Author | Stephan Kornelius – Pragma Professional Services Business Lead
In asset-intensive industries, leaders face mounting pressure to deliver sustainable performance amid budget constraints, rising risk, and increasing scrutiny from boards and investors. Yet many organisations still lack an objective, repeatable way to understand how effectively their assets are being managed – or how asset management maturity translates into business value.
A structured asset management maturity assessment provides this clarity. By establishing a reliable baseline, measuring progress over time, and linking practices to measurable outcomes, organisations can move beyond compliance toward true performance leadership.
What is an asset management maturity assessment?
An asset management maturity assessment is a structured, evidence-based evaluation of how effectively an organisation manages its assets across strategy, governance, people, processes, systems, and performance.
Typical dimensions include:
- strategy and leadership
- risk and governance
- lifecycle and reliability management
- work management
- data, systems, and information
- performance and continuous improvement
Think of it as a comprehensive capability scan – revealing strengths, blind spots, and improvement priorities with clarity and objectivity.
From compliance to capability: the power of repetition
Maturity assessments are often mistaken for audits — a governance exercise that highlights non-compliance. But an AMIP assessment is fundamentally different. It objectively captures your organisation’s current state, reveals capability gaps, and guides improvement initiatives.
As Pragma’s Business Lead for Professional Services, Stephan Kornelius, explains, “A single assessment gives you a snapshot. Repeated assessments give you the movie. The full story of progress, setbacks, and learning over time.”
Evidence supports this. A multinational mining organisation improved its asset management maturity by 23% and its overall performance by 27% between its first and second assessment, three years apart. This improvement didn’t happen by chance – it was the result of a structured, repeatable approach that created momentum for continuous improvement.
Repeated assessments also serve as proof: demonstrating value creation, strengthening governance, and building a compelling case for strategic investment.
Creating alignment across the organisation
Asset management extends far beyond engineering. It influences and is influenced by finance, operations, procurement, sustainability, HR, and risk. Each of these functions interprets performance differently. A maturity assessment provides a shared, objective baseline that makes alignment possible.
As Pragma Partner Consultant Stefan Terblanche notes, “Once you have a shared reference point, you can prioritise with confidence. Everyone knows where you are and what needs to improve next.”
This alignment is reinforced in the Asset Management Improvement Planning (AMIP) Report 2025, which states that “the most important benchmark is yours … It’s your foundation for improvement and gives you a structured way to monitor your maturity as you progress.”
When leaders can see the same facts, decisions around extending asset life, reducing downtime, optimising costs, and managing risk become clearer and more strategic.
From insight to execution: a roadmap that delivers value
Across hundreds of assessments globally, a clear pattern emerges: organisations that reassess regularly outperform those that do not. The impact shows up in measurable results and in the day-to-day realities of how teams work.
Establishing a reliable baseline for alignment
One organisation described their reassessment as the moment “everyone finally saw the same picture.”
Rather than debating opinions, teams were united around clear evidence. Alignment reduces wasted effort, strengthens trust, and brings focus to the priorities that matter most.
Turning strategy into tangible progress
After the first assessment, teams often feel a renewed sense of purpose — but direction and validation are still needed.
Repeated assessments help leaders:
- track improvements
- identify interventions that worked
- adjust strategies with confidence
One mining operator used their reassessment to justify a restructured reliability function that later delivered measurable reductions in unplanned work. Progress becomes meaningful only when it can be measured again.
Strengthening governance and assurance
Boards, regulators, and investors expect more than reassurance – they expect verifiable evidence. Regular assessments provide:
- documented improvement
- defensible decisions
- transparent maturity journeys
For many organisations, the reassessment becomes the moment they can demonstrate improvement rather than simply report on intentions.
Building capability, confidence, and culture
Repeated assessments create momentum. They highlight what’s improving, where capability is growing, and what systemic barriers require leadership attention. This cycle strengthens organisational confidence and enables teams to move beyond reactive behaviour toward consistent, predictable performance.
As Pragma consultant Philip Hanekom puts it, “An improvement in practice drives improvement in performance.”
This principle transforms assessment results into actionable plans that help organisations shift from firefighting to forecasting, from reactive fixes to sequenced, long-term improvement.
Why many organisations remain stuck, and how assessments solve it
Across more than 250 global AMIP assessments, Pragma has observed several consistent trends:
- only 30% of organisations had a documented asset management strategy
- around 40% had only a basic asset management policy
- Maintenance Work Management maturity declined by 16% over the past decade
- the corresponding performance in this area dropped by 36%
Despite heavy investment in technology, many organisations lack the underlying management discipline to sustain improvement.
Maturity assessments provide the structure needed to stabilise performance, embed accountability, and make informed trade-offs between performance, cost, and risk.
A strategic imperative in a changing environment
As Terblanche reminds us, “Asset management isn’t a sprint. It’s a discipline that rewards consistency, patience, and evidence.” Repeated maturity assessments embody that discipline. They help leaders measure, learn, adapt, and demonstrate whether investment in people, processes, and systems is producing real business value. They also act as a form of technical due diligence — emphasised by Kornelius: “You can read the numbers in a financial statement, but they don’t tell you whether the assets behind those numbers are being managed sustainably.”
For investors, lenders, boards, and regulators, maturity assessments provide reassurance that capital is being deployed responsibly and that physical assets are protected rather than eroded.
The bottom line
Maturity assessments are not about ticking boxes. They are about building confidence that assets are being managed responsibly, that teams are aligned, and that investments are delivering measurable, sustainable value. In an environment where capital, reliability, and resilience are inseparable, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t improve what you never assess.
To explore the data and insights shaping asset management excellence, download the AMIP 2025 Report.
FAQ: asset management maturity assessments
1. What is the purpose of an asset management maturity assessment?
It objectively benchmarks capability and performance, helping organisations understand how well their asset management practices support business outcomes.
2. How is a maturity assessment different from an audit?
Audits measure compliance. Maturity assessments evaluate effectiveness, alignment, and improvement potential.
3. How often should we repeat an assessment?
Most organisations reassess every 12–18 months to measure progress, validate improvements, and identify emerging risks.
4. What business value can repeat assessments deliver?
Improved reliability, reduced cost, better risk management, stronger governance, and evidence-based investment justification.
5. Who should participate in a maturity assessment?
Engineering, operations, finance, HR, procurement, sustainability, IT, and executive leadership — because asset management is cross-functional.
6. How do assessments support ISO 55001 and assurance requirements?
Repeated maturity assessments strengthen ISO 55001 alignment by:
- evidencing leadership commitment
- demonstrating continuous improvement
- validating capability maturity across ISO requirements
- creating transparent governance and assurance records
- Rather than treating ISO as a compliance hurdle, repeated assessments embed its principles into the organisation’s operating rhythm.
