Our guest today has quite a few more than 30 years experience under his belt. Recognised as the father of the pipeline model for understanding work management, Richard Blayden was the first to put together a detailed framework for operational readiness processes. His developments have become the standard reference point for many of us in the industry. Starting out his career as a young apprentice, Richard went back to study engineering and progressed into project management. With a broad range of knowledge and depth of experience, he provides asset management and organisational performance improvement services to the mining industry and other industries. In this episode, Richard shares from his years of experience and how and why he came to develop the pipeline model. Having been involved in maintenance and project management from early days, he found that a lot of issues on site were due to a lack of information, communication and poor data analysis. Richard discusses common issues on site and how the pipeline model helps to lift people up to a common goal rather than dwelling on their personal thoughts about a particular issue. Richard discusses his involvement in the BHP maintenance evaluation in the early days and the three key issues that were discovered from that process. He shares his thoughts on why people aren’t good at data analysis, how a character string analysis identified an issue that was costing millions of dollars every year and how identifying and implementing the right process helped to fix it. LINKS: Website: https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/