Especially in a safety-critical sector, such as the oil and gas industry, it is important that your maintenance employees are qualified and comply with all regulations. These may be legal requirements, such as VCA certification [external link to, but also conditions and agreements that your company itself uses. In order to be allowed near an installation at all, mechanics or other maintenance personnel must, for example, have successfully completed certain training courses and be aware of matters such as escape routes or the location of fire extinguishers. As the client for the maintenance work, you are responsible for this, even if you hire people from another company. This is also important for insurance purposes. If you use uncertified employees, you are not insured.

Information about certification of maintenance employees fragmented

The information needed to comply with all agreements and rules is fragmented in many organizations. They often keep track in an Excel sheet of which employee has followed which training courses and obtained which certifications. In addition, there may be different sheets or systems in use per location and therefore different versions of the truth in circulation. Due to staff turnover, the data is also not always up-to-date, while external employees usually remain out of the picture because their own employers record information regarding training and certification. A complicating factor is also that different departments are involved or have an interest in training and education. This ranges from HR and planning to engineering and maintenance.

Match qualifications per role and employee

How do you ensure that you bring together all the necessary data on requirements, skills, training and certifications for maintenance work and make it transparent? At Gemba, we have helped a number of our clients to do this with IBM Maximo. On the one hand, we have mapped the requirements per maintenance role, on the other hand, the training courses followed and certifications obtained per employee, and this for both internal and external people. We have overlaid those pictures in IBM Maximo.

Always deploy qualified employees

By matching the data in IBM Maximo, the companies in question have a clear insight into the state of affairs. They know exactly what is needed to perform certain work on assets and which employees are qualified to do so. With this information, the planning department can deploy people with the right skills. The technical department knows which employees it should encourage to renew their certifications. And the HR department can include the topic well-prepared in performance reviews with maintenance employees. It is even possible to have employees request training directly in IBM Maximo. In this way, training and certification in the field of maintenance becomes an integral part of your business processes.