Oil and gas operations run in some of the most demanding environments of any industry. Assets are complex, geographically distributed, and often operating under strict regulatory oversight. At the same time, safety is not simply a priority but a requirement.

In this environment, maintenance and HSE cannot operate as separate functions.
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IBM Maximo Application Suite brings these areas together by combining core work management with industry-specific capabilities designed for oil and gas. The result is a more structured, integrated approach to maintaining assets while managing safety, risk, and compliance.

Why Maintenance and HSE Must Be Connected

In oil and gas, every maintenance activity carries some level of risk. Whether it is routine inspection or major equipment repair, there are safety implications tied to the work being performed.
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Common challenges include:

• Managing high-risk work in hazardous environments
• Coordinating permits, isolations, and safety procedures
• Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements
• Maintaining accurate records for audits and reporting
  
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When maintenance and HSE processes are disconnected, organizations often rely on manual coordination, which introduces risk and inconsistency. Maximo addresses this by embedding HSE processes directly into maintenance workflows, ensuring that safety steps are part of how work is planned and executed.

Maximo for Oil and Gas Industry Solution

Maximo includes a dedicated Oil and Gas industry solution that extends core functionality with capabilities specific to upstream, midstream, and downstream operations.
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This solution enhances standard Maximo applications such as Work Order Tracking and Assets with additional features for:

• Asset hierarchy and location tracking aligned to oil and gas operations
• Industry-specific classifications and attributes
• Integrated HSE processes and workflows
• Support for inspections, incidents, and regulatory tracking
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These extensions are designed to reflect how oil and gas organizations actually operate rather than forcing generic processes into complex environments.

Maintenance Management in Oil and Gas

At the core of Maximo is work management, but in oil and gas, this extends beyond standard work order processing.
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Maximo supports the full maintenance lifecycle, including:

• Work identification and request creation
• Planning, scheduling, and resource assignment
• Permit and safety integration
• Execution and field data capture
• Completion, documentation, and reporting
  
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What makes this different in oil and gas is the level of control and traceability required.
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For example, maintenance activities often need to be linked to:

• Specific equipment or process units
• Shutdown or turnaround schedules
• Safety procedures and isolations
• Regulatory documentation
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Maximo provides the structure to manage these dependencies in a single system.

HSE Applications in Maximo

Maximo’s HSE capabilities are built to support health, safety, and environmental processes alongside maintenance activities.
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These applications allow organizations to manage:

• Incident and near-miss reporting
• Hazard identification and risk assessment
• Safety observations and corrective actions
• Environmental tracking and compliance
  
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Instead of managing these processes in separate systems, Maximo connects them directly to assets and work orders. This creates a more complete view of operations, where safety data and maintenance data are part of the same system.

Permit to Work and Safety Integration

One of the most critical areas in oil and gas operations is permit to work. Maximo supports permit management by linking permits directly to work orders and ensuring that required approvals and safety steps are completed before work begins.
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This includes:

• Defining permit requirements based on work type
• Routing permits through approval workflows
• Verifying that safety conditions are met
• Linking permits to specific tasks and assets
  
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By embedding permits into the work management process, Maximo helps reduce the risk of unauthorized or unsafe work.

Isolation Management and Control of Work

Isolation management is another key component of safe maintenance execution. In oil and gas environments, equipment often needs to be isolated from energy sources before work can begin. This process must be carefully planned and verified.
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Maximo supports this through structured workflows that:

• Define isolation points and procedures
• Track lockout and tagout activities
• Ensure verification steps are completed
• Maintain a record of isolations for compliance
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This level of control helps ensure that safety procedures are followed consistently across all work activities.

Inspections and Regulatory Compliance

Oil and gas organizations are subject to strict inspection and compliance requirements. Maximo supports inspection management by allowing organizations to:

• Define inspection forms and checklists
• Schedule recurring inspections
• Capture inspection results in the field
• Link findings to corrective work orders
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Inspection data is tied directly to assets and locations, making it easier to demonstrate compliance and track asset condition over time. This is especially important for audits, where organizations need to provide clear and accurate records.

Incident Management and Root Cause Analysis

Maximo also provides structured support for incident management.
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When an incident occurs, organizations can:

• Record the event with detailed classification
• Link it to assets, locations, or work orders
• Conduct investigations and root cause analysis
• Track corrective and preventive actions
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This creates a closed-loop process where incidents lead to improvements rather than just documentation. Over time, this helps reduce repeat incidents and strengthen overall safety performance.

Connecting Maintenance and HSE Data

One of the biggest advantages of using Maximo in oil and gas is the ability to connect maintenance and HSE data.
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For example:

• Work orders can be linked to incidents or hazards
• Inspection findings can trigger maintenance activities
• Failure data can be analyzed alongside safety events
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This integration allows organizations to move beyond isolated data points and understand how maintenance and safety interact. It also supports more informed decision-making across operations.

How to Analyze and Use Maintenance and HSE Data in Maximo

Capturing maintenance and HSE data in Maximo is only part of the value. The real benefit comes from how that data is analyzed and used to improve operations. Because Maximo connects work orders, permits, incidents, inspections, and assets, it creates a structured dataset that can be analyzed across multiple dimensions. This allows organizations to move beyond tracking activity and start identifying patterns.

Identifying high-risk work types

By analyzing work orders alongside permit types and safety classifications, organizations can identify which types of work consistently require higher levels of control. This helps prioritize planning, training, and oversight for activities that carry the most risk.

Linking incidents to maintenance activity

Incidents and near misses can be tied directly to work orders and assets. This makes it possible to answer questions such as:

• Are incidents occurring during specific types of maintenance work
• Are certain assets or locations associated with higher safety risk
• Are there patterns tied to contractors, crews, or work conditions
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This level of visibility supports more effective root cause analysis.

Evaluating permit and isolation effectiveness

Permit and isolation records can be reviewed alongside work execution data. For example:

• Are permits consistently applied to the correct types of work
• Are isolation procedures being followed and documented
• Are there delays or issues tied to permit approvals
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This helps refine control of work processes and improve consistency.

Tracking inspection findings and corrective actions

Inspection results can be linked directly to follow-up work orders. This allows organizations to:

• Measure how quickly issues are addressed
• Identify recurring inspection findings
• Evaluate whether corrective actions are effective
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Over time, this helps reduce repeat issues and improves compliance performance.

Practical Use Case: Reducing Repeat Safety Incidents During Maintenance

Consider an offshore oil and gas operation experiencing repeated safety incidents during routine maintenance activities. At a high level, the organization sees incident reports, but the root cause is not immediately clear.
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Using Maximo, they can analyze:

• Work orders associated with incidents
• Permit types linked to those work orders
• Assets and locations where incidents are occurring
• Inspection and hazard records tied to the same activities
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This reveals a pattern. A significant number of incidents are tied to a specific type of maintenance task performed under similar conditions, with consistent gaps in permit documentation and isolation verification.
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With this insight, the organization can take targeted action:

• Update permit requirements for that work type
• Strengthen isolation procedures
• Introduce additional validation steps before execution
• Provide focused training for crews performing the work
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Instead of reacting to individual incidents, the organization addresses the underlying issue. In Maximo, this type of analysis is possible because of how key objects are connected across maintenance and HSE workflows. At a high level:
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WORKORDER - Stores the maintenance activity, including asset, location, and failure classification (problem, cause, remedy)‍

FAILURE Codes (FAILURELIST / related tables) - Define the structured hierarchy used to classify failures‍

ASSET and LOCATION - Provide context for where failures and work are occurring

PERMIT and related records - Link control of work processes directly to work orders

INCIDENT / SAFETY records - Capture events, hazards, and investigations tied to assets or work activities

INSPECTION results - Record condition and findings that can trigger follow-up work

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Because these records are linked through shared fields such as asset, location, and work order references, Maximo enables organizations to:

• Analyze failure trends by asset or system
• Correlate incidents with specific maintenance activities
• Evaluate whether certain failure types consistently require permits or isolations
• Track whether corrective actions reduce both failure frequency and safety risk
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This structure is what allows maintenance, HSE, and reliability data to be analyzed together rather than in isolation.

How This Data Is Used in Reporting and Analytics

Once maintenance, HSE, and failure classification data are structured in Maximo, the next step is making it visible and actionable. This typically happens through Start Center KPIs, reporting tools like Cognos, and data platforms such as Naviam DataStudio.

Start Center and KPIs

Within Maximo, the Start Center provides a real-time view of operational data through KPIs and result sets.

Organizations commonly configure KPIs to track:

• Number of work orders by failure type
• Open incidents by asset or location
• High-risk work orders requiring permits
• Repeat failures within a defined time period
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These KPIs allow users to quickly identify trends without running full reports, making it a daily operational tool rather than just a dashboard. For example, a spike in work orders with the same problem code can highlight an emerging reliability issue. Result sets can also be configured to show:

• Recent incidents tied to specific assets
• Work orders missing failure classification
• Overdue corrective actions from inspections or safety events

Cognos and Standard Reporting

For deeper analysis, many organizations use Cognos or built-in Maximo reports to combine maintenance and HSE data. Typical reports include:

• Failure trends by asset class, system, or location
• Incident frequency linked to maintenance activities
• Work orders by permit type or risk classification
• Root cause analysis using problem and cause codes
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These reports allow teams to move beyond individual records and analyze performance over time. For example, combining failure codes with incident data can reveal whether certain failure types consistently lead to safety events.

Naviam DataStudio

For organizations looking to go further, Naviam DataStudio provides a more flexible way to analyze and visualize Maximo data. With DataStudio, teams can:

• Combine data from work orders, incidents, inspections, and assets
• Build custom dashboards tailored to specific roles or sites
• Track reliability and safety metrics in a single view
• Identify patterns across large datasets that are difficult to see in standard reports
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This is especially useful in oil and gas environments, where operations span multiple sites and asset types. For example, a DataStudio dashboard might show:

• Failure frequency by asset type alongside incident rates
• Correlation between inspection findings and corrective work
• High-risk assets based on both failure history and safety events

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Maintenance, HSE, and reliability strategies are often managed as separate processes. Maximo brings them together.

Failure classification provides structure to maintenance data. HSE applications provide context around risk. Reliability strategies turn that combined data into action. When these elements are aligned, organizations gain a clearer understanding of how assets fail, how work is performed, and where improvements are needed. That is where Maximo delivers the most value.

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