A personal tribute to John Moubray (1949-2004)
My very first encounter with John Moubray was in June, 1996 at ABRAMAN - Brazilian Maintenance Association Conference, which that year was held in Belo Horizonte. He was the conference special guest and was presenting a lecture on the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) concepts and main framework. The general atmosphere provided me a feeling that he was talking about something completely new for the vast majority of the audience, including myself. He was addressing in a very light fashion the paradigms changes proposed by the new methodology and the extreme changes required to the beliefs advocated by the practices in place up to that point in time in the world of physical asset reliability. The audience was surprised with the concepts and features embedded into the new methodology addressed by Moubray. As the lecture turned to the Q&A phase, it was possible to identify that the audience was swinging from skeptical to enthusiastic and sometimes bouncing forward and backward regarding the concepts exposed. That lecture was like a point of inflection for the maintenance management and risk management in Brazil. It was clear that Moubray was announcing a new era for the failure management. Abroad, specially in the UK and the US, the same type of scenario was occurring and the new paradigm being deeply studied and fully understood.
From that very beginning I have positioned myself among those who were envisioning a new era for both disciplines, the failure management and the physical asset performance management. The Reliability Centered Maintenance methodology not only had been developed with a strong logical framework, but it was also supported scientifically by the valuable research performed by the U.S. Civil Aviation over the first half of the 1970's. Those factors embedded in its inception and development were the key for its resiliency and longevity up to and beyond the present days.
By mid-1998, RCM projects in Brazil had grown up to the point where training resources such as the RCM2 book, a world-wide best seller, and the full set of technical and collateral materials pressed us to translate them into Portuguese. John and I had undertaken the task of translating and printing the RCM full set of materials into Portuguese. It was an unforgettable adventure. However, that endeavor provided me an outstanding opportunity to closely work with Moubray on the first translation of his best seller RCM2 text book, launched in Brazil in 2000 and revised in 2001 and 2002.
Moubray himself was very enthusiastic with the potential of the Brazilian marketplace for the coming years. As a result, he went to Brazil several times, invited by me and my company, to lead open and private conferences, as well to participate in meetings with our major clients and prospects. Based on his observations during those historical trips to Brazil, his perception regarding the Brazilian economy and the marketplace in development has been consolidated in a positive way. Looking back in the first years of the first decade of the 21st Century, I am sure those times were like gold to me and to professionals interested in acquire physical asset management knowledge from the very best source available around the world, i.e. John Moubray.
Remembering John Moubray’s technical legacy I can say that I am honored to be part of a very selected team of Practitioners, deeply and continuously coached by John Moubray himself. Those Practitioners are a live legacy. To be part of this live legacy made a big difference to my professional life. Also, as part of Moubray’s technical legacy we have the RCM2 book and both the SAE standards, SAE JA 1011 and SAE JA 1012 RP.
I would say, without any doubt, John Moubray has been one of the most exceptional, brilliant and kind gentleman that I had the opportunity to work with. He definitely positively influenced my professional career and his legacy will continue doing so over the years to come, through his legacy for the understanding and application of the reliability centered maintenance technique.
Kleber Siqueira
Kleber Siqueira is RCM Practitioner and was the Aladon Network's Licensee for Brazil between 1997 and 2006.
He has more than twenty five years of experience in consulting services for development and implementation of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS); implementation and management of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) projects; and implementation of asset performance management (APM) systems.
He performed projects for leading companies in industries such as aluminum and nickel mining, refining, smelting, and processing; automotive manufacturing; food manufacturing; gas pipelines and city gates; iron mining, steel making, offshore topsides and drilling rigs; refineries, petrochemicals; pulp & paper; metro (subway).
