The Three Pillars of a Reliability Playbook: Standards, Expectations and Training

Digitally Managed Assets

At PCA, Stan Moore is helping clients develop strategic playbook frameworks that help organizations connect the dots between direction, execution and leadership. Moore is a PCA Senior Maintenance and Reliability Consultant whose background includes technical authorship, industry leadership, and hands-on project success.  

Moore's playbooks are built on three core pillars: standards, expectations, and training. Such a framework can empower your team to perform with confidence while aligning with long-term reliability goals. 

Let's break down how each piece works and why all three are critical. 

1. Standards: Defining What "Good" Looks Like 

Asset reliability management is a high-stakes game in which business continuity is on the line. Every team needs an understanding of the goalposts to achieve victory. That's where standards come in. 

In a playbook, standards represent the best-in-class procedures, metrics and workflows that guide your work. These are modeled examples of what success should look like for your company. 

Setting a standard helps eliminate guesswork from tasks like maintenance and condition monitoring. Everyone needs to be working from the same baseline to create more consistent and scalable performance. 

2. Expectations: Aligning Culture With Strategy 

You can have the best standards in the world, but if leadership doesn't communicate expectations, the benefits of the playbook will be dimensished . 

Think about some of history's best coaches. They had high standards and held their players accountable. As an organizational leader, you need to do the same.  

Expectations come from the top. They define how seriously the organization takes its strategic initiatives and how committed leadership is to supporting reliability as a long-term value.  

"When I build playbooks with clients, I make sure executive leaders are part of the process. I once asked a CEO to sign the first page of the playbook and bring it with him on site visits. When his team members saw that he traveled with and used the playbook to guide decision-making, buy-in went through the roof,said Moore. 

3. Training: Empowering Execution 

Without training, standards are just words on a page, and expectations become sources of frustration. Your people need the tools and education to do what's being asked of them and do it well. 

Training builds competency and confidence. It also enables team members to take ownership of their work. Training ensures that your asset-management program isn't dependent on just a few knowledgeable individuals; instead, expertise is built into company culture. 

Training should be hands-on and role-specific. Align your training program with the standards outlined in the playbook. Continually provide opportunities for your team members to grow and get better so they can thrive in their assigned roles.  

Build a Living, Breathing Framework 

At PCA, we don't believe in shelfware. A great playbook is a living framework that's anchored in clear standards. It communicates your expectations and empowers your team to live up to those expectations through targeted, purposeful training.  

Want to build a playbook that actually gets used? PCA can show you how. Schedule a consultation today.