Deep Dive: Paul Barringer’s Economic Approach to Maintenance and Reliability - The discussion source is an excerpt from a 2025 article by Terrence O’Hanlon detailing Paul Barringer’s approach to maintenance and reliability, emphasizing an economic and tactical perspective. Barringer makes a clear distinction, asserting that maintenance is a reactive process focused on quickly restoring function and minimizing costs and downtime, while reliability is the strategic, proactive effort to prevent failures altogether. His views are heavily supported by data indicating that the majority of failures stem from people and procedural errors (around 72%) rather than equipment issues (28%). Consequently, Barringer advocated for viewing all maintenance and reliability actions through an economic lens, prioritizing work based on Pareto analysis and the most urgent risk assessments.

The_Economics_of_Failure

David Totman and Terrence O’Hanlon discuss the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure which depicts the condition and performance of American infrastructure in the familiar form of a school report  card—assigning letter grades based on the physical condition and needed investments for improvement.

The latest Report Card grades show we have a significant backlog of overdue maintenance across our  infrastructure systems, a pressing need for modernization, and an immense opportunity to create reliable,  long-term funding, but they also show that we can improve the current condition of our nation’s  infrastructure — when investments are made and projects move forward, the grades rise.

America's Report Card with David Totman, American Society of Civil Engineers and Terrence O’Hanlon

Join Terrence O’Hanlon, live from Emerson Exchange 2016 in Austin Texas as he catches up with Mike Train, Executive President of Emerson Automation Solutions to discuss reliability and asset management.

Relability Radio Podcast with Mike Train

Derek Burley of Blue Sky Reliability provides an overview if his upcoming IMC short course co-presented with John Reeves of TRM relating Failure modes (from RCM) to Failure codes (from CMMS).

Failure Modes Linked to Failure Codes

Derek Burley of Blue Sky Reliability shares advice on how to get the most out your IMC conference participation.

Getting the Most from IMC

While at the Association of Asset Management Professionals San Francisco Bay Area Chapter meeting being hosted at the Oracle office in Pleasanton California, Terrence O’Hanlon, CEO and Publisher of Reliabilityweb and Uptime Magazine moderated an RCM Roundtable discussion with RCM Guru Anthony “Mac” Smith, Author of RCM: Gateway to World Class Maintenance and Nick Jize of JMS Associates.

RCM Roundtable Discussion

2017 - 01 - 25 - Suzy Jarman - Interview

2017 - 01 - 25 - Petra Botts - Interview

Mike Johnson Interview

2017 - 01 - 25 - MichaelHollowayInterview

Reliability Radio interviews Bill Connell at the OilDoc Conference in Bavaria, Germany.

Bill Connell Interview

Reliability Leadership and Asset Management

The_Economics_of_Failure

Reliability Leadership

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