Reliability engineering,
without the headcount
Whether your reliability seat is empty or filled, the engineering rarely gets done. We deliver the output as a service, so it happens every month regardless of who is on site.
Not ready to talk? Take the business-case pack instead.
Mining, rail, utilities, heavy industry and food processing · Australia and internationally
Here is how it works
What you are missing, and why
There are two ways to lose reliability engineering. Most operations are living with one of them, and many with both.
The seat is empty
Analysis stops. Strategies age against equipment that has changed. Defects repeat because nobody has the time to eliminate them. The improvement register stops moving.
And when you finally fill it, the new engineer starts from nothing, because everything the last one learned about your failure modes left with them. It lived in one person’s head and their working files.
You can employ a reliability engineer continuously for a decade and still be at year one of reliability maturity.
The seat is full, and the job still is not getting done
The moment a critical asset goes down, your reliability engineer is the most qualified person standing there. So they get pulled into the recovery. Then the shutdown. Then the incident investigation, the audit, the warranty dispute, and covering the planner’s leave.
Reliability engineering is the first work to be postponed, because it is the only work on site with no deadline attached to it.
This is not a failure of the person. It is what happens when a specialist function sits inside an operational hierarchy, within earshot of the radio.
What you get instead
One centre, two ways to use it
You centralised dispatch because a specialist watching twelve trucks from a control room beats a generalist watching four from the pit. Reliability engineering is the same problem.
The Reliability Operating Centre is our reliability engineering function, working on your assets. You can access it two ways, and most sites use both.
Managed Reliability
A subscription to reliability engineering output. We work your CMMS data, run the analysis, facilitate the RCAs and hold the improvement plan, on a fixed monthly fee set by how many assets you nominate and how much authority you want us to carry.
Reliability Engineer Support
A named engineer working on your site, at your rhythm, in your meetings. The difference from an agency contractor is what stands behind them: the full centre, and a written commitment that you never pay for a cold start again.
Start with either. Most sites begin with one and add the other, because an engineer onsite is more effective when a centre is doing the analysis behind them.
Managed Reliability
You choose two things: which assets are in the programme, and how much of the job you want us to own. Everything else is fixed.
| LevelTier | Level 1Monitor | Level 2Analyse | Level 3Direct |
|---|---|---|---|
| What we do | We watch and report. Exception alerting, KPI trending, a monthly performance pack and a monthly call. | Everything in Monitor, plus we do the engineering. Reliability analysis on your nominated assets, RCA facilitation, strategy review on a set cadence, fortnightly call. | Everything in Analyse, plus we own the plan. We chair your reliability meeting, run defect elimination, hold the improvement register and carry KPI accountability. Monthly onsite. |
| You keep | All analysis and all execution | Ownership of the plan and all execution | Execution capacity and site authority |
| Right for you if | You have a functioning reliability engineer and want visibility plus a second opinion | Your engineer is vacant or overloaded and you need output | You have no reliability function, or one that has stalled |
Level 1Monitor
- What we do
- We watch and report. Exception alerting, KPI trending, a monthly performance pack and a monthly call.
- You keep
- All analysis and all execution
- Right for you if
- You have a functioning reliability engineer and want visibility plus a second opinion
Level 2Analyse
- What we do
- Everything in Monitor, plus we do the engineering. Reliability analysis on your nominated assets, RCA facilitation, strategy review on a set cadence, fortnightly call.
- You keep
- Ownership of the plan and all execution
- Right for you if
- Your engineer is vacant or overloaded and you need output
Level 3Direct
- What we do
- Everything in Analyse, plus we own the plan. We chair your reliability meeting, run defect elimination, hold the improvement register and carry KPI accountability. Monthly onsite.
- You keep
- Execution capacity and site authority
- Right for you if
- You have no reliability function, or one that has stalled
What it costs
Two things set your fee, and you control both.
A Managed Asset is a functional location at maintainable-item level that carries its own maintenance strategy. You nominate them from your own CMMS, in four bands from under 75 up to 800, so you decide how much of your plant we manage. We reconcile the count quarterly.
Monitor, Analyse or Direct. The tiers step up on authority rather than activity, because the constraint on most sites is not analysis capacity — it is whether anyone owns the plan.
We will not put a monthly figure on a web page, because we would be guessing at your asset count — counting it properly is what the readiness check is for. But this number barely moves. Every fee is built up from the hours in the work, so whichever tier you pick and whatever size your site, the rate per hour of engineering you receive stays within a few dollars of this. Run your own seat through the calculator below and compare.
No cost
The fit and data readiness check. Half a day. You leave with an asset count, an honest verdict on whether your data can carry the service, and an indicative tier.
A fixed fee
Foundation runs 90 days for a fee agreed before anything starts, so there is no exposure to scope. You own the 12-month reliability plan at the end whether or not you continue.
Not sure which tier or band fits your site?
What we put in writing
Not intentions. Contracted service levels, with the same consequences as any other supply agreement.
Want these commitments against your assets?
Why a centre can do this and a single seat cannot
The economics only work because the centre is not doing this by hand. Four things make that possible.
Where the centre is, and who is in it
Reliability Engineer Support
An experienced reliability engineer working on your site, charged on hours worked at an agreed rate. That much an agency can do. Here is what they cannot.
Every engineer arrives connected to the centre
Your engineer is not working alone with what they happen to know. Their rate includes standing centre time each month: senior peer review, access to our specialists, and analysis support behind them.
When your engineer hits something outside their depth, they do not guess and they do not go quiet. They escalate to a Principal.
No cold starts
If your engineer rotates or moves on, we replace them within an agreed window, the handover runs through the centre, and you are not charged for the replacement’s ramp-up period.
No agency offers that, because no agency holds your site’s context. We can, because the centre does. Your failure history, strategy library and analysis record live in our system, not in one person’s laptop.
Escalate when the site needs more than an engineer
Your onsite engineer can trigger centre work packages when the job outgrows one person. The two most common are the ones site teams least expect to need.
Four ways to solve this. Here is the honest comparison.
You are not only choosing between us and doing nothing. These are the real alternatives, and each one is genuinely better than us at something.
Swipe the table sideways to compare →
Want us to be straight with you about which of these fits?
The comparison worth running
Most operations have never costed the vacancy, only the salary.
A resident reliability engineer
- ~$310,000 a year fully loaded
- ~71 productive reliability hours a month
- 3 to 4 months vacant between hires
- 4 months at reduced output while ramping
- Knowledge leaves when they do
- One person’s specialisms
Managed Reliability, mid-sized site
- Less than that annual figure
- 124 dedicated hours a month
- No vacancy risk
- No ramp-up cost
- Knowledge stays in the centre
- Principal, Senior and Engineer, plus the platform behind them
About $310,000 a year fully loaded for roughly 71 productive reliability hours a month, 3 to 4 months vacant between hires, 4 months ramping, and one person’s specialisms that leave when they do.
124 dedicated hours a month for less than that annual figure, with no vacancy risk, no ramp-up cost, knowledge held in the centre, and Principal, Senior and Engineer on the account.
Fully loaded means on-costs, travel and accommodation, licences, training and management overhead, plus the amortised cost of recruitment and ramp-up across an average tenure. The productive-hours figure allows for the share of the role that goes to breakdowns, shutdowns, incidents, audits and covering other vacancies, and for the months the seat sits empty between hires.
Do not take our assumptions. Use yours.
Every figure above rests on what an average site looks like. Put your own numbers in and see what your reliability seat actually costs per hour of engineering you get out of it.
Your site
Set to zero for a residential hire.
The rest goes to breakdowns, shutdowns, incidents, audits and covering other vacancies.
What that seat costs you
- Fully loaded, per year$266,450
- Turnover drag, per year$44,316
- All-in, per year$310,768
- Reliability hours you actually get71 / month
Want this run properly against your own payroll and CMMS data?
And it comes from a different budget
A new position needs an establishment change, competes with every other function’s headcount request, and can take two budget cycles. A service line comes from your maintenance services budget, which you control or can influence directly.
The Reliability Operating Centre lets you solve a headcount problem without winning a headcount fight.
This is not a new idea for us
We have been running embedded reliability engineering for years. Nineteen engagements at mining, rail and heavy-industry operations across Australia and internationally. Clients keep extending: one has renewed the same arrangement four times, and several others have extended repeatedly.
What is new is that we have built the centre behind it, so the continuity no longer depends on one engineer staying.
Two steps before you commit to anything
Fit and data readiness check NO COST
Half a day, remote plus one site visit. We count your Managed Assets from your CMMS, tell you honestly whether your data can support the service, and give you an indicative tier. If your data cannot support it, we will say so. A subscription built on unusable data fails, and we would rather lose the sale than the reference.
Foundation — 90 days, fixed fee
CMMS extract and performance baseline, cost-loss model, criticality confirmation, your first reporting cycle and a 12-month reliability plan. At the end you have a plan you own whether or not you continue. If you do continue, part of the Foundation fee is credited against your first three months.
Then choose your tier. Six months to start — long enough to judge us, short enough that you are not betting your year on it. After that it moves to twelve month terms, renewable each year. Step up any time, step down at the end of any term with three months notice. Your strategy library and analysis history stay yours either way. Your monthly fee is set from the asset count we established at the readiness check, and works out at about $180 per hour of dedicated reliability engineering whichever tier you choose.
Two things we will ask of you
We are straight about this because it is what makes the difference between a service that works and a subscription nobody actions.
When this is the wrong answer
We would rather tell you now than nine months in. If any of these describe your operation, a subscription is not what you need yet.
Questions we get asked
Every account starts with onsite immersion, and every tier including Monitor carries minimum onsite days each quarter. We never staff an account with someone who has not walked your plant.
Australian-based engineers working from our centre in Maroochydore, Queensland, with scheduled time on your site. Nothing is sent offshore. Every account carries a Principal, a Senior and an Engineer, with a named alternate for each so nothing waits on someone’s leave.
Your data is held in a private, access-controlled environment under strict data-handling controls, used only to deliver your service, and it remains yours. Access is limited to the named team on your account. We will put the specifics in writing as part of the service schedule, and we are happy to work to your own data-handling requirements.
The initial term is six months. After that it moves to twelve month terms, renewable each year, and you can step down at the end of any term with three months notice. Whatever you decide, your strategy library, failure mode register and analysis history are yours to keep — the model is built so your team becomes self-sufficient, not more dependent.
Then we tell you at the readiness check, before you have spent anything. Data remediation is quoted separately. We do not start a subscription we cannot deliver against.
No. Reliability Engineer Support puts a named engineer on your site, but you are buying the centre behind them and a continuity commitment no agency can make. Managed Reliability involves no headcount on your site at all.
A project delivers a report and ends. This is a standing capability with committed service levels and a monthly fee, designed so your team gets more capable, not more dependent.
Most of our clients do. The question is not whether you have the seat, it is how much of that seat reaches reliability engineering once breakdowns, shutdowns and audits have taken their share. Monitor exists precisely for sites with a good engineer who needs analytical capacity and a second opinion behind them.
Good. That is a legitimate outcome and the tiers step down at anniversary. Your strategy library, failure mode register and analysis history are yours, and your new engineer starts with them rather than from scratch.
Yes. Multi-site is where the centre model works hardest, because the same analysis capability and failure mode library serve every site. Priced individually.
Not ready for a conversation? Take the business case instead.
A short pack you can put in front of your engineering manager and your finance business partner: what the service covers, the service levels we contract to, the cost comparison with the method shown, and what we would need from your site. Built to be forwarded.
Send me the pack
What the service covers, the service levels we contract to, the cost comparison with the method shown, and what we would need from your site. Built to be forwarded.
Start with a conversation, not a contract
A fit and data readiness check costs you half a day and nothing else. You will get an asset count, an honest verdict on your data, and an indicative tier. If it is not a fit, we will tell you.
Or call us directly: (07) 5300 2777 · [email protected]
Request a fit and data readiness check
No cost, no commitment. Half a day, remote plus one site visit. You will leave with a Managed Asset count from your own CMMS, an honest verdict on whether your data can carry the service, and an indicative tier.
We reply from a human inbox, usually within one business day. Your details go to our team and our CRM, and nowhere else. If it is not a fit, we will tell you.
Reliability engineer reading this rather than buying it? Our engineers work across multiple sites from the centre, with onsite rotations by choice, mentoring from Principals, and a career that is not one site’s PM schedule. See open roles.