IBM Maximo for Oil & Gas
Permit to work, management of change, mechanical integrity, and pipeline records on IBM Maximo Oil & Gas for upstream, midstream, and downstream operators
Overview
IBM Maximo Oil & Gas is an industry solution on Maximo Manage that adds the processes operators actually audit against: permit to work, isolation certificates, management of change, incidents and investigations, operator logs with shift handover, and ISO 14224-based asset specifications and failure codes. It is still current in MAS 9, and recent releases added emission management, a waste management app, a Companies app for contractor safety data, AI-assisted incident categorization, and a permit to work mobile app in Oil & Gas 9.2. Upstream, midstream, and downstream teams use it differently: offshore operators build BSEE SEMS inspection records, pipeline operators manage segments as linear assets for PHMSA integrity programs, and refiners keep the OSHA PSM mechanical integrity trail. We configure Maximo as the system of record for work and evidence, and integrate it with the dedicated RBI and pipeline-integrity tools it is not designed to replace.
What oil & gas maintenance leaders are prioritizing
Retired and renamed in MAS 9
Maximo Safety (IoT wearables) was withdrawn in MAS 8.9 and must be removed before upgrading. HSE Manager is now Maximo Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), Linear Asset Manager is now Linear assets included in Manage, and Scheduler is also included in Manage. The Maximo Anywhere Incident Reporter was replaced by the Incident reporter app in Maximo Mobile, and Bing and Google Maps are deprecated as map providers. Maximo 7.6.1, including its industry solutions, is out of base support, so remaining Oil & Gas 7.6 sites need a MAS 9 upgrade plan.
The problem
300,000 miles of gas transmission pipeline. About 300,000 miles of gas transmission pipelines cross the United States
1.37M miles of gas distribution mains. US gas distribution mains in 2023, up from 874,000 miles in 1990
OSHA PSM requires written mechanical integrity procedures, inspection and testing to recognized practice, documented results, and correction of deficiencies. Auditors look for the paper trail as much as the equipment condition.
PHMSA integrity management rules expect operators to identify, assess, repair, and validate segments, and the Gas Mega Rule extended management of change and post-event inspection requirements beyond high-consequence areas.
Hot work, confined space, and isolation permits involve many contractors and shifts. Paper permits and spreadsheets make it hard to prove that isolations, approvals, and handovers happened in the right order.
Refinery and plant turnarounds often grow in scope after the freeze date, and emergent work found during execution strains budgets, schedules, and contractor crews.
Free-text failure reports cannot support reliability analysis. Without a consistent ISO 14224 taxonomy at go-live, Predict models and bad-actor reports have little to work with.
Offshore platforms and remote well sites need offline work execution and careful scoping of mobile data, while long permit and operator-log histories can slow the system if they are not archived.
How we fix it
Maximo Oil & Gas and the HSE add-on provide permit to work, isolation (LOTO) certificates, bypass management, risk assessments, and management of change. Permits are configured from work orders and job plans so isolation steps travel with the work.
AI in practice
With Oil & Gas 9.2, technicians can start permit requests at the job site in the Permit to work mobile app, and those requests follow the same approval and validation controls as the desktop process.
Covered equipment is flagged in the asset and location hierarchy, inspections and tests run as PMs with recorded results, and deficiencies become tracked work orders. Serialized assets and e-signatures on inspection forms support BSEE SEMS record requirements.
AI in practice
In 9.2, inspections can be assigned to an owner or owner group across access permits, audits, incidents, operator rounds, risk assessments, and MOC, so overdue items are visible to the people responsible.
Linear assets, included in Manage in MAS 9, model pipelines with start and end measures, mileposts, and dynamic segmentation for assessment, repair, and cathodic protection work. Specialist ILI alignment and risk modeling stay in dedicated integrity software integrated with Maximo.
AI in practice
Maximo Health can hold condition and risk scores per segment that help prioritize inspection, while RBI and integrity tools such as API 581 engines calculate intervals and drive work orders in Maximo.
Incidents, defects, and investigations support root cause analysis and lessons learned. Emission management logs continuous emissions on location meters and fugitive emissions on incident events, with an emission management dashboard, and 9.2 adds a waste management app.
AI in practice
Oil & Gas 9.2 adds AI-powered incident categorization trained on your own incident history, and can calculate CO2e for fugitive emissions automatically through the Envizi GHG API.
Maximo Oil & Gas ships ISO 14224-based asset specifications and failure codes (failure class, problem, cause, remedy), with an update for the 2016 edition. Maximo Monitor ingests SCADA and historian data from compressors and pumps.
AI in practice
Maximo Predict can estimate failure probability where failure history is rich, such as rotating equipment fleets. Assets with thin histories should start with Health and Monitor.
Walk through your assets, integrations, and compliance needs with an engineer who has configured Maximo for your industry.
The platform
Compliance
Covered-equipment lists, PM and inspection results, deficiency work orders, and the MOC app support element (j) mechanical integrity and element (l) management of change.
The RMP prevention program mirrors PSM, so the same asset, inspection, and work order evidence chain applies.
Linear segments with mileposts, assessment and repair work orders, and records retention support integrity management for segments that could affect high-consequence areas.
The MOC app, cathodic protection survey PMs, and event-triggered inspection work orders help address repair criteria, corrosion control, and MOC for non-HCA segments.
Segment-level assessment plans and repair work are managed on linear assets in the same way as gas transmission.
Inspection forms with e-signatures, serialized assets, and deficiency work orders support offshore mechanical integrity records.
Maximo has no API 581 calculation engine. A dedicated RBI tool calculates risk and intervals, and Maximo executes and records the inspection plan.
Pressure vessel, piping, and tank inspection intervals are managed as PMs with condition-monitoring points and measurement history.
Maximo Oil & Gas includes ISO 14224-based failure codes and asset specifications as its reliability data taxonomy.
Fugitive and continuous emissions records and leak-repair work orders help track LDAR obligations as the rules and deadlines continue to change.
It is an IBM industry solution that runs on Maximo Manage and adds oil and gas processes: permit to work, isolation certificates, management of change, incidents, defects and investigations, operator logs with shift handover, and ISO 14224-based asset specifications and failure codes.
Yes. It ships as a Maximo Manage industry solution in MAS 9 and received new features in the 9.0 and 9.2 releases. Users of industry apps require Premium-tier AppPoints.
Maximo Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) is a separately licensed Manage add-on covering incidents, permits, MOC, emissions, and operator rounds. Oil & Gas includes that HSE scope and adds oil and gas content such as ISO 14224 specifications and failure codes and drilling and production reporting.
IBM added a Waste management app, a Companies app for contractor safety data, automatic CO2e for fugitive emissions through the Envizi GHG API, AI-powered incident categorization, inspection assignment to people or groups, the Permit to work mobile app, and maps in Incident reporter.
Yes, from Oil & Gas 9.2. The Permit to work mobile app lets technicians start permit requests at the job site, and those requests follow the same approval and validation controls as the desktop process.
Yes. Linear asset support, including start and end measures, dynamic segmentation, and mileposts, is included in Manage in MAS 9. Specialist integrity analytics such as ILI data alignment and HCA risk modeling usually stay in dedicated pipeline-integrity software integrated with Maximo.
Maximo holds the covered-equipment list, schedules PMs and inspections, records results against each asset, and tracks deficiency work orders to closure. That provides the documented audit trail that PSM element (j) asks for.
Not natively. The usual architecture is a dedicated RBI tool that calculates risk and inspection intervals and then drives PMs and work orders in Maximo, while Maximo Health can hold criticality and risk scores.
Yes, from MAS 9.0. You can log continuous emissions on location meters and fugitive emissions on incident events, and view them on an Emission management dashboard covering methane, NOx, SF6, refrigerants, and other emissions.
Maximo Mobile supports offline work execution and inspections, and Maximo Monitor can ingest edge and SCADA data. Reliable offline sync depends on careful data-set scoping, and IBM's guidance for Oil & Gas and HSE stresses archiving permit and operator-log history.
Tell us where your maintenance program is today. We will tell you honestly what Maximo can and cannot do for it.
