OR&A - The Definitive Reference
 

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Operations Readiness
The process of preparing the custodians (owner/operator) of an asset under construction (and the supporting organisation) such that, at the point of delivery/handover, that organisation is 'Ready to Operate', (i.e. is fully prepared to assume ownership of the asset, accepts responsibility for, and is capable of, performing the safe and efficient operation of that asset, in a safe, sustainable and environmentally friendly manner).

By default, this includes participation in the activities of the Project Team to ensure the needs of the Asset Operations Team (to enable them to implement this process) are recognised and addressed during the development of the asset.

Assurance
In this same context, assurance refers to the act of providing confidence to the various stakeholders in a project or venture that both their asset and supporting organisation has achieved a state of 'Readiness to Operate', (or that it will be able to do so by the time the acceptance / handover to the Operations Team occurs).

When to use OR&A
As indicated by the relevant International Standard BS EN ISO20815, the OR&A™ process should be used throughout every phase of a project. However, in our experience, this is not always possible, so because deploying the OR&A™ process at any stage adds value, the OR&A™ Solution can be deployed at any point in a project by performing a review (using the OR&A™ Review tool) to set the baseline by populating the current status into the OR&A™ Solution as the starting point, providing immediate real-time assurance from that point forward.

Operations Readiness & Assurance (OR&A)
Initially created as Mission Readiness by NASA, renamed Operational Readiness for the Apollo moon-shots, and then later adopted as Operations Readiness by the Oklahoma Power Corporation in the USA, Operations Readiness & Assurance (OR&A) has a long history in many industries that all wanted the same thing - to have assurance that their asset would operate as intended for its design life.

The key word in all of this is assurance, after all, it is too late, at Project handover, to realise that errors or omissions have been made during design, that key requirements have been overlooked or that the operator is not ‘Ready to Operate’. Deploying a robust OR&A™ process is the only way to ensure that the necessary Operations Requirements have been considered during design and construction.

We know that there are now literally hundreds of companies out there who purport to do OR&A, but if you are going to use one of them, ask them if they comply with the appropriate International Standards and then use the OR&A Comparison Chart to evaluate their system, compare it to ours and then re-think your decision. If they don't understand what is meant by assurance, they won't be able to demonstrate how it is achieved and how it can be used to benefit your project.

Advertising Campaign

Frequent visitors to LinkedIn may have noticed our recent advertising campaign. Tired of boring, adverts, we thought a little humour might be the way to bring OR&A to the attention of more people that need it ... we apologise in advance to anyone actually trying to purchase these books and respectfully suggest you buy the real one!