The main sections of the aide-memoir are ordered as follows:

Assets Objectives Strategy:

1. Characteristics of plant operation.

2. Business, production and maintenance objectives.

3. Maintenance life plans for process plant.

4. Maintenance life plans for electrical and instrumentation equipment.

5. Condition based maintenance.

6. Corrective maintenance and plant condition review.

7. Preventive maintenance schedule.

Organization:

8. Maintenance workload.

9. Maintenance resource structure.

10. Maintenance administrative structure.

Systems:

11. Work planning and work control.

12. Maintenance control.

13. Stores management.

14. Maintenance documentation.

The above information can be divided into hard data —that which is written down, e.g., job descriptions, or is recorded in some other way, e.g., on an organization chart—and soft data —that which derives from expressed opinions, e.g., concerning human factors, or is recorded but is not directly or easily accessible, or needs to be modelled.

Data Collection Methods

It will be appreciated from the aide-memoir that the main effort of an audit is data gathering. In order to do this efficiently, a well thought out programme for this (see next section) is needed and the most appropriate collection methods—viz., interviews, questionnaires, surveys, models—must be employed. Such methods can be used on their own, e.g., interviews only, or in combination, e.g., interviews plus models. Much of the hard data can be collected by company personnel either before or during the site visit.

FIGURE 3–1 Schematic of Air Compressor

Appendix 2 shows the pre-site-visit information list. Such information is usually collected by the audit facilitator (whose main responsibility is to arrange the audit interviews). Figure 3–1 shows a schematic of an air compressor, with rotable spares information. This was drawn up (after explanation of what was required) by an area technician during the site-visit phase of a chemical plant audit.

The questionnaires are used in two ways. Firstly, in interviews during which the questions (and where necessary the rating scale associated with the questions) are explained; the use of questionnaires for this purpose was discussed in Chapter 2 and an example given in Table 2–2. Secondly, to survey the opinions of a group of people on a particular issue (see, for example, Table 3–1) in which case the questionnaires are completed directly by those being surveyed. The surveys are conducted during the site visit and, as far as possible, are explained to the group concerned.

Outline organization and systems models are constructed and agreed early in the site visit and are subsequently used during the one-to-one data collection interviews. For example the work planning model (see Figure 1–17), is used as a reference when discussing with the planners (and others) the way the system works, and to identify actual and potential problems. The resource structure model, (see Figures 1–14 and 1–15) is consulted when discussing issues such as skills profiling and inter-plant flexibility with managers and supervisors.