Practical experience with a data collection project: the OREDA project

Experience data on the reliability of equipment has become vital to many types of engineering and maintenance analyses. The consequences of incorrect design or poor maintenance may adversely affect: safety, the environment or cost in most categories of process industries, and, in particular, offshore exploration and production industries. The OREDA project is a data collection programme for the offshore industry which has been operating since the early 80ʹs. A high level of knowledge has been gained from this programme on: specification of data, data collection methods and the utilization of data. Some of the results and the knowledge gained from this project are presented in this paper.