The New Year Audit: Is Your Asset Strategy Fit for 2026?

As industrial facilities emerge from the winter break, many senior leaders face a familiar sense of unease. Whether your site has been on a skeleton shift or fully closed over the winter period, the restart phase is a critical window of vulnerability. At Finch Consulting, we act as the "critical partner" during these transitions, providing the engineering confidence that a standard maintenance checklist simply cannot offer. Here is why your asset strategy needs a Finch-led perspective as you enter 2026.

Posted

28.01.2026

Beyond the Surface: Assessing Lifecycle Risks

The British winter is notoriously hard on plant and machinery. Thermal contraction, moisture ingress, and stagnant fluids during a shutdown can accelerate degradation in ways that often remain invisible until a catastrophic failure occurs.

Finch Consultants look beyond the obvious. We provide a structured assessment of equipment lifecycle risks that your internal teams, often stretched by the demands of daily production, may overlook:

The Restart Shock: We identify “at-risk” start-up points, ensuring that the transition from cold to operational temperatures doesn’t result in brittle fractures or seizures.
Corrosion Cycles: Our experts pinpoint where condensation during the shutdown may have initiated “pitting” in dormant pipework or pressure vessels, potentially compromising your long-term integrity.

Standardising Success: Setting 2026 Reliability KPIs

You cannot manage what you do not measure, but many businesses are still tracking the wrong metrics. Finch helps you move away from vanity stats and towards Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that actually drive your bottom line. By partnering with us, you can establish standardised, evidence-based reporting for 2026, focusing on:

True Availability: Using OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) to identify where assets are underperforming, not just when they are broken.
Recovery Resilience: We help you analyse your MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), identifying the skills gaps or critical spares shortages that turn a minor glitch into a three-day shutdown.
Energy Intensity: We align your engineering output with boardroom environmental goals, identifying the aging, inefficient assets that are currently “bleeding” your energy budget.

The Great Pivot: Moving from “Fix-on-Fail” to a Structured Strategy

A “Fix-on-Fail” mentality is the most expensive way to run a business in 2026. It leads to emergency shipping costs, unplanned overtime, and a reactive culture that erodes profit. Finch Consulting specialises in guiding businesses through this cultural and technical shift. We don’t just “fix things”; we implement Asset Management Systems that provide:

Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) Reviews: Ensuring you are performing the right work, on the right assets, at the right time.
Lifecycle Assurance: Providing the data you need to make informed “Repair vs. Replace” decisions, ensuring you get the most out of your capital investments.

Assuring Businesses, Reassuring People

The goal of a Finch-led New Year audit isn’t merely to find faults; it is to provide you with the assurance that your capital is protected and your people are safe. As you look towards the remainder of 2026, the question isn’t whether your machines will run today, but whether your strategy will sustain them until December. If you are still trapped in a reactive cycle, Finch Consulting is here to help you pivot towards a world-class asset strategy.