Applying RAMSSHEEP analysis for risk-driven maintenance

The Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment of The Netherlands and Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) aim to launch a risk-driven maintenance concept named RAMSSHEEP. Engineering and consultancy companies are expected to develop the RAMSSHEEP concept in order to create better maintenance strategies. The objective is to investigate whether RAMSSHEEP can be applied as a risk-driven maintenance tool for primary flood defence systems in The Netherlands. By applying a probabilistic approach to a flooding problem, more insight is gained in the advantages and disadvantages of RAMSSHEEP. This paper addresses the problem which primary flood defence systems experience with respect to maintenance strategies. Often external political pressure is applied to improve reliability and availability and to reduce costs significantly. Therefore this paper suggests an approach that is able to find an optimal maintenance strategy by finding the economic most beneficial maintenance interval. More and more (large) companies have made an inventory of their process system(s) and qualified and quantified the possible risks that may endanger an optimal reliable performance of the system. The main purpose is based on controlling or even avoiding risks during operating phase (Andrews & Moss 2002). Therefore maintaining a system will play a crucial role in ensuring the reliability and availability of the system is as high as possible against the lowest possible costs (optimization of efficiency). So by applying the concept of risk management it is possible to get an indication of the reliability of the system and how actions can be taken to ensure an optimal condition of the system (Zaal 2011). A well-known analysis to get an indication of the performance reliability (quality) of the functioning of a system can be described by Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS). The RAMS analysis can be seen as a risk concept that describes the primary performance of all the functions of a system. A RAMS analysis can be used in every stage of the life cycle for the entire infrastructure in The Netherlands: road network, major waterways and main waters. This analysis can be applied on a complete system but also for small components within a network. Crucial information for a management team is: – Is the system available?; – Do the objects fulfill its purpose (function)?; – What is the condition of the objects?;