Maintenance

How to accelerate standardised maintenance work - and make it stick

February 17, 2026
8 minutes
How Obzervr helps mining organisations standardise work in mining maintenance. How Obzervr helps mining organisations standardise work in mining maintenance.

At a glance:

  • Standardised maintenance work is critical for safety, reliability and performance, yet execution remains inconsistent across many mining operations.
  • Obzervr's Digital Work Management Solution provides an end-to-end digital workflow for receiving, executing and recording work - removing paper, spreadsheets and local workarounds.
  • Guided digital service sheets in Obzervr embed expert knowledge at the point of work, ensuring maintenance tasks are executed consistently across crews and sites.
  • A holistic implementation approach addresses cultural, behavioural, training and accountability factors alongside digital transformation — driving sustained adoption.
  • Real-time visibility and exception-based dashboards within Obzervr enables supervisors and leaders to manage by exception and strengthen accountability.
  • Trusted, standardised data flows seemlessly back into ERP and CMMS systems enables benchmarking, faster onboarding and continuous improvement.

When standardised work exists, but consistency doesn’t

Standardised maintenance work is a well-established strategy for driving operational efficiency, reducing costs, minimising unplanned downtime, and improving safety outcomes in mining operations.

Industry research indicates that implementing standardised maintenance processes can reduce unplanned downtime by up to 18%, while cutting maintenance costs by 12 to 22%.

These improvements directly impact equipment reliability and extend asset lifespan, contributing to increased productivity, more predictable production schedules, and improved budget control.

Mining and related heavy industry organisations adopting effective standardised work maintenance practices can also achieve tangible benefits such as:

  • A 30 to 50% reduction in technician service hours, unlocking equipment availability and operational capacity
  • Fewer emergency repairs and maintenance backlogs
  • Improved compliance with safety and regulatory requirements
  • Enhanced data accuracy and quality, enabling better decision-making
  • Safer work environments through consistent safety protocol adherence

Despite these well-documented benefits, many mining organisations continue to find implementing and sustaining standardised work across multiple sites, teams, and complex assets challenging. The common misconception is that technology adoption alone solves the problem. However, realising consistent standardisation requires managing human behaviour and organisational culture alongside process and technology change.

Source: Mainstream's 2026 State of Asset Management Report

Why standardised work breaks down in practice

Beyond technology: navigating the human factor in standardised work adoption

A key insight from the 2026 State of Asset Management Report is that standardisation of work is as much about people and behaviours as it is about digital tools. Successful implementation involves addressing:

  • Accountability: establishing clear expectations and consequences for compliance and performance
  • Training and onboarding: ensuring all personnel understand and can follow standard processes
  • Cultural alignment: fostering a culture that values process discipline and continuous improvement
  • Behaviour change management: engaging frontline teams to embrace standardisation as a tool for easier, safer work

Without this holistic approach, digitising existing inconsistent or informal practices without addressing organisational culture and behaviour simply embeds inconsistency into new tools.

The business risk of inconsistency

Eventually, the cost of inconsistent work execution becomes impossible to ignore.

Asset Management leaders lose confidence in maintenance data and struggle to compare performance across sites. Safety-critical procedures are executed differently depending on the crew or location. New sites fail to inherit proven ways of working, while performance gaps widen without clear visibility into root causes.

At this point, heavy industry organisations recognise that documenting standards is no longer enough. To scale safely and efficiently, standardised work must become routine, not optional and where frontline teams have the right digital tools that make following standardised work easy, and ultimately - preferred.

How to accelerate standardised work in asset management

As the research points out, standardised work requires organisations to manage human behaviours and adoption alongside a technology change.  

Having worked with asset leaders and frontline maintenance teams to implement digital maintenance tools for over 10 years - we know intimately how these critical frontline teams work day-to-day. Working closely with these teams, we have built an intuitive web-based platform and mobile app that align with how the individuals in these teams work, and an implementation approach with a strong focus on early frontline team engagement, comprehensive user training, behaviour change and accountability.

According to Obzervr CEO Tania Devoti, sustainable standardisation starts with enforcing a consistent end-to-end work routine:

“Digital work identification, seamless CMMS integration, and visual dispatching aren't just features—they are the foundation of a standardised modern workflow. They empower maintenance teams to stop chasing paperwork and start focusing on the work that actually matters.”

Obzervr's Digital Work Management Solution is designed to make this routine the default. By becoming the single integrated digital solution for work management with built-in safety compliance, it removes manual and time-consuming side tools such as paper forms and spreadsheets that introduce variation and undermine consistency and transparancy.

Key benefits of implementing Obzervr as an end-to-end solution:

  • Centralised digital workflows that replace fragmented paper forms and spreadsheets: Field technicians work from a single source of truth integrating work instructions, safety checks, asset history, and tooling requirements, reducing human error and variability.
  • Access to pre-built, industry-aligned maintenance templates (SAMI): These accelerate deployment by providing standardised service sheets based on manufacturer specifications and expert reliability consulting, enabling mining organisations to initiate standardisation without extensive in-house resources.
  • Real-time supervision and field-to-planner feedback: Supervisors monitor usage, compliance and progress via dashboards on Obzervr's Supervisor and Analytics Portal, while planners receive direct feedback from field teams via Obzervr's Frontline Capture App to update workflows, digital service sheets and templates. This creates a continuous improvement loop, ensuring standards evolve with operational realities.
  • Behaviour change enablement: Obzervr’s technology partner approach to working with our customers, focuses on people by providing tailored user-based training and support materials, easy knowledge capture allowing experienced workers to guide other team members, and fostering accountability mechanisms where supervisors can see in real-time who is using and effectively adopting digital tools through dashboards - all essential for sustainable standardised work adoption.

This combination makes Obzervr both a digital enabler and a strategic technology partner, helping mining organisations and their asset management teams move beyond technology installations to achieve lasting operational discipline and performance gains.

The digital tool capabilities that support standardised work

Obzervr's Digital Work Management Solution delivers comprehensive end-to-end fieldwork automation and mobility capabilities designed specifically for mining and heavy industry maintenance.

Specific capabilities that support standardised work includes:

  • Provides frontline teams with all the information they need to execute work consistently and safely
  • Configurable digital checklists and smart work forms that standardise safety checks, inspections, servicing, and audits accross assets and sites
  • Real-time feedback from frontline teams on maintenance issues captured through Obzervr’s Capture Mobile App and communicated to Supervisors via the Exception Management dashboard.
  • Real-time structured feedback from the field on required form changes, equipment updates, measurement parameter changes, new drawings and workflow improvements - ensuring continuous alignment between field execution and form design
  • Real-time alerts and daily summaries keep everyone aligned
  • Comprehensive data capture via an intuitive Mobile App integrating measurements, photos, videos, notes and compliance indicators
  • True offline capability of the Obzervr mobile app - crucial for remote and underground environments
  • Real-time and automated reporting and analytics via the Analytics Portal for asset health monitoring, defect trends and Maintenance team KPI tracking
  • Seamless integration with leading ERP and CMMS systems such as SAP and Pronto with real-time information flow from the field to the office.

Importantly, Obzervr's end-to-end solution connects maintenance team members, their supervisors and the office for real-time communication, collaboration and visibility of accurate data to help them make informed decisions daily.

Abstract digital wave pattern composed of curved lines and dots in shades of teal and blue on a black background.

Standardising work in real mining environments

Mining operations face unique challenges that make standardisation difficult to sustain:

  • Geographically dispersed sites across vast regions
  • Varying levels of digital literacy and system adoption amoungst teams
  • Entrenched local practices developed over time
  • Newer sites lacking strong foundations in established processes
  • Legacy infrastructure and systems that doesn’t always align with standard asset designs

The State of Asset Management Report highlights the importance of defining non-negotiable standards while allowing controlled local adaptation. Attempting to standardise everything often results in standardising nothing effectively.

Obzervr is built for this reality. It delivers a single, standardised digital framework for receiving, dispatching, executing and recording work — ensuring the same workflows, service sheets and data capture requirements apply across all teams and sites. This consistent digital framework creates routine, reinforces accountability and embeds standardised work as the way work gets done.

Turning standards into everyday behaviour

Obzervr helps transform standardised work from a documented intention into an everyday habit by focusing on three core areas:

Routine

All teams and sites follow the same process for receiving, dispatching, executing and recording work. This creates consistency and removes ambiguity from maintenance execution.

Knowledge capture

Expert knowledge is captured and embedded into guided workflows, digital service sheets and templates. The same checks, readings, photos, videos and evidence are captured digitally for every task, making standards visible and simple at the point of work. This supports both experienced technicians and new starters.

Transparency and accountability

Dashboards in the Analytics Portal provides real-time visibility into how work is being executed across sites and teams. Leaders can see where standards are being followed and where intervention is required, enabling accountability and peer-driven improvement.

Together, these elements drive sustainable behaviour change rather than one-off system adoption.

What consistent standardised work looks like

When standardised work is successfully embedded, the benefits extend well beyond efficiency gains.

Organisations experience:

  • Consistent execution of maintenance work across sites
  • Improved data accuracy and trust in asset information
  • Safer work environments through reliable adherence to safety-critical processes
  • Faster onboarding of new personnel into established ways of working
  • Continuous improvement driven by structured feedback and visibility

Standardised work becomes easier than working around the system, and operational discipline becomes part of the culture rather than an imposed requirement.

Moving beyond technology-driven standardisation

The State of Asset Management Report 2026 makes it clear that standardised work cannot be achieved through technology alone. Success depends on addressing human behaviour, accountability and organisational culture.

Obzervr helps mining organisations do exactly that - by combining an integrated end-to-end digital work management solution with disciplined implementation, comprehensive user training and support, embedded knowledge and transparent accountability.

By partnering with Obzervr, mining organisations can accelerate their standardised work journey and unlock the operational, safety and financial benefits that consistent execution delivers.

Learn more at the MAINSTREAM Summit 2026

Hear from Tania Devoti, CEO of Obzervr, as she shares practical insights on embedding standardised work across sites and driving consistent execution in the field.

See Obzervr at the MAINSTREAM Summit in Perth on 18th March 2026.

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