This November, the UK & Ireland Maximo User Group (MUG) community gathered at IBM’s York Road offices in London for what became one of the most energizing and forward-thinking meetups to date. With a brand new two-day format, a packed agenda, and nearly 200 attendees each day, the event struck the perfect balance between hands-on technical learning and user-led storytelling.
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What made this MUG special wasn’t just the new format, it was the energy. There was a real sense of momentum across both days: organizations accelerating their MAS journeys, users digging deeper into reliability and mobility, and a growing curiosity around AI’s role in asset-intensive operations. This felt, more than ever, like a community moving forward together.
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Day 1 - MAS Unlocked: Hands-On and Immersive

Day 1 debuted MAS Unlocked, transforming an entire floor of IBM York Road into an interactive, multi-room learning environment. Guided by colored badges, attendee groups rotated through themed rooms every 30 minutes, each focused on a different capability within the Maximo Application Suite.

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Room topics covered:

• Mobility/Technician work execution
• AI and its real-world role in MAS
• Reliability Strategies
• Visual Inspection and AI-powered insights
• Scheduler and Work/Resources Optimization
• Condition-Based Maintenance (Monitor, Predict, Health)

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Drop-in clinics ran alongside the main rotations, including Manage, Asset Lifecycle Management, Red Hat, Upgrades and Automation, offering attendees direct access to IBM designers, developers, and partner experts.

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The AI session was one of the most popular rooms of the entire event, with a queue forming outside for much of the day. It’s clear that AI is no longer seen as an add-on but is becoming central to how organizations are thinking about reliability, inspection, decision support, and long-term asset strategy.

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Naviam Mentors at MAS Unlocked

Our Naviam experts proudly supported some of the sessions, alongside IBM across Manage, Mobility, Reliability, and Visual Inspection, helping users troubleshoot challenges, explore new capabilities, learn about current projects and understand how MAS can be shaped to fit real operational needs.

Manage Drop-In Session

Andrew Jeffery, Senior Maximo Consultant with Naviam and author of MaximoSecrets, and Christiaan Loc of MaxLogic joined IBM's Steve Lee for the Manage Drop-In session to cover all things Manage related.
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In this session, it was interesting to see a majority of functional questions over technical ones. The use of Asset Templates also appeared more than once as a possible solution.
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Andrew shared: “The first question was about integrating sensors on wearables from a vendor looking to do some integration; the last question was about tracking assets that regularly move across sites and how to locate them. This led to discussions on RFID or NFC tags and Maximo Mobile Asset Manager, which has an ‘auditing’ capability. All interesting discussions, which kept others in the room."

Mobility in MAS Session

Naviam's Lee Daley, Customer Success Director, and John Rotaru, Senior Technical Pre-Sales Consultant, joined Ian Sellars from IBM to host an insightful session on Mobility in MAS. Each session across the day was packed-out, indicating that mobility remains a top priority for those involved in asset management.
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Lee said: “Whether attendees were interested in empowering the workforce or evaluating the suitability of their chosen application, the topic clearly resonated. Each session was highly engaged, with questions continuously flowing from start to finish.”
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John added: "Mobility remains front and center for many organizations. Attendees were keen to understand what truly works offline, how to streamline technician workflows, and the best ways to bring field teams on the MAS journey. Being able to share real-world examples from challenging environments helped show what’s possible today and what’s coming next."

Reliability-Centered Maintenance in MAS

Dominic Bramley, Head of Pre-Sales with Naviam, and Damien De Gouveia of Cohesive hosted the Reliability Strategies session with over 40 organizations attending over the course of the day.
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The session proved to be of great interest, the general understanding being that Reliability-Centered Maintenance is an effective way of reducing downtime and optimizing PM regimes within asset intensive organizations but can be a costly exercise to undertake.
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However, the session demonstrated how Reliability Strategies is included with MAS ‘free of charge’ and can accelerate the implementation of RCM with access to an extensive library of failure data and mitigation activities, a custom builder and AI assistance. Attendees were engaged with plenty of questions and suggestions for future enhancements that will be fed back to IBM.
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Dominic shared: "A straw poll of organizations who attended the sessions revealed that while 70% were using Maximo failure codes to some degree, only 15% had an active RCM program in place. However, 60% said they plan to undertake this in future, showing clear intent to move toward structured RCM.”

Maximo Visual Inspection

Naviam Product Developer Michael Rawlinson, who has recently been working on an exciting MVI project, joined Russ McKay and Claudio Guerrero from IBM to lead this session with live demonstrations.
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The session focused on the simplicity and flexibility of MVI. While many initially assumed it was designed mainly for manufacturing environments with consistent inputs, we explored how its use cases are far broader. As the associated technology becomes better in quality and lower in cost, the potential capabilities across many sectors are endless.
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Michael told us: “MVI can handle less structured inputs and adapt to varied scenarios, making it highly versatile. We also discussed how the underlying architecture required to run MVI in an organisation can be implemented at a much lower cost than most people think. "

AI – The Hot Topic!

Alexander Delic (MaxTAF) and Sandra Gannon from IBM hosted the most popular room of the day with a fantastic session on AI in MAS, and Alex kindly shared some of his findings from the day. Their goal was to provide attendees with a "critical questions" framework for upcoming AI initiatives. Users really valued having concrete criteria to evaluate AI tools, rather than just hype.
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A hands-up user poll showed a strong appetite to learn more about how AI might help on their EAM mission (80%+ were at least ‘curious’). When asked about adoption timelines, this varied widely from 1 year (10%), 2 years (40%) to 3-5 years (about 80%).
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There was clear agreement on two key points: that hallucination is a genuine concern, and AI systems should explicitly state when they can't find an answer rather than fabricate one.
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Also, there was clear recognition that conversational interfaces can actually be superior to traditional methods for complex queries. Being able to ask for data in natural language and chain multi-stage questions feels more intuitive than needing technical expertise to navigate complex screens.
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Alex added: “It was clear from my session that the interest in AI for improving asset management missions is definitely here, and the community definitely 'feels' that AI is more than just hype. There was consensus that the true mission over the months and years ahead is going to be working on identifying the areas where AI can genuinely add value, while still being trustworthy.”

Day 2 — Real Stories, Real Impact

Day 2 returned to the traditional MUG structure, bringing forward the authentic, user-led stories, that make this event so valuable. The morning was filled with practical insight from organizations navigating everything from large-scale transformation to operational modernization. Each presentation prompted lively discussion, with attendees eager to benchmark their own journeys against the experiences shared.

Morning Presentations Overview

Toyota: “Our Maximo Journey”

Presented by Asset Management Systems Specialist with Toyota, Phil Tuckley

Toyota opened the morning with a grounded and practical look at their long-standing Maximo evolution. Phil shared how Toyota continues to refine its asset management practices through consistent processes, structured governance, and a strong focus on user adoption across distributed sites.
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Their journey highlighted the importance of building capability step by step, ensuring that every improvement genuinely supports the technicians and teams who rely on Maximo every day. It was an honest, relatable account of modernizing operations without losing sight of day-to-day realities.

Stena Drilling: “Overcoming Disconnected Environments to Connect a Workforce”

Presented by Martin Eklund (Stena Drilling) with Andrew Carrie (Cohesive)

Stena Drilling’s session shone a light on high-risk, remote offshore environments. Martin and Andrew walked the audience through Stena’s MAS upgrade journey, regarded as a first for MAS implementations in a disconnected environment.
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The presentation included how they minimalized downtime while handling complex data, to ensure stable go-lives in environments where disruption simply isn’t an option. They demonstrated how thoughtful planning, strong collaboration, and the right approach can deliver a zero-disruption upgrade, even under extreme constraints.

Southern Water: “The OAM Story: Change, Mobility, and Early Wins”

Presented by Andy Beebee & Stuart Begent (Southern Water)

Southern Water provided a candid look at the organizational and cultural side of MAS adoption. Their journey explored how mobility is transforming frontline work, how change is being embedded in operational teams, and what early improvements they’re already seeing in asset reliability and service responsiveness.
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Les présentateurs ont présenté une perspective intéressante et équilibrée, reconnaissant les efforts nécessaires à la modernisation de processus de longue date, tout en montrant les avantages tangibles que la mobilité au sein de la gestion d'actifs structurée apporte à l'ensemble de leur réseau.

Transport for London : « Intégrer et adopter le MAS à grande échelle »

Présenté par Richard Thomas, chef de produit senior, Asset Management Systems (Transport pour Londres)

Compte tenu de son emplacement à Londres, la présentation de TfL a donné un aperçu de la manière dont Maximo soutient l'un des écosystèmes d'actifs les plus importants et les plus complexes du Royaume-Uni, avec plus de 10 000 techniciens du métro de Londres qui y font confiance quotidiennement. Il a expliqué comment la plateforme sous-tend la maintenance de milliers d'actifs critiques et aide à gérer un vaste éventail d'équipes internes et de sous-traitants externes.
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Richard a exploré la manière dont le MAS est intégré à grande échelle, les défis d'adoption associés à une organisation de la taille de TfL et les avantages opérationnels déjà émergents, notamment une fiabilité accrue, une durée de vie des actifs prolongée et une diminution des défaillances critiques, donnant aux participants une idée convaincante de l'impact que peut avoir un programme MAS bien adopté.

IBM : feuille de route MAS et mise à jour d'IDeaS

Présenté par Andrew Foster, IBM
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Andrew a clôturé la matinée par une session sur la feuille de route qui a permis de relier les commentaires des utilisateurs, les priorités de développement et l'orientation future de MAS. La mise à jour traitait de l'évolution des fonctionnalités des flux de travail de surveillance, de prévision, de gestion et mobiles, ainsi que de la manière dont les soumissions IDeaS continuent d'apporter des améliorations. Il s'agissait d'une session ouverte et transparente qui a aidé les participants à se préparer à l'avenir et à comprendre comment leur contribution influence la gamme de produits MAS.
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Soumettez vos idées, suggestions et commentaires à IBM en utilisant ce lien.

Tables rondes : petites salles, grandes perspectives

Après le déjeuner, les tables rondes, toujours très populaires, ont amené les présentateurs directement dans la salle avec les participants pour des conversations franches et pratiques. Ces sessions apportent souvent de l'or : un partage d'expérience honnête, « voici ce qui a fonctionné pour nous » et des solutions qui peuvent être appliquées immédiatement.

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Les questions posées par les diapositives et les sondages en direct ont contribué à orienter la discussion, confirmant une fois de plus à quel point le comité d'organisation du MUG continue d'être réactif et axé sur les utilisateurs.
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Perspectives d'avenir

L'énergie qui a caractérisé ces deux journées était indéniable, ce qui témoigne de l'engagement de la communauté, de l'intérêt croissant pour le MAS dans tous les secteurs d'activité et de l'ouverture des participants à partager, à apprendre et à se lancer des défis.
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L'événement de novembre dernier a été considéré comme un moment marquant. Le nouveau format a fonctionné. Les conversations étaient plus approfondies. Et les sessions pratiques ont apporté une valeur réelle et tangible. Alors que les organisations accélèrent leur transition vers Maximo Application Suite, des événements comme celui-ci contribuent à apporter la clarté, la confiance et le soutien communautaire nécessaires pour aller de l'avant.
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Ce fut un privilège de participer à un événement aussi collaboratif et avant-gardiste. Nous attendons déjà le prochain avec impatience !

7 mai 2026 - Dundee, Écosse