Asset Management Assessment & Improvement Plans

Hard work isn't the problem. Clarity is.

Female electrical engineer in Australian suburbs, smiling at camera.

Most maintenance and asset management teams are not underperforming because they lack effort. They are underperforming because they lack a clear, agreed view of where the gaps are, and which ones to fix first.

Without that clarity, improvements are inconsistent. Budget cases are hard to defend. Teams work in parallel on competing priorities. And the results never quite match the effort invested.

COSOL's Proprietary Asset Management Assessment delivers the one thing most operations are missing: a structured, data-backed, evidence-based view of your current maturity position - and a prioritised roadmap that tells your leadership team exactly what to do next, in what order, and what it will mean for production, cost, and reliability.

25+ Years

Asset Management Expertise

21 Core

Competencies Assessed across people, process, data, and systems

6-8 Weeks

Average delivery time

What your operation looks like without a clear maturity view

"Everyone is working hard - the issue is we're not all working on the same thing." - A sentiment COSOL hears on almost every engagement. The patterns are consistent across asset-intensive operations. Without a structured view of maturity:

AM Standards and Frameworks

Breakdowns increase. Recovery is inconsistent. Compliance to plan falls. Critical spares aren't where they need to be. Maintenance backlogs grow faster than they are cleared - hiding emerging safety and production risks.

Weak standards and structure

Work management processes are followed differently by different supervisors, shifts, and sites. Standards exist on paper but are not embedded in daily routines. Roles and accountabilities are unclear. Improvement depends on who happens to be on that week.

Poor data and systems

Digital asset management systems are incomplete or holding low-quality data. Multiple sources of truth. Manual spreadsheets. Reporting that lags behind reality. Key insights locked inside the heads of a few individuals - creating continuity and succession risk.

Thumbnail of the "How Leaders Know It’s Time for an Asset Management Assessment - Checklist"

Download our Checklist on 'How Leaders Know It's time for an Assessment'

“Teams work hard but improvement initiatives stall because there's no agreed view of maturity, gaps, and priorities.”

– Ben Prior | Capability Manager - Advisory, COSOL

COSOL's Asset Management Assessment & Improvement Plan provides the structure, clarity, prioritisation and practical plans you need to lift capability and control where it matters most.

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The COSOL Asset Management Assessment & Improvement Plan

A proprietary toolkit. Real field experience. A plan you can defend.

COSOL's Asset Management Assessment uses our proprietary maturity toolkit - built over 25 years of asset management delivery across mining, utilities, oil and gas, transport, and defence. It is not a generic framework downloaded from a standards body. It is an operationally validated diagnostic developed by specialists who have worked on the sites, understood the failures, and built the improvement plans that actually held.

The assessment evaluates both what you do and what you get from it - practices and outcomes - across 20 competency areas. This dual lens matters. An operation can have documented processes that nobody follows. It can also be getting reasonable outcomes through individual heroics that will not survive a key person leaving. The assessment identifies both - and tells you what to do about each.

BENEFIT 1

One Page, Total Clarity

See your current state across Core competencies. Know exactly where you're strong and where you're fragile.

BENEFIT 2

Data-Backed Roadmap

Get a two or three-phased priority plan (0-2+ years) that your whole leadership team will support - no more arguing about what to fix first.

BENEFIT 3

Business Impact Tied to Every Action

Every recommendation links to throughput, recovery, and cost. You'll know the expected ROI before you spend a dollar.

BENEFIT 4

We Stay for Delivery

Unlike consultants who disappear after recommendations, COSOL stays accountable with the unique ability to co-deliver the improvement projects.

Common Goals Our Customers Are Wanting to Achieve

The COSOL Asset Management Assessment & Improvement Plan helps our asset-centric customers achieve these common goals:

Lift throughput and recovery

Prove ROI on improvement project before it secures budget

Maximise production and reduce unplanned downtime

How It Works - Our Proven 4-Step Assessment Process

Delivered in 6-8 weeks with minimal disruption to operations

Step

Define Objectives & Tailor Toolkit

Confirm scope and competencies with your site.
Align with asset management framework and site objectives.
Adapt our proprietary toolkit to assessment scope.
Submit RFI using toolkit references

Step

Evaluate Submitted Materials

Review documents against toolkit competencies.
Capture evidence of practices, gaps, and outcomes.
Record findings in assessment template.

Step

On-Site Assessment

Validate through interviews, observations, and system walk-throughs.
Gather additional evidence.
Confirm practices and gaps with site stakeholders.

Step

On-Site Assessment

Convert findings into structured action plan.
Highlight strengths and priority gaps.
Align recommendations to business risk and maturity goals.

Download our Checklist on 'How Leaders Know It's time for an Assessment'

The 21 competency areas we assess

COSOL's proprietary Assessment toolkit evaluates your operation across 21 competency areas - spanning strategy, work management, data, systems, and people - and produces a scored, evidence-based view of where the gaps are and which ones matter most. Start with a few or do them all.

What are your peers prioritising?

Based on assessments completed across asset-centric operations, COSOL has identified the six common competency areas flagged as priority gaps - and the ones that tend to deliver the fastest reliability gains when addressed. - Curious to know which ones they are, contact the team to go through them and why they keep getting selected as priorities.

Leadership, Culture, and Organisation Design

Operational Readiness and Asset Onboarding

Materials Management

Change Management

Defect Elimination

Strategic Asset Management Planning

Operate for Reliability

Contractor Management

Decommissioning and Disposal

People and Capabilities

Asset Criticality and Performance Requirements

Work Management

Condition Monitoring

Asset Performance Tracking

Asset Management Digital Systems

Asset Planning and Strategies

Shutdown Management

Hydrocarbon Management

Asset Integrity

Workshops and Tooling

Lifecycle Cost and Budgeting

What a completed Assessment delivers

At the end of a COSOL Asset Management Assessment and Improvement Plan, your leadership team has three things:

The Assessment Toolkit

Your completed, scored assessment across all 21 competency areas (or as many as you chose) with practices and outcomes mapped. This is yours to keep and use as the baseline for annual reassessment, so you can measure progress over time

A Prioritised Improvement Roadmap

A phased, 0–24 month improvement plan with initiatives sequenced by business impact - not by what is easiest or loudest. Each initiative includes expected outcomes, effort requirements, and a value case linking it to production, uptime, and cost.

A Value Case You Can Defend

Every initiative in the roadmap is tied to a measurable business outcome - whether that is increasing throughput, improving OEE, reducing reactive maintenance spend, or managing compliance risk. This is what turns an improvement plan into a business case.

Watch our Maturity Assessment Webinar

COSOL’s Capability Manager – Advisory, Ben Prior and Mining Industry Lead Christopher Gordon share what many asset-centric operations get wrong about maturity assessments and how to do them right (or know when to get help).

Watch Webinar

Webinar: The Hidden Cost of Good Enough Asset Management

What makes COSOL's toolkit different

The Institute of Asset Management self-assessment toolkit is a useful starting point for asset-centric organisation. But what COSOL's created is something different.

Our toolkit was built by asset management specialists with decades of hands-on operating experience - not designed as a generic framework and adapted for industry later. It goes deeper in the areas that matter most to asset-centric operations: work management execution, materials management, maintenance strategy quality, shutdown management, and the intersection of people, process, and digital systems.

Critically, it assesses both practices and outcomes - not just whether a process exists, but whether it is working. An organisation can score well on documented processes and still be deeply reactive if those processes are not followed or are not delivering results. Our toolkit is designed to find that gap - and it always does.

"It's not about shooting from the hip. The toolkit structures your thinking so you narrow in on the things that will actually move the dial — not just the things that are easiest to fix."

– Ben Prior | Capability Manager - Advisory, COSOL

A few other reasons

25+ Years of Asset Management Expertise

Deep asset management and vertical expertise across APAC and Americas in asset-centric sectors like mining (including gold, iron ore, coal, and more), utilities, and infrastructure.

Experienced Operators, Not Just Consultants

Our advisory experts have on the ground experience. We understand the real-world pressures of planning, maintenance, reliability, and shutdowns.

Proprietary Diagnostic Framework

Our maturity toolkit is our own IP—proven across dozens of sites. Evidence-based, not theoretical.

We Stay for Delivery

Unlike consultants who vanish after recommendations, we co-deliver the improvement projects. We stay accountable.

Full-Service Capability

From Advisory to AMaaS (Asset Management as a Service), we can support your entire asset management journey.

Proven Results

Documented customer cases delivering 5× ROI in year one. Improvements tied to throughput, uptime, and cost.

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Is this the right time for an assessment?

Organisations typically engage COSOL for an Asset Management Assessment and Improvement plan when one or more of the following applies:

Commodity prices are strong and you want to maximise productive capacity while conditions are favourable

A new leader has joined at Superintendent level or above and wants an independent, clear view of the gaps before committing to a direction

New equipment is arriving on site and you need a strong asset management foundation before commissioning

A major upgrade or processing plant expansion is approaching and asset management needs to be in order before investment increases

The internal sentiment is: "We know there are issues, but we can't agree on what to fix first"

The earlier COSOL is engaged, the more value we can deliver. Most assessments are completed within four to eight weeks and produce a roadmap ready to take into the next budget cycle.

Industries we Serve

Mining (Gold, Iron Ore, Coal)

Oil & Gas

Rail & Transport

Utilities

Infrastructure

Who We Work With

Processing Managers

Maintenance Managers

Engineering/Asset Management Superintendents

Site GMs/MDs

Manager of Processing Operations

Our advisors are trusted by asset-centric organisations across Australia and internationally

"A leading Australian gold producer engaged COSOL when they identified clear opportunities to improve maintenance and asset management - but lacked the time and internal capacity to drive the strategic work. COSOL applied its Asset Management Maturity Assessment, delivered a three-phase roadmap, and began co-delivery of the improvement initiatives. The program is set to deliver multiple ROI in the first year."

– Ben Prior | Capability Manager - Advisory, COSOL

Specialists, not Generalists

COSOL advisors are not generalist consultants who have built their expertise at a keyboard. COSOL deliberately recruits specialists who have spent decades working on the ground - across sites, sectors, and continents - and who bring the kind of field-hardened judgement that only comes from having lived inside the operations they are now helping to improve.

Meet some of our Advisors

Ben Prior

Capability Leader - Advisory

15+ years

Michael Callioni

Manager Advisory

17+ years

Josh Old

Strategic Advisor

20+ years

Part of a broader program

The Asset Management Assessment sits at the start of COSOL's Asset Management Maturity Uplift — a complete program of advisory, standards, data, and co-delivery support for asset-intensive operations.

Asset Manageent Maturity Uplift

The full program overview, including all four solution areas

Back to Asset Management
Maturity Uplift

Operations Readiness

When new assets are commissioned, master data is the foundation that determines whether your team starts Day 1 ready or reactive.

Visit Operations Readiness

Master Data Services

Assessment frequently identifies master data quality as a high-priority gap. COSOL's Master Data team builds what your EAM or ERP needs to perform.

Learn more about
Master Data Services

Master Data as a Service (MDaaS)

Once the data is built, we manage its ongoing quality through a structured governance program.

Learn about MDaaS

FAQs

Ready to Move from Firefighting to Focused Improvement

Book a 15 or 30-minute assessment conversation with our Asset Management specialists. We'll help you understand if this approach is right for your operation - with no obligation.

Book your Assessment

6-8 Week Delivery

Minimal operational disruption

Proven ROI

Insights From Asset Management Advisors

Webinar: The Hidden Cost of Good Enough Asset Management

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