03.5
Operational readiness of the organisation
Does an organisation exist that is capable of operating this asset on the day it is handed over, with people in post?
What goes wrong without it
Readiness is generally assessed as a property of the asset. The asset is usually the part that is ready. What is missing is the organisation: the roles, the trained staff, the spares, the systems, the contracts and the authority to spend. These have long lead times and no contractor is responsible for any of them, so they are nobody’s critical path until the week they become everybody’s.
What to examine
- Check whether the operating roles are filled, not whether they are defined. A structure chart is not readiness.
- Establish the lead time on the longest operational dependency, usually a systems implementation or a term maintenance contract, and compare it to the handover date.
- Confirm training was delivered to the people who will do the work rather than to whoever was available.
- Test whether the operator can raise, approve and pay for a corrective work order on day one.
Required by
- ISO 55001:2024, Clause 7.1, resources, and Clause 7.2, competence.
- ISO 55012, people involvement and competence in asset management.
- ISO 21502:2020, Clause 6, on transition and the realisation of benefits after closure.
Read the sources
- ISO 55001:2024, asset management system requirements2024 edition; read 2026-09-26.ISO’s product page: the publication details and ISO’s own summary of the standard, not the requirement text. The contents, foreword and introduction cited in this publication are taken from the standard’s preview pages hosted on the ANSI webstore, not from this page.
In the asset lifecycle method
The steps of the two methods that this domain examines.