There has been a tremendous fuss about Predictive maintenance this summer. Consulting firms and sensors suppliers seem to rediscover maintenance after so many years of staying carefully away from this complex – and often non-bankable – topic. Time has changed now, and thanks to the limitless power of AI and IoT ubiquity, the maintenance nut will soon be cracked (possibly by a cobot nutcracker).

The last “Maintenance in China” survey, conducted in 2017 and covering over 450 companies, provides useful insights. We republish here a summary of the findings and expand on what best-in-class companies (those with the best performance according to their survey results) have done to obtain such results.

In this month’s newsletter, we are pleased to share the results of our 2018 customer satisfaction survey, which focuses customers under support. The purpose of the survey is to constantly improve our customer service and to identify customer long-term needs.

An explosion ripped through Chenjiagang Chemical Park in Yancheng, Jiangsu province on March 21, which killed 78 people and seriously injured 79. A few months before, at 0:41 on November 28, 2018, an explosion occurred near Shenghua Chemical in Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province: 23 were killed and another 22 injured.

LBC Shanghai Shipping is making tangible progress towards better risk prevention with the use of a specialised risk prevention management system. In recent years, accidents in storage terminals have made headlines in China, prompting local authorities to strengthen regulations and to very significantly step up law enforcement.

The use of “smart” BIM for O&M meets practical “dumb” challenges, especially in the Chinese market where maintenance practices are not well established. Useful lessons can however be learnt from experience and standards used in the industry. A project role must be created for O&M data preparation, first to define specifications, formats, schedules before major equipment contracts are signed, then to follow up data preparation activities during construction. As far as software is concerned, a practical advice is to avoid conflicts with project teams and software vendors: instead, an O&M layer added onto the BIM model can provide the necessary support. Examples of projects in environmental utilities and buildings in mainland China and Hongkong are...