The situation we are usually called into
A utility operates a geographically dispersed fleet. Oil samples are taken, sent to a laboratory, and returned as reports. The reports are filed.
Three specific gaps compound. Sampling produces unrepresentative data — sample points, frequency and procedure vary by site and by individual, and a sample drawn from a drain plug on a cold, settled sump tells you about the sump floor, not the oil in service. No target cleanliness levels exist, so an ISO 4406 code is a number with no decision attached: nothing triggers filtration, nothing triggers investigation. And contamination control is treated as housekeeping — storage, transfer, breathers and top-up practice, where most particle and water ingress originates, sit outside the reliability programme entirely.
- A large majority of bearing and hydraulic failures are traceable to contamination, degradation or incorrect lubricant — yet are recorded as component failures.
- Particle contamination control is among the highest-leverage, lowest-cost interventions available in rotating-equipment reliability.
- Maintenance can absorb 20–60% of operational expenditure depending on industry and asset type; lubrication-driven failures sit inside that figure, uncounted.
The real problem is attribution
An organisation that cannot say why a bearing failed will keep buying bearings. The failure record is not wrong; it is incomplete in exactly the place where the cause lives.
How we run the programme
Lubricant fundamentals and selection
Viscosity, additive systems, and the failure consequences of the wrong product in the right machine — including the ones that look like mechanical faults.
Sampling that yields decisions
Sample point selection, live-zone sampling, procedure standardisation, and frequency derived from machine criticality rather than habit.
Interpreting the test slate
Particle count and ISO 4406 codes, water content, viscosity trending, elemental analysis, oxidation and varnish potential — and what each result implies for action.
Contamination control as engineering
Target cleanliness per machine class, filtration strategy, desiccant breathers, and a controlled lubricant storage and transfer regime.
Root cause, not replacement
When a lubricant-related failure occurs, identify the ingress path — not just the failed component.
What makes it survive the next budget cycle
What the client is left with
A fleet whose oil is clean, dry and correct by design rather than by luck — and an organisation that can finally answer the question it could never answer before: why did that bearing fail?