Having started my career on the tools and later working across maintenance, reliability, engineering, and management, I’ve seen firsthand the value of experience that systems and procedures simply don’t capture. People accumulate decades of knowledge about why assets behave the way they do, the decisions behind modifications and the consequences of getting things wrong. Yet organisations often take this knowledge for granted until someone retires or moves on. The challenge isn’t simply capturing information; it’s transferring the judgement, understanding and experience that make information useful. From an Organisational Change Management perspective, knowledge transfer needs to be deliberate, supported through mentoring, succession planning and everyday working relationships, rather than left to a last-minute handover. After all, an organisation may own its assets, but does it genuinely retain the knowledge and capability required to manage them?
Every asset-intensive organisation has people who seem to know everything.
They remember why equipment was modified, which components have a history of failure and why certain operating arrangements exist.
Sometimes that knowledge has accumulated over decades.
Then one day, they retire.
Then one day, the organisation discovers that much of its asset knowledge has walked out the door.
This isn’t simply a documentation problem.
Experience includes judgement, context, and an understanding of relationships that are hard to capture in a database.
Asset Management depends on reliable information and organisational knowledge to support decisions across the lifecycle.
Yet many organisations rely heavily on individuals without effective knowledge-transfer arrangements.
Organisational Change Management can help address this through succession planning, mentoring, structured handovers and deliberate knowledge capture.
Importantly, knowledge transfer should occur while experienced people are still available, not during their final weeks of employment.
It also requires identifying which knowledge matters most and who will need it.
An organisation may own the asset, but does it genuinely own the knowledge required to manage it?
#ISO55001 #SuccessionPlanning #TacitKnowledge #Mentoring #AssetInformationManagement #MaintenanceReliability #OrganisationalLearning #KnowledgeRetention