RCM Contract Facilitation

We have extensive experience applying RCM to a wide range of different assets. We are available to facilitate meetings of your teams.

Internal or External Facilitators?

One question many organisations grapple with is whether to have internal or external RCM Facilitators. There are advantages and disadvantages of each, and in our opinion, the choice is not clear cut.

The big advantage of internal Facilitators is that they learn a lot about the asset, the team members and the organisation, and if they are internal, this knowledge remains in-house. In addition, ownership of the solution is greater so there is a greater chance that implementation will be successful. Using an internal Facilitator can be cheaper for the organisation because, once trained, they can facilitate many analyses. If outsiders are used, their charges will be incurred on an on-going basis.

However, an internal Facilitator has a learning curve to go up and needs to be trained and mentored to be fully competent in the application of the process. Even after the training and mentoring programme an internal Facilitators will not have had as much experience as an outsider who has successfully made a living from the application of the process and has many years of experience. In our experience, many organisations do have internal people who can make excellent Facilitators. A big problem however is that they also tend to be good at other things, so are usually busy with other initiatives, and if they are ambitious and capable, they tend to move onwards and upwards out of the job that required them to be RCM Facilitators in the first place.

Another aspect to consider is the attitude of the business to consultants. It can be a big frustration for some people internally that recommendations will only be considered if an outsider has made them. Other organisations are suspicious of outsiders and try to use internal expertise as much as possible.

An intermediate approach that many organisations adopt is to use an external Facilitator for the pilot – because the decision about whether to use the process depends on this crucial study/ studies so it is important to minimise the risk of failure - and an internal Facilitator in subsequent rollouts.

Facilitator competency development typically consists of a 3-day RCM introductory course, a 10-day facilitators course and plus mentoring during subsequent roll-outs.

Note that in all cases the team must come from the organisation that owns the asset – under no circumstances should a contract team be used because they do not know the asset (some organisations have actually done this and the resulting RCM analysis has been little more than an exercise in box-ticking and feeding a computer).

We are flexible -  whether you wish to use internal or external facilitators, we can help. If you wish to discuss further, please contact us.