Oil and Gas Operations Management for Asset Reliability Training Course

Course overview

Oil and gas assets operate under production targets, process-safety constraints, ageing equipment, remote logistics and volatile maintenance demand. When operating discipline, maintenance planning and reliability decisions are managed separately, the result is often avoidable downtime, deferred work, repeat equipment failures, inventory shortages and poor visibility of production risk. This course helps personnel connect daily operating decisions with asset reliability, maintenance execution and lifecycle performance across upstream, midstream, LNG, refining and petrochemical facilities.

Participants learn to build an operations management system that converts production priorities into controlled work, reliable equipment performance and measurable improvement. The course covers asset criticality, failure modes, preventive maintenance optimisation, operator care, work management, shutdown planning, production-loss accounting, maintenance KPIs and risk-based decision-making. Participants practise using reliability-centred maintenance principles, ISO 55000 asset-management concepts, ISO 14224 equipment data taxonomy and CMMS data to distinguish chronic losses from one-off events and select practical interventions.

Instruction combines worked oil and gas cases, facilitator-led technical sessions, CMMS-based data exercises and team workshops. Participants analyse a simulated production asset with recurring compressor, pump and instrumentation failures; prioritise a maintenance backlog; develop a reliability improvement plan; and present the business case for action. Each participant leaves with an asset reliability action plan containing a critical-equipment ranking, KPI dashboard specification, failure-elimination workflow and 90-day implementation roadmap that can be adapted to their own facility.

The course is designed for operations, maintenance, reliability and production professionals who need a common method for improving availability without compromising process safety, quality or cost control. It is suitable for personnel moving from technical supervision into integrated operations or asset-performance roles.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Develop an asset criticality ranking using consequence, probability and production-impact criteria
• Construct a reliability block diagram and availability calculation for a production system
• Apply failure mode and effects analysis to identify credible equipment failure mechanisms and controls
• Create a preventive-maintenance optimisation plan using failure history, task intervals and equipment criticality
• Interpret CMMS work-order data to calculate backlog, schedule compliance, repeat-failure and wrench-time indicators
• Lead a root cause analysis using barrier-based causal mapping and corrective-action verification
• Prepare a production-loss and maintenance business case using downtime, throughput and lifecycle-cost data
• Produce a 90-day asset reliability improvement roadmap with owners, milestones, KPIs and governance reviews

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Operations Supervisors — who must protect production targets while controlling operating and maintenance risk
• Maintenance Supervisors — who need to convert maintenance backlogs into prioritised, executable work
• Reliability Engineers — who require operational context to target recurring losses and improve equipment performance
• Production Engineers — who analyse downtime, constraints and deferment causes across producing assets
• Asset Integrity Engineers — who must align inspection, integrity risk and maintenance actions with asset criticality
• Plant or Facility Managers — who need an integrated view of availability, cost, process safety and improvement priorities

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have basic familiarity with oil and gas facility operations, including common equipment such as pumps, compressors, valves, heat exchangers and control systems. Experience reading maintenance work orders, production reports, P&IDs, equipment registers or downtime logs is useful, but not mandatory. Participants should be comfortable with simple spreadsheet calculations such as percentages, averages and sorting data. No previous reliability-engineering qualification, CMMS administrator access, advanced statistics, coding or specialist simulation software experience is required. Complete beginners should expect an intensive introduction to reliability terminology before applying it to practical operating cases.

Training methodology

The programme uses instructor-led technical briefings followed by facility-based application exercises. Participants work with a simulated oil and gas asset dataset containing production deferment records, SAP PM-style work orders, failure codes, preventive-maintenance tasks and equipment histories. Teams complete criticality scoring, FMEA, backlog prioritisation and root cause workshops, then test recommendations against safety, production and cost constraints. Facilitators use upstream, pipeline, LNG and refinery examples to compare operating contexts. The final session converts each participant’s analysis into a practical 90-day reliability improvement plan for workplace use.

Course outline

Day 1: Operations performance and asset reliability foundations

• Oil and gas asset lifecycle and operating-model interfaces
• Production availability, reliability, maintainability and utilisation definitions
• Process safety, production assurance and maintenance-risk trade-offs
• ISO 55000 asset-management value framework
• Asset hierarchy, equipment register and functional-location structures
• Asset criticality analysis using consequence and likelihood scoring
• Leading and lagging indicators for operations and reliability

Workshop: Participants build a criticality ranking for a simulated gas-compression train and identify the equipment requiring enhanced reliability controls.

Day 2: Failure analysis and reliability strategy selection

• Failure mechanisms in rotating, static, electrical and instrument equipment
• ISO 14224 equipment taxonomy and failure-data coding
• Failure mode and effects analysis worksheet development
• Reliability-centred maintenance decision logic
• Weibull concepts for failure-pattern interpretation
• Reliability block diagrams and system availability calculation
• Preventive, predictive, condition-based and run-to-failure task selection

Workshop: Teams complete an FMEA and maintenance-strategy recommendation for a crude-export pump system with repeated seal and bearing failures.

Day 3: Maintenance work management and CMMS control

• Work identification, notification quality and job-plan development
• Maintenance backlog ageing, risk ranking and weekly scheduling
• SAP PM and IBM Maximo work-order data fields
• Schedule compliance, plan compliance and emergency-work measurement
• Materials readiness, critical spares and kitting controls
• Operator care routes and autonomous-maintenance boundaries
• Turnaround and shutdown scope challenge methods

Workshop: Participants triage a maintenance backlog, create a one-week frozen schedule and justify deferrals using criticality and risk data.

Day 4: Performance measurement, loss elimination and decision support

• Production-loss classification and deferment accounting
• Overall equipment effectiveness and oil and gas availability metrics
• Mean time between failures and mean time to repair interpretation
• Root cause analysis using causal-factor and barrier mapping
• Bad-actor identification from repeat-failure and downtime data
• Maintenance cost, lifecycle cost and value-case calculations
• Reliability dashboard design for daily and monthly reviews

Workshop: Teams investigate a recurring compressor trip case, map causes and barriers, and prepare a quantified failure-elimination proposal.

Day 5: Reliability governance and implementation planning

• Operations-maintenance-reliability governance roles and decision rights
• Daily production meetings and weekly maintenance coordination routines
• Risk-based prioritisation of reliability improvement initiatives
• Management of change for maintenance-strategy modifications
• Corrective-action ownership, due dates and effectiveness checks
• Reliability maturity assessment and improvement sequencing
• Ninety-day implementation roadmap and stakeholder communication

Workshop: Each participant produces and presents a 90-day asset reliability action plan with priorities, owners, KPIs, review cadence and expected business impact.

Tools & standards covered

SAP Plant Maintenance (SAP PM), IBM Maximo Asset Management, ISO 55000 Asset Management, ISO 14224 Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries Equipment Reliability Data

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions