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Experience in the development and start‐up of new capital projects has shown that many of the difficulties encountered from an operations and maintenance perspective could have been mitigated or avoided through better scoping, planning and preparation of the appropriate organizational capability. Describes the history of development and packaging of a variety of principles, practices and methodologies designed to ensure that operations and maintenance issues are addressed early in the project and developed in parallel during the engineering design and construction phases. The objective is to ensure that at start‐up, all of the appropriate organizational systems, procedures and information requirements are in place and being used effectively by knowledgeable people working together in a safe and collaborative organizational environment. This allows the people to focus fully on the commissioning and on‐going sustainable operation of the new facilities to ensure productivity, cash flow and profitability of the new business.

The planning stage in start‐ups still typically overlooks the importance of organizational capability. Yet experience shows that this frequently leads to operations and maintenance problems that can threaten the viability of new capital projects. So what are the priorities? And how can companies maximize the potential for success of their projects?