MAINSTREAM Melbourne 6-7 August 2026

6-7 August 2026

CENTREPIECE at Melbourne Park

Celebrating 30 Years of

Community, Content & Connection From Managing Asset Data to Decarbonisation; and Future Maintenance Workforce to Work Management Fundamentals – MAINSTREAM is not your average conference.

Join the MAINSTREAM Community in Melbourne for two amazing days of content, networking, knowledge-sharing and fun as we celebrate the people, technology and ideas transforming asset management.

MAINSTREAM acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin as the traditional owners of the greater Melbourne area. We pay our respect to the ancient and continuing cultures and connections to land and to Elders past, present, and emerging.

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Topics 1

The Knowledge Exodus

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Data Abundance Without Insight

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AI Pilot Purgatory

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The Execution Discipline Gap

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The Middle Management Bottleneck

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Workforce Wellbeing and the People Metrics Gap

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Strategic Misalignment and the Language Barrier

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System Fragmentation and the Data Trust Deficit

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The Apprenticeship and Training Pipeline Crisis

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Safety, Risk, and Asset Management Silos

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Decarbonisation and the Asset Transition Challenge

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Shutdown and Turnaround Excellence 3

“Hands-down the most valuable Maintenance and Reliability conference in the world.”

Christer Idhammer Global Reliability Thought Leader and Founder, IDCON

“Mainstream is the most innovative, informative and inspiring asset and reliability conference in Australia” Martin Sassenberg Engineering Manager, Queensland Sugar

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Who’s attending MAINSTREAM? AB Mauri Accenture Accruent Acervas ADBRI Adelaide Airport Agen AGL Energy Limited AGL Hydro AGL Loy Yang Amazon Australia AMSYST ANSTO APA Group apt Group Aquip Systems Asset Schools Assetivity AusNet Aurizon Australia Post AVEVA BAE Systems Baker Hughes Bartconsult Beach Energy Bega Group Bendelta BHP Bluescope Steel Bluestone Mines Tasmania Bowen Rail Company 6

Brightly Software Australia Brisbane Airport Corporation Bulla Dairy Foods Bureau Veritas Certus Digital CitiPower / PowerCor CleanCo Queensland CM Group Coles Group Contact Energy Continuum AI COSOL Covaris CS Energy Cyient Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal Darwin Port Corporation Delta Electricity Dept of Defence Australia Dept of Transport and Planning Victoria Domaine Chandon Downer Group DP World UK Ego Pharmaceuticals ElectraNet Endeavour Energy Energy Queensland EnergyAustralia Enerven Energy Infrastructure EnterpriseIS ETEL Transformers Evoenergy

Evolution Mining Evora IT Exxon Mobil Australia Fehu Asset Management Solutions Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Fonterra Fortescue Fulton Hogan Future Asset Management Egis Genesis Energy George Weston Foods Gladstone Area Water Board Gladstone Ports Corporation Global Energy Network Glencore GreaseBoss Groundup.AI GWMWater Harbour City Ferries Hexagon Humbli HVL Group IBM I-care Reliability IFM Efector Iluka Resources Incitec Pivot Infra Group InfraBuild Construction Solutions Infrastructure Advisory Group InfoConsulting

Information Quality Innovapptive IROM Odyssey Kairos Strategies Kimberly-Clark Kinetic KPMG Lactalis Libertas Lochard Energy Lubrication Expert Machinemonitor Marathon Food Industries Matolin Group MCGlobal Solutions Melbourne Airport Melbourne Water Corporation Metro North Hospital and Health Service Metro Trains Melbourne Mobius Institute Murrumbidgee Irrigation MyPass Global NASA Johnson Space Center Naviam Nestlé New Zealand Steel Limited Newmont North East Water NVMS Solutions Obzervr Octave OneRiver Software MAINSTREAM Conference attendees 2026

Cont.

Opal OpenText Optamized Orica Origin Energy Pfizer Australia PiLog PM Eleven Port of Melbourne Ports North Powerlink Queensland PPG Industries Prometheus Group Prospecta Software Quarterbac Queensland Alumina Queensland Nitrates Queensland Rail Queensland Sugar Ramsay Health Care Reduxo Reliable (US) Rio Tinto - Bell Bay Aluminium Rockfield Technologies Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust SA Power Networks Sanitarium Santos SAP Saputo Dairy SAS Asset Management

SC Analytix Secora APII Sell & Parker Seqwater SKF Reliability South32 Stawell Gold Mines Streamlined Asset Management Sydney Water TasNetworks TechnologyOne Territory Generation Tomago Aluminium Company Total Mobile Solutions Townsville City Council Toyota Automated Logistics Transdev TransGrid Transurban TXM UGL Ultra-Tek University of Queensland Unleash V/Line Valmet Ventia Verbrec Visy Pulp & Paper VROC.ai Water Corporation Water Services Assoc of Aust

Watersure Welding Quality Mgt Systems Wilmar Sugar Australia Woodhouse Worley Yarra Valley Water

MAINSTREAM Conference attendees 2026

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Agenda Overview 8

Briefing for Speakers 18:30 – 20:00 JumpStart & Pre-Registration

Thursday O7:30 – 08:30 Registration & Expo 08:35 – 17:15 Keynotes Perspectives Innovation Theatres 17:15 – 19:00 MAINSTREAM Networking Party sponsored by Octave 19:30 – 22:00 MAINSTREAM After Dark

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07/08

17:00 – 18:30

06/08

05/08

Wednesday

Friday O7:15 – 08:15 Tea & Coffee & Expo 08:15 – 15:45 Keynotes Xchanges Masterclasses Panel Discussions Innovation Theatres 15:45 MAINSTREAM Close

Brilliant Content.

Capability Development.

Incredible Networking.

Curated Content Across 9 Tracks Access to all Keynotes, Breakouts and Demos Lunch, Morning & Afternoon Teas The Networking Function Mobile App Year-round membership to MAINSTREAM Community Online Platform Searchable Attendee List Access to all Content After the Event

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Everyone Learns MAINSTREAM offers you SIX different formats for learning, capability development, interactivity, and knowledge.

Differently

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Keynotes 45 mins Strategic discussion on industry shaping challenges. Thought-provoking sessions that tackle broad issues.

Interactive Panels & Debates 60 mins

Panellists from different companies and industries collide with varied viewpoints and diverse perspectives and experiences.

Perspectives 35 mins Practitioners share their perspectives and battle-tested approaches to business challenges revealing triumphs, lessons learned, and tangible results.

Xchange Sessions 90 mins Dynamic, crowd-sourced discussions.

Limited attendance (20 in each) ensures maximum engagement, as facilitators guide idea and solution exchange.

Workshops 90 mins Interactive, delivered by subject matter experts, and rooted in case history and real examples.

Innovation Theatre 15 mins Rapid-fire demonstrations, new solutions showcasing the latest apps, products, and technologies poised to transform asset, equipment, and workforce management.

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Keynote Session

The Intelligent Factory: How AI is Changing Everything We’re all investing heavily in AI — yet most struggle to move beyond pilots and proofs of concept. In this landmark MAINSTREAM Lecture, Jeff Winter introduces the Intelligent Factory: not a collection of smarter machines, but an enterprise-wide operating model where intelligence and autonomy are

Jeff Winter Industry 4.0 Analyst & Enthusiast (US)

deliberately designed into every decision.

Drawing on his global expertise in Industry 4.0, Jeff reframes AI not as a tool, but as a structural capability that fundamentally changes decision speed, accountability, and execution — and reveals why so many AI initiatives stall before they deliver real value.

Attendees will leave with clear answers to the questions that matter most: Why AI initiatives stall in production — and the structural decisions that are quietly killing ROI

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How AI has evolved across levels of understanding and agency, and what that means for your factory floor The critical difference between what AI can comprehend and what it should be authorised to do How autonomy introduces new governance, accountability, and organisational challenges most manufacturers aren't prepared for The three preconditions for operational AI: Anchor it, Authorise it, and Adapt it — the foundation for scaling AI safely and effectively

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Keynote Session

Just Another Day

It started as just another day. Then 22,000 volts of electricity surged through Theo's body as he worked on live powerlines - an accident that all but ended his life.

Theo speaks candidly about the three days he spent in hospital waiting to die, and the desperate fight to survive that followed - physically and mentally - long after the event itself. As he speaks, a slideshow

Theo Venter Author, Public Speaker Culture Change Facilitator, Safety Ambassador

projects the reality of that day: his horrific injuries, the toll on his family, and the long, slow road back to recovery.

This is a story told without filters. It is hard-hitting, deeply personal, and carries a safety message that lands in a way no policy or procedure ever could. Theo's decision to spend the rest of his life talking about safety - and sharing his story with as many people as possible - stems directly from the near-fatal

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moment that almost took everything from him.

Management, supervisors and, most importantly, your workforce will walk away seeing safety in a completely different light. It's a presentation that inspires, unsettles and stays with everyone who witnesses it.

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Keynote Session

Moon Base: The Role of Maintenance and Reliability on the Surface of the Moon Ed Van Cise In addition to returning humans to the surface of the Moon, NASA has begun the creation of a permanent base at the Moon’s south pole. In the coming years, this Moon Base will establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. With a city on the Moon’s surface, what maintenance and reliability challenges await and how will NASA handle them?

NASA Moon Base Mission & Systems Interoperability Office NASA (US)

This keynote will provide an overview of NASA’s plans to return humans to the lunar surface with the Artemis program and explain NASA’s plans for establishing a permanent human presence with the Moon Base program. Establishing an outpost in the hostile and rugged lunar environment poses a number of maintenance and reliability challenges, many of which are identical to those being faced by industry

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today on Earth.

As an experiment to conclude the first day of the MAINSTREAM Conference, consider the potential for applying industry’s approaches to addressing Earth-based maintenance and reliability challenges to lunar applications.

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Keynote Session

How to Thrive in the Era of Industry 4.0 Manufacturing is entering a decisive period shaped by the convergence of physical systems, digital technologies, and intelligent software. Industry 4.0 represents the latest phase in a long industrial evolution—from mechanization and electrification to automation—distinguished by cyber-physical

Jeff Winter Industry 4.0 Analyst & Enthusiast (US)

systems, pervasive connectivity, and real-time data exchange. This shift is not defined by a single technology, but by the integration of IoT, digital twins, advanced analytics, and AI into core manufacturing and supply-chain operations, fundamentally changing how value is created, delivered, and sustained.

As manufacturers progress along this journey, maturity models and global benchmarks reveal a widening gap between leaders and laggards. High-performing organizations are characterized by strong digital threads that connect design, production, supply chain, and service, enabling continuous feedback loops and faster decision-making. Data becomes a strategic asset when it is contextualized, trusted, and

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operationalized across the enterprise, allowing organizations to move beyond siloed optimization toward end-to-end visibility, resilience, and adaptability in increasingly volatile markets.

Industry 4.0 also drives a profound shift in business models and innovation strategies. Products are no longer endpoints; they become platforms for ongoing digital services, lifecycle insights, and new revenue mechanisms. This transition requires manufacturers to rethink organizational structures, technology adoption patterns, and customer relationships, aligning engineering, operations, and commercial functions around outcomes rather than outputs. Ultimately, success in the Industry 4.0 era depends not only on adopting advanced technologies, but on deliberately designing systems, processes, and strategies that unlock sustained innovation and long-term relevance.

This session will not be a traditional presentation. Instead, it will be an interactive "Ask Anything" discussion, designed to explore the real-world opportunities, challenges, and lessons emerging from Industry 4.0 adoption. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage directly with ask questions, challenge assumptions, and dive into the practical issues.

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Perspective Session

Risk-Modelling Brought Together by: Data, Expert Knowledge, AI and Strategy Modelling risk allows us to make robust and repeatable investment decisions. It supports us in communicating those decisions in a way that aligns to corporate strategy gaining executive level buy-in to asset strategy. It provides our engineering experts data to support their intuition and decision making.

And focuses our data improvement activities and machine learning applications on the information we

Ali Walsh Head of Asset Strategy and Insight, SA Power Networks

need most in our decisions making.

Why and how we model risk on our electricity assets How this modelling aligns to corporate Objectives and Key Results The way risk modelling provides support to our engineering experts intuition The importance of data enablement in risk modelling

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How getting the foundations and structures right is required for AI to add value.

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Perspective Session

From Apprentice to CEO: 40 Years of Maintenance & Reliability Lessons What does a reliability problem look like from the workshop floor? From the control room? From the boardroom? The answer - after 40 years - is that it looks like a completely different problem. Same failure. Different stakes, different language, different consequences.

Brian Ropitini Chief Executive ETEL Transformers

Brian traces a journey from apprentice to CEO, using that shift in perspective as a lens on everything that has, and hasn't, changed in maintenance and reliability. The technology has transformed. Safety expectations have risen. Data is everywhere. And yet the fundamentals that actually determine whether organisations succeed, like disciplined routines, frontline ownership, and learning loops that stop repeat failures, remain as rare and as hard-won as ever.

For technical professionals with an eye on leadership, this session goes beyond the engineering. It

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addresses the hidden curriculum of reliability leadership: how to communicate risk without losing credibility, how to navigate competing stakeholder priorities, and how to advance without compromising the standards that got you here.

Real experiences. Real mistakes. Real recoveries.

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Perspective Session

Transforming Sites Through the Reliability Strategic Map A Reliability Strategic Map connects corporate intent with day-to-day practice across ports globally. It converts strategic vision into measurable improvement by linking financial performance, equipment reliability, work management, and people readiness.

Alberto Landeaux Global Director Reliability Ports & Terminals DP World (UAE)

In this case study we’ll explain how the map acts as a transformation system rather than a diagram.

Helping each site identify gaps, define priorities, and measure progress through a common language of reliability. Participants will learn how alignment between maintenance processes, data, and leadership behaviors accelerates maturity and supports consistent execution.

Through real examples, the presentation will show how sites apply the map to strengthen preventive maintenance, reduce failures, and build reliable operations. Attendees will gain a clear framework to

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translate strategy into local action and create a sustainable improvement cycle that endures beyond individual projects.

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Perspective Session

Fixing the DRIP: From Data Rich, Information Poor to Value-Driven Asset Intelligence Many asset-intensive organisations are DRIP: Data Rich, Information Poor. Across the asset lifecycle — design, commissioning, operation, condition monitoring, maintenance, and renewal — data is abundant and increasingly inexpensive to collect. As a result, “more data” has quietly become the default objective.

Drew Troyer Contributing Editor, Reliable (US)

Yet cost volatility, reactive work, unstable planning, and investment misalignment persist. Data accumulation is not value creation.

The core issue is architectural. Asset data is rarely structured around the economic outcomes it is meant to support. Instead, organisations move forward from data and hope insight emerges.

This session introduces a reverse, value-driven logic for fixing the DRIP. Rather than starting with data, we begin by defining the value desired: cost stability, uptime reliability, capital efficiency, and controlled risk exposure. From there, we work backward through the chain: the actions required to deliver that

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value; the decisions required to enable those actions; the insights required to support those decisions; the information required to generate those insights; and finally, the data required to produce that information.

This disciplined inversion — the foundation of the Data to Dollars framework — shifts the objective from data expansion to economic alignment. It clarifies which data matters, which KPIs predict value, and which analytics roles must exist to convert asset performance into financial predictability.

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Perspective Session

The Leading Edge of Maintenance, Technology and Innovation The mining industry is facing a pivotal challenge: legacy enterprise systems, fragmented data pathways, and siloed human processes that are limiting the sector’s ability to operate efficiently, safely, and competitively in an increasingly complex environment.

Maria responds by outlining a shift toward intelligent, autonomous enterprise systems, strengthened data

Maria Joyce Vice President, BHP Maintenance & Engineering Centre of Excellence, BHP

stewardship, and an elevated human workforce. It calls for miners, OEMs, and technology partners to reimagine collaboration, redesign decision frameworks, and harness AI driven orchestration to unlock step change value, resilience, and long-term sustainability.

Current state and limitations of today’s enterprise systems Vision for intelligent, integrated, autonomous future systems

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Evolving role of data and unstructured information Changing workforce roles and capability uplift required Machine design evolution and autonomous maintenance practices New miner–OEM relationships and long term value opportunities

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Perspective Session

Built for Zero Failure: NASA's Blueprint for Reliability-Led Leadership Implementation and operation of human spaceflight missions is challenging and complex requiring

Ed Van Cise

support from the crews in space and Earth-based operations and engineering teams. Responding to the

NASA Moon Base Mission & Systems Interoperability Office NASA (US)

dynamically changing environment and mission in and beyond Earth orbit, as well as managing the risks inherent in those missions, requires high performing, highly reliable teams.

This discussion will explore the subject of leadership within the context of NASA’s Mission Control based on personal experiences of the presenter with the International Space Station, Commercial Crew Program, the lunar Gateway, and NASA’s future lunar surface programs.

Learn to anticipate failures, build organisational excellence through intentional culture, empower leadership at every level, and transform potential problems into pathways for success. When failure isn't

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an option, preparation becomes the mission.

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Perspective Session

Using the Data We Have - How We Stopped Waiting for the Perfect System!

At Ego Pharmaceuticals we have lots of reports, they are put together in Excel, involve a lot of manual data manipulation, and are distributed to a very small audience. There is a great deal of overlap as our team produces different reports, independently, with the same data sources, and these report processes

Glen Fleming Chief Operating Officer, Ego Pharmaceuticals

are mostly undocumented.

In this session we will examine how we have rebuilt some of the reports from scratch, with almost zero data manipulation, with a centralized function and documented. And how all this has been done with

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basic tools, and zero programming.

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Perspective Session

You’re In “Reactive Mode” And You Didn’t Even Know It! As Asset Management & Maintenance practitioners we understand that reactive is a part of our world, but does it have to be such a big part? I say it shouldn’t be, and it doesn’t have to be!

Anthony Cook Some aspects of reactive maintenance such as breakdowns or the absence of planned maintenance are obvious but there are numerous hidden reactive events, behaviors and practices that impact operations and maintenance daily. In this presentation we call them out and look at how they impact us and what we

Asset Management Strategist, Enerven

can do about it. This will be an interactive presentation where audience participation will be an important feature. I will also share some of our recent experiences.

Whilst we can’t eliminate the reactive world, we can reduce it and react to it more effectively.

Topics will include:

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What is reactive? Reactive is more than just dealing with breakdowns Audience quiz: Where does your organisation think it is and where do you think it is and why is there a gap?

Identifying reactive events, practices and the implications Take a stand and make a change How to avoid being reactive and move to reducing reactive events and behaviours

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Panel Session

Thirty Years On: What Have We Built — And Who Will Guard It? A Conversation with Dr. Bob Platfoot – a MAINSTREAM 30th Anniversary Featured Session

Dr. Bob Platfoot

Australia has produced world-class maintenance, reliability and asset management thinking. We built

Principal and Managing Director, Covaris

world-leading refineries, iron ore operations and power infrastructure that set global benchmarks. We trained engineers who shaped industries. We did the hard, unglamorous, data-driven, people-intensive work.

So why does one of the architects of that legacy lie awake at three in the morning?

Peter Durrant Adjunct Principal, Education and Change Management, Covaris

In this landmark conversation, marking MAINSTREAM’S 30th anniversary and over four decades of Bob Platfoot's contribution to the field, we go beyond the textbooks and consulting war stories to ask the questions that matter. Bob was there at the beginning. He helped build the intellectual foundation Australian practitioners stand on today. And now he has one urgent question for the next generation:

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Will you care for what we built, as much as we did?

Bob’s message is less a warning than a dare – that Australia has the talent, the track record, and the tools to lead the world in this field, but greatness in any industry is never inherited, it's chosen, every day, by the people willing to do the unglamorous work that keeps everything else running.

Dr. Bob Platfoot is the Principal and Managing Director of Covaris, founded in 2000 to advance practical asset management techniques. He began his career in NSW power stations, earned his PhD in fluid dynamics and life assessment of coal-fired boilers, and spent years on faculty at UNSW before taking his research into industry. A MAINSTREAM member since year one, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to sit with one of Australia's great engineering minds and ask: what did we learn, what did we lose, and what must we never let go of?

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Perspective Session

Creating a Culture of Safety – Practical Lessons from the Nuclear Industry The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation operates the OPAL multi-purpose research reactor to deliver outcomes in human health, environmental sustainability, and industrial innovation.

Within this high-consequence environment, safety is not just a priority—it is systematically embedded into every decision, behaviour, and operational process.

David Vittorio General Manager, OPAL Reactor, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

The nuclear sector offers both theoretical foundations and highly practical approaches to aligning organisational culture with stated safety values. For asset-intensive industries, the key challenge is not defining safety as a value, but consistently translating it into day-to-day actions, decisions, and behaviours across the workforce. Creating a culture that genuinely prioritises safety is a continuous journey across the full lifecycle of assets. It extends beyond traditional health and safety to include psychosocial safety, workforce wellbeing, and the way individuals think, act, and make decisions under

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pressure. This session will go beyond theory to explore how safety culture is actively operationalised in a nuclear environment—and what other industries can realistically adopt.

Drawing on real examples from the OPAL reactor context, the session will highlight how leadership behaviours, governance frameworks, and cultural interventions directly influence safety outcomes. This includes how structured decision-making processes, clear accountability, and visible leadership actions reinforce expectations and shape workforce behaviours in high-risk environments. Attendees will also gain insight into how these practices contrast with more reactive or compliance-driven approaches commonly seen outside the nuclear sector. Establishing and sustaining a safety-first culture requires more than intent-it demands consistent leadership, aligned systems, and deliberate action. This is ultimately the responsibility of leaders and managers to ensure that organisational values are not just stated, but experienced across the workforce.

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Perspective Session

Raising the Bar for Operations: How Data Governance, Digital Assets, and AI Transform Handover Quality Industry studies show inaccurate technical assumptions and data can cause budget variations of up to 30% in complex engineering projects. Asset owners often receive EPC handover data that is inconsistent, incomplete, or unsuitable for assurance and long-term management.

Ruben Sen Brisbane State Manager, Information Quality by SGS

IQ by SGS will introduce practical case studies on improving Asset handover quality through independent data governance, digital asset management, and targeted AI. Topics include defining digital deliverables, structuring vendor data for verification, and closing EPC data gaps using AI. Outcomes include better asset decisions, reduced OPEX, stronger governance, and operations-ready asset information.

1.How to make better asset and engineering decisions using accurate tags, hierarchies, and metadata.

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2.What to do to have more effective project budget execution & drastically reduce opex when data reflects physical assets.

3. How to implement a robust governance & assurance framework during capital works ensures owners receive the information required to maximise operations and productivity of assets, helping EPCs produce operations-ready data.

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Perspective Session

From Data to Insight: What's Working in Practice Many organisations are exploring how AI, analytics, and digital technologies can support better operational decisions, but turning potential into practical results is rarely a straightforward process. At AGL, we started with a simple question: where can data help solve real operational problems? The

Amir Saberi Lead Engineer - Advanced Analytics, AGL

journey since has involved experimentation, learning, setbacks, and a growing understanding of what it takes to deliver value at scale.

In this session, we share several practical use cases that have emerged from that journey, including detecting boiler tube leaks earlier, reconstructing missing production data following sensor failures, and applying analytics to better understand and manage geotechnical risk events such as tunnel collapse. We will also discuss emerging optimisation opportunities within hydro operations.

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Rather than presenting a polished end-state solution, this session provides a candid account of how we got started, what has worked in practice, and where challenges remain. We'll talk through the journey— warts and all—including lessons learned, organisational barriers encountered, and the approaches that are helping build confidence, capability, and momentum for broader adoption across the business.

1.How to identify and prioritise practical analytics and AI use cases that deliver operational value and build organisational support.

2.Common challenges encountered when moving from proof-of-concept to real-world implementation, and the lessons learned along the way.

3. Strategies for building capability, trust, and momentum to scale data-driven decision-making across operations and engineering teams

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Perspective Session

From Blind Spots to Governed Intelligence: Continuous Computer Vision Monitoring at South32 Heavy industrial sites operate continuously across day and night shifts, yet monitoring coverage has historically been uneven, periodic, and dependent on personnel availability.

South32, working with Unleash live, deployed computer vision monitoring across critical operational

Cameron Gauci Senior Specialist Mining, South32

zones and high-risk vehicle movement corridors, including stop sign and boom gate compliance, to generate continuous, automated oversight of asset conditions, operational controls, and safety-critical behaviours.

The result was a persistent evidence base supporting targeted operational interventions, behavioural safety programs, and regulatory compliance obligations across all shift hours. This session covers how

Michael Swanander Global Head of Sales, Unleash live

the program was scoped, deployed, and integrated into operational governance.

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1.Computer vision closes structural detection gaps that periodic manual monitoring cannot address, across both asset conditions and safety-critical behaviours, generating an evidence base that supports operational governance and regulatory compliance across all shift hours 2.Continuous monitoring reveals risk patterns and behavioural conditions that shift-level observation and point inspections consistently miss, enabling a move from reactive response to evidence-based intervention across operational and safety programs simultaneously 3. The operational intelligence generated by a monitoring program compounds beyond its primary purpose: data captured continuously across day and night shifts supports root cause investigation, compliance reporting, and process improvement in ways that periodic inspection never could

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Perspective Session

Criticality That Counts: Driving Reliability, Inventory Optimisation, and Cost Efficiency Many organisations operate with asset criticality classifications that were never truly evaluated — inherited through ERP migrations, copied from legacy systems, or assigned without structured methodology. The result is predictable: flawed maintenance prioritisation, reactive planning, and

Tom Harbison Surface Shutdown Manager, Newmont

inventory strategies built on assumption rather than evidence.

We faced this challenge at scale. With thousands of assets incorrectly classified in our ERP, minor components were competing with major production-critical equipment for maintenance attention, planner bandwidth, and spare parts investment. The system wasn't just inefficient — it was actively working against us.

In response, we designed and implemented a dynamic, data-driven Equipment Criticality Analysis (ECA) program from the ground up. The work involved cleansing and reassessing over 9,000 asset lines,

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integrating failure mode modelling, and building a live Power BI visualisation layer — enabling real-time, value-based decision-making at both the planning and execution level.

The outcomes have been significant and measurable. Maintenance teams can now prioritise work with confidence, anchored to production value and quantified downtime risk rather than historical habit.

Shutdown planners make faster, better-informed trade-offs when scope conflicts arise. And critically, the ECA outputs have reshaped our inventory strategy — driving targeted investment in high-risk critical spares while identifying and eliminating substantial volumes of obsolete stock, delivering clear financial returns.

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Perspective Session

Cost‑Effective Engineering Controls to Eliminate Chronic Separator Failure Since commissioning, a critical milk separator experienced recurring water contamination in the gearbox, ultimately resulting in a catastrophic failure and significant production disruption. A detailed cause‑tree investigation was undertaken to identify the primary failure mechanism and contributing factors. This

Sam Vallance Group Reliability Engineer, Bega

analysis enabled a low‑cost engineering control to be implemented that eliminated the root cause of failure. In addition, a practical oil health monitoring program was introduced, incorporating improved visual inspections, oil sampling and crackle testing. These actions restored equipment reliability, reduced business risk and delivered high confidence in long‑term separator health within tight cost and resource constraints.

After the works complete, the site team has better understanding and ownership of the equipment, which

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was previously perceived as 'the contractor's problem'.

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Perspective Session

Leading Reliability: The Human Side of Maintenance Excellence Technical excellence alone won’t deliver sustained reliability. The maintenance and asset leaders who

Justina Stromnes

consistently outperform their peers do so by mastering something far harder than systems and tools.

Organisation Psych and Leadership Coach

They master themselves, their people, and the organisational environment in which great maintenance happens. Strategy, culture, and capability are the real levers, and they sit firmly in the leader’s hands.

This intensive 90-minute workshop distils the core principles from a comprehensive leadership development programme into a practical, high-impact session designed for senior maintenance and asset leaders ready to elevate their influence and organisational performance.

Self-awareness and leadership identity - understanding how your presence shapes those around you Emotional intelligence as a senior leadership discipline, not a soft skill Setting strategic direction that connects maintenance to enterprise value

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Building and sustaining a culture of reliability, ownership and continuous improvement Communicating, influencing and navigating complex organisational dynamics Leading safety at the organisational level - beyond compliance to commitment Driving performance, accountability and developing the next generation of leaders Managing complexity, competing priorities and your own sustainability as a leader Whether you lead a team of supervisors or an entire asset management function, you will leave with sharper self-insight, practical frameworks, and a clear sense of where to focus your leadership energy to create lasting impact.

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Perspective Session

A Risk-Based Asset Criticality Framework for Smarter Rail Prioritisation V/Line needed a more practical and consistent way to understand asset risk and prioritise maintenance, renewals, critical spares analysis, life-cycle modelling, and investment decisions across a diverse regional rail network. Existing approaches did not provide sufficient visibility of consequence, exposure, and

Siddhesh Kolekar Asset Reliability Manager, V/Line Corporation

operational context to enable transparent, risk-based prioritisation.

To address this, the Asset Reliability team led the development of an updated asset criticality framework designed to better reflect the actual risk profile of assets. The framework incorporates consequencebased lenses including safety, service delivery, customer, regulatory/compliance, environmental, and reputation impacts, together with exposure factors such as age, utilisation, detectability, and restoration time.

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As part of this work, the Asset Reliability team engaged SMEs across multiple asset disciplines to define asset functions and align on credible worst-case and most-likely failure modes at the product family level.

We also developed a structured survey-based approach to gather consistent ratings and support efficient workshops. The framework is intended to strengthen risk-based planning within the Annual Works Plan and support broader business functions across the asset management lifecycle.

The key benefits of this work are improved consistency in asset prioritisation, better visibility of higherrisk assets, more informed project nominations and investment decisions, improved prioritisation for critical spares and life-cycle analysis, and a stronger link between engineering knowledge and business planning.

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Perspective Session

Rehabilitating Operations and Maintenance as One: What System Level Change Actually Requires Rebecca Yianakis Organisations managing complex, multi site operations face a familiar set of pressures: exponential growth in population, technology, self-servicing everything and changing accountabilities of support teams, with

Production Manager, Sydney Water

knowledge and seasoned experience leaving faster without being captured . Middle managers are stretched between transformation ambitions and daily operational reality with shifting priorities and limited budgets.

Grounded, honest examples of organisations tackling all of these and more at once - remains rare.

This presentation shares practical lessons from an active transformation across Sydney Water's Water Resource Recovery Operations and Maintenance teams, spanning 30 facilities across 10 hubs and operating under multiple ISO aligned management systems during a period of accelerating generational change.

Starting from a formally assessed maturity baseline of approximately 2 out of 5, the program is deliberately

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rebuilding capability, knowledge retention, and execution discipline in parallel. Six connected workstreams drive this reset: a Knowledge Retention Program targeting contextual and judgement based expertise at risk of loss; a Training, Learning and Development framework addressing 24 identified gaps against ISO competency requirements; an Integrated Management System maturity approach to make operational process control and the data trustworthy; blank sheet risk assessments to surface blind spots; targeted continuous improvement on recurring issues; and an operational dashboard rebuild enabling timely, accountable monitoring across management levels.

The program is also delivering an AI enabled operator support agent providing fast access to over 1,000 approved documents, with governance designed to evolve toward agentic AI use cases while keeping human judgement central.

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Perspective Session

Work Design for a Mentally Healthy Workforce Following on from his highly regarded sessions and workshops with MAINSTREAM on building effective

Simon Brown-Greaves

mental health strategies, Simon will now turn his attention to one of the most critical success factors in

Organisational Psychologist, Assure

creating mentally healthy workplaces — job and work design.

Drawing on his extensive experience as Chief Mental Health Officer for leading Australian organisations, Simon brings both strategic insight and practical expertise to this increasingly important area.

In this session, Simon will share practical examples, frameworks and tools designed to help organisations and work groups embed psychosocial risk mitigation into the design of work itself. A key focus will be on the importance of collaboration with job holders and the role of effective consultation frameworks in driving meaningful and sustainable outcomes.

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Simon will also explore some of the most pressing management challenges organisations are navigating today, including flexible work practices, job control, workload pressures and exposure risk.

Adding a touch of “back to the future”, Simon will revisit the enduring importance of process reengineering and robust innovation practices in supporting mentally healthy, high-performing workplaces.

This session will provide leaders with actionable insights into how thoughtful work design can improve both employee wellbeing and organisational performance.

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Perspective Session

Breaking Out of AI Pilot Purgatory: Practical Tips & Tricks for Maintenance Managers Shane Scriven Despite years of investment, most organisations remain stuck in an endless cycle of AI pilots that never deliver operational value. The numbers are sobering: 76% of AI initiatives fail to achieve expected returns,

Managing Director, SAS Asset Management

manufacturing failure rates sit at 76.4%, and only around 11% of organisations have genuinely scaled AI into production. Leadership ambition continues to outpace workforce readiness, with AI skills scoring the lowest of any readiness dimension at 2.69 out of 5.

This workshop is for maintenance and reliability managers tired of proofs of concept that work in isolation but evaporate the moment they meet real operational systems and messy data. We'll examine why pilots fail at scale, what high-performing organisations do differently, and how to build the foundational capabilities - clean data, system integration, workforce literacy, and governance - that

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determine whether AI delivers value or becomes another sunk cost. We'll also tackle the more provocative opportunity: rather than using AI to optimise existing processes for marginal 10% gains, how do you reinvent maintenance entirely to be dynamic, responsive, and tied to actual operating conditions?

A diagnostic framework for assessing whether your organisation is genuinely AI-ready or simply AIcurious Strategies for closing the gap between leadership ambition and workforce capability A governance approach addressing transparency, accountability, and the boundaries between AI recommendations and human judgement in safety-critical environments A reinvention-first methodology: what would maintenance look like with unlimited resources and perfect information, and where can AI realistically bridge that gap?

Bring your current AI initiatives, your scepticism, and your hardest integration problems - we'll work through them together.

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Perspective Session

Five Fast Fixes: Easy Lubrication Wins Every Plant Should Be Using in 2026 In this 40 minute education session, Lubrication Expert Rafe Britton will run you through five simple

Rafe Britton

strategies you might be overlooking in the pursuit of lubrication-enabled reliability:

Technical Director, Lubrication Expert

1.The humble desiccant breather (more important than you think!)

2.Kidney loop filtration (there’s a new technology in town) 3. Real-time oil analysis (valuable - not for the reasons you think) 4.Ultrasonic grease guns (because you are using the wrong grease volume - guaranteed)

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5.Used grease analysis (grease is a lubricant too, why aren’t you testing it?)

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Perspective Session

Smarter and Faster Demands For Infrastructure Requires a Back-ToBasics Asset Management Approach Australia’s energy transition is driving the rapid delivery of major transmission and connection infrastructure under unprecedented time, regulatory and stakeholder pressures. A narrow project focus

Sylvia Miles Manager, Asset Management Contestable, AusNet

can drive siloed, short‑term decisions that compromises long‑term, sustainable outcomes.

In practice, delivering smarter and faster infrastructure solutions requires a back-to-basics Asset Management approach.

This presentation shares real world lessons from integrating contracted transmission and energy connection assets into operations.

Demonstrating how focusing on whole of lifecycle consideration earlier in the project lifecycle and

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reinforcing the “why” behind decisions and standards reduces risk, strengthens operational readiness, and improves long term performance.

37

Perspective Session

The Reliability Revolution: Powered by People, Connected by Purpose Alberto Landeaux This session explores how reliability at DP World has evolved from a tactical task into a global movement powered by people.

Global Director Reliability Ports & Terminals, DP World (UAE)

Across more than sixty countries, we’ve built a culture that’s human-centered and technology-enabled, united by a shared language that starts on the terminal floor and reaches the executive office.

Our journey began in 2013 with the arrival of our first reliability engineer. Since then, reliability has grown —not just in numbers, but in mindset. Today, thousands across our ports and terminals speak the language of reliability with purpose, pride, and conviction.

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The movement continues to expand, creating champions who look beyond their own sites, support others, and learn from each other’s strengths. Together, they’re building a culture where reliability is more than a function—it’s a unifying force across regions and roles.

In this session, you’ll hear the voices of our people, sharing real stories that answer the questions many reliability professionals ask themselves—helping them connect the dots, find clarity, and shape the next step in their own reliability journey.

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Perspective Session

Driving Better Asset Performance at Kimberly-Clark How do you improve an operation that is already a top performer among its peers?

Jonathan Murcott, Reliability and Engineering Manager at Kimberly-Clark Australia, and Timothy McLean,

Jonathan Murcott Millicent Mill Engineering Manager, Kimberly-Clark Australia

Managing Director of TXM, will discuss how the Kimberly-Clark Millicent Mill is improving asset performance through focused improvement of key assets and by engaging its relatively inexperienced workforce in autonomous maintenance and machine care.

1.A practical approach to TPM that engages both reliability and operations teams in improving asset performance.

Timothy McLean Managing Director, TXM Lean Solutions

2.The keys to engaging front line operators in care of machines including standardized and streamlined startups and setups, more effective cleaning and autonomous maintenance activities.

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3. How a focused approach on improvement of individual asset performance can reduce maintenance costs and increase performance

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Perspective Session

From Worthless Data to Intelligent Assets: Edge Federated ML in Real-World Asset Management Asset-intensive organisations have invested heavily in enterprise asset management systems and condition monitoring infrastructure, yet most operational data remain underutilised. This presentation challenges the conventional centralised analytics approach and introduces edge federated machine

Shane Scriven Managing Director, SAS Asset Management

learning as a transformative architecture for physical asset management.

Drawing from real-world implementations across Australian transport, ports, and heavy industry, this session demonstrates how edge computing combined with federated learning solves four critical barriers to intelligent maintenance Attendees will learn how edge federated ML enables each asset to develop local intelligence whilst contributing to collective= wisdom—all without exposing sensitive operational data. Real-world results

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demonstrate how distributed asset intelligence transforms maintenance planning, improves resource allocation, and enables truly prescriptive decision-making at the asset level.

Key takeaways include understanding why traditional data collection fails to deliver maintenance value, recognising the architectural advantages of edge federated learning for asset decision-making, and identifying practical first steps for implementing intelligent asset management within current operational environments. isolated asset knowledge that prevents fleet-wide learning data silos across facilities that block insight sharing cloud analytics latency that misses split-second failure indicators privacy concerns that lock away valuable operational data

40

Perspective Session

The Reliability Revolution: Powered by People, Connected by Purpose This session explores how reliability at DP World has evolved from a tactical task into a global movement powered by people.

Alberto Landeaux Global Director Reliability Ports & Terminals, DP World (UAE)

Across more than sixty countries, we’ve built a culture that’s human-centered and technology-enabled, united by a shared language that starts on the terminal floor and reaches the executive office.

Our journey began in 2013 with the arrival of our first reliability engineer. Since then, reliability has grown —not just in numbers, but in mindset. Today, thousands across our ports and terminals speak the language of reliability with purpose, pride, and conviction.

The movement continues to expand, creating champions who look beyond their own sites, support

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others, and learn from each other’s strengths. Together, they’re building a culture where reliability is more than a function—it’s a unifying force across regions and roles.

In this session, you’ll hear the voices of our people, sharing real stories that answer the questions many reliability professionals ask themselves—helping them connect the dots, find clarity, and shape the next step in their own reliability journey.

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Perspective Session

Measuring What Makes People Stay, Speak, and Thrive: A Personal Story and a Practical Framework In asset-intensive workplaces, we measure uptime, output, safety, cost, and risk — but often miss the

Aby Alshareef Engineering & Maintenance Manager, Opal

human conditions that determine whether people speak up, contribute fully, and stay well.

Drawing on my journey with a childhood speech disorder and my experience as an Engineering Manager at Opal, this session reframes workforce wellbeing as a measurable leadership discipline. In this session I will share how silence, hesitation, and difference can be misread in workplaces, and go on to introduce a practical L.A.S.T.I.N.G. framework leaders can use to build dignity, psychological safety, inclusion, and stronger people metrics.

1.How to identify hidden human signals behind silence, hesitation, disengagement, and performance.

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2.How to apply the L.A.S.T.I.N.G. framework to improve dignity, inclusion, and psychological safety.

3. How to create practical people metrics that strengthen wellbeing, leadership, and operational performance.

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Perspective Session

Stopping the Bleeding: Implementing Tight Commercial Controls to Eliminate Scope Creep and Contractor Overspend This presentation draws on the Commercial Management module of Shutdown School to address critical

Peter Durrant Adjunct Principal, Education & Change Management, Covaris

financial pitfalls associated with major shutdown events, where costs can represent 60–80% of an annual maintenance budget. Shutdowns frequently rely on transient contractor resources, which introduce significant risks related to uncontrolled scope growth and unexpected cost increases.

We will explore best practices to ensure precision of scope from the outset, moving beyond imprecise

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work definitions that lead to inflated manning levels and unnecessary fees.

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Perspective Session

From Integration to Intelligence: Rewiring Engineering for Value and Reliability Three years ago, we brought together two critical functions—engineering and capital projects—into a

Jane Bydder General Manager Engineering & Projects, Genesis Energy

single, unified model. While the expectation was cost reduction through outsourcing, the real opportunity was far greater: unlocking value through smarter asset management, digital capability, and data-driven decision-making.

This insight sparked a broader transformation. We reallocated engineering effort toward high-impact work to drive reliability, availability, and efficiency. In parallel, we built a data and AI strategy grounded in a simple idea: technology is a bridge, not a replacement. As many organisations are discovering, the biggest AI gains aren’t from disruption, but from small wins like capturing expert knowledge and

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automating labour-intensive work.

This session shares our journey from structural integration to intelligent operations - aligning people, processes, and technology to deliver measurable gains in availability, efficiency and cost performance.

1.Prioritising risk and impact – not cost alone – unlocks value 2.Freeing engineering capacity enables step-change gains in asset performance 3. Data & AI scales expertise, improving reliability, decision-making, and resilience

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Perspective Session

What Are We Actually Transforming Transformation is all the rage these days, and bestowing that word in someone’s job title has become something of a corporate badge of honour - but rarely do organisations take the time to unpack the

Chris Cunningham

ecosystem they are actually trying to change.

Principal Asset Management, Covaris

Asset Management is not a function or system - it is a complex ecosystem primarily made up of Asset Information, Engineering, Reliability, Work Management and Operations, all interdependent and shaping performance as a whole.

Most transformation efforts fail not through intent, but through ignoring this system; and critically, disregarding the human experience within it.

This session unpacks the ecosystem, showing how people, processes, systems and data interact in day-

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to-day work and why “human centred” design is essential to achieving real, sustained change. At a minimum, attendees will walk away with three things they will no longer ignore: Understanding what you are actually transforming Identify where transformation efforts break down Design transformation around people, not just systems

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Perspective Session

Effectively Integrating Major New Assets and Asset Safety into Your Asset Management System Transgrid is the manager and operator of high voltage transmission services in NSW, the ACT and Victoria.

Robert Alcaro Director or Asset Portfolio Integration, Transgrid

Our assets are managed to minimise the inherent risk they present to our workers and the general public.

To manage these safety, reliability and bushfire risks, we have implemented a ‘network’ safety management system that is complementary to our ISO 55001 Asset Management System and ISO 45001 health and safety management system.

This has required careful alignment of these systems, along with processes to integrate major new assets,

Stephen Renshaw Asset Management System Specialist, Transgrid

and a program of management awareness and communication to ensure effectiveness as the network

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grows through the energy transition.

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Perspective Session

Turn Asset Complexity into Confident Action A practical, operator-focused discussion with industry leaders on how asset teams are moving beyond complexity to deliver reliable, risk-informed outcomes. The session explores how strengthening execution discipline and governance, combined with embedded, context-aware intelligence, helps organisations improve decisions,

Greg Baud Asset Manager, Watersure

coordinate work more effectively, and achieve measurable performance gains - within increasingly complex operational environments.

3 Key Learnings: 1.How to shift from reactive, fragmented work to disciplined, outcome-driven execution across operations 2.Scale reliability and performance through repeatable ways of working

Martin Blyth Head of Sales ANZ, Octave

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3.Connect planning, maintenance, and operations to reduce complexity

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Perspective Session

Beyond Preventive Maintenance: Building Reliable Operations Through Trusted Asset Intelligence Hospitals and manufacturing plants operate under vastly different conditions, yet both face the same challenge

Karl Howard Managing Director I-care Reliability

maintaining asset reliability while reducing risk, improving productivity and making confident maintenance decisions.

This panel discussion explores how Ventia and PPG Industries are approaching maintenance transformation through improved asset visibility, predictive technologies and better operational decision making. Rather than focusing on technology alone, the discussion examines how organisations build trust in data, overcoming organisational barriers and embedding reliability into day-to-day operations to improve uptime, safety and maintenance effectiveness

Pablo Perez-Reigosa Asset Manager - Austin Health, Ventia

across critical infrastructure.

Balancing reliability with operational risk in critical environments

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Turning maintenance data into confident operational decisions Building trust in predictive maintenance technologies Lessons from hospitals and continuous manufacturing Breaking down maintenance and operational silos Scaling digital maintenance beyond pilot projects

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Perspective Session

How Accurate Drawing Access Keeps Yarra Valley Water's Crews Safe Vishal Vinayak Yarra Valley Water manages nearly $6 billion in assets serving two million Melbourne residents. Its legacy system struggled to manage native CAD files, forcing teams to rely on PDF copies stored across hard drives. This made it

Asset and Spatial Information Support Manager, Yarra Valley Water

difficult to locate current drawings and introduced compliance, security and safety risks. By implementing Accruent's EDMS RedEye as a single source of truth, Yarra Valley Water consolidated 400,000 drawings with rich metadata, role-based access and automated workflows, streamlining operations and reducing drawing retrieval from hours to just a few clicks.

Cisco Sara Manager of Product Management (EDMS), Accruent

Collated 400,000+ drawings from multiple legacy sources and hard drives Defined metadata standards and acceptance criteria for loading into RedEye

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Deduplicated and folded superseded revisions to streamline document control and information access Loaded, tested and validated documents to confirm accuracy and completeness Configured role-based permissions and automated review and approval workflows Published a drawing standard to enforce contractor quality

49

Perspective Session

Building a Safer, Simpler Business: Beach Energy's Five-Year Journey to HSE Excellence Glenn Watt Beach Energy runs confined space entry, work at height over water, mobile equipment, pipeline installation, and

Chief Operating Officer Beach Energy

offshore vessel operations across multiple Australian basins. That result is well above industry benchmarks for that risk profile and stems from a deliberate decision to simplify business operations and apply technology where it removes risk or sharpens visibility.

In this session, Beach Energy COO Glenn Watt shares the operational transformation behind the result. How the

Matt Smith CEO MyPass Global

team simplified the HSE management system, replaced fragmented contractor compliance with a single source of truth for workforce competency, and used technology to improve visibility and remove people from high-risk

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environments. MyPass CEO Matt Smith will frame the industry context and join Glenn for Q&A. Simplifying the HSE management system Building one verifiable source of truth for contractor competency across every site and basin Using technology to remove people from risk, not to add complexity Five year journey to HSE excellence

50

Perspective Session

From Data Abundance to Decision Conviction: Trusted, Risk-Based Maintenance at Fonterra Aaron Goldsbury Maintenance has solved data collection but stalled on data conviction — across the sector, 78% of organisations collect more data than they can analyse and 67% don’t trust it enough to act.

Chief Engineer – Global Engineering Fonterra

At Fonterra, critical asset information sat fragmented across SAP, historians, condition tools and people’s heads.

Through our Digital Maintenance programme with AVEVA, we are turning that data into standardised, risk-based maintenance strategy -= using Asset Strategy Optimisation to digitise strategy, condition insight and decision governance, while execution stays anchored in SAP. This session shares, practically, how we convert abundant data into trusted maintenance decisions.

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1.The paradox: why data-rich still means insight-poor and low trust 2.Fonterra’s Digital Maintenance North Star: strategy, condition insight, governance 3.Where AVEVA Asset Strategy Optimisation turns data into risk-based strategy 4.Making insight trusted: data ownership, ISO 14224, governance over technology 5.A tripartite operating model that removes translation loss between partners 6.Early proof from first site go-lives, plus five lessons

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Perspective Session

Optimising Field Service Execution in Asset-Intensive Service Operations Chris Dippenaar Delivering efficient field service operations at scale remains a major challenge for service and asset intensive

SAP Enterprise Architect Ventia

organisations. Balancing technician suitability, workforce utilisation, automated scheduling, and real-time visibility across complex operations is critical to maintaining service quality and responsiveness.

This session explores how Ventia with the support of IBM has implemented SAP Field Service Manager to modernise and optimise its scheduling and dispatching processes for its service delivery operations.

Attendees will gain insight into the operational drivers behind the initiative and the growing importance of digitally enabled field execution in improving coordination between planners, field teams, and operational systems. The

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presentation will also highlight practical considerations for organisations seeking to enhance workforce visibility, streamline scheduling and service workflows, and improve responsiveness in dynamic service environments.

Through real-world implementation perspectives, Ventia will share lessons learned in preparing systems, processes, master data, and work order planning capabilities to support a successful enterprise-scale rollout of SAP Field Service Manager.

Gain insight to the operational challenges that commonly impact field service execution across large, assetintensive organisations.

Discover how improved coordination between planners, field teams, and operational systems can enhance service delivery outcomes.

Gain insight into the foundational role of master data and work order planning in supporting scalable field service transformation.

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Perspective Session

The "Best Position Ever" for Maintenance: How Wilmar Sugar Switched to OneRiver’s Arrow Tracey Kostecki Find out how Wilmar Sugar successfully made the switch to Arrow: Hear how OneRiver's Intelligent Maintenance Scheduling Solution revolutionised their maintenance operations.

Work Management Systems Manager Wilmar Sugar Australia

This joint session reveals the 'why' and 'how' behind the need for change, the rapid implementation process of Arrow and the results of current successes that are leading Wilmar to their “best position ever” for maintenance season.

Join Tracey Kostecki, Maintenance Manager at Wilmar Sugar, in a discussion about how her team moved from

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navigating challenges to improved schedule compliance, and the ongoing benefits, adaptable across any industry.

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Panel Session

The AI Reality Check – From Hype to Operational Value AI is rapidly reshaping maintenance and reliability, but most organisations are struggling to translate ambition into measurable results.

Jane Bydder General Manager Engineering Projects, Genesis Energy

Why do so many AI initiatives fail to deliver, and what does this reveal about gaps in infrastructure, data readiness, and governance?

Yolanda Babnik How can organisations strengthen the foundations needed to support AI without disrupting existing operations?

General Manager - Asset Strategy, Transurban

What role do trust, culture, and human judgement play when algorithmic insights challenge decades of experience?

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Jason Apps How do we design human–AI collaboration models that enhance, rather than undermine, engineering decision-making?

Managing Director, Industry X, Asset Management Lead APAC Accenture

What practical lessons can be learned from real-world successes and failures to move from experimentation to sustainable value?

Amir Saberi This panel brings together industry experts who are navigating both the promise and pitfalls of AI in maintenance, sharing their experiences of case studies, some that succeed and some that stall. Looking

Lead Engineer Advanced Analytics, AGL

at the cultural, technical, and ethical enablers required to make AI work in real operational environments.

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Panel Session

Fresh Eyes on the Plant Floor: Maintenance & Reliability Through the Eyes of the Next Generation For thirty years, MAINSTREAM has tracked a profession built on hard-won experience – the engineer who knows a bearing is failing by the sound it makes. But the people who carry that knowledge are leaving: 25,000 engineers will retire within five years. The graduates who could replace them are being courted

Interns and engineering graduates of Glencore, Thiess, Horizon and BAE Systems.

by consulting, renewables, and big tech.

So this session hands the stage to the people walking in the door. Four early-career engineers – some in their final year, some weeks into their first role, all shaped by internships at Glencore, Thiess, Horizon and BAE Systems – sit down for an honest, unscripted conversation about reliability seen from the start of a career, not the end of one.

It is a rare chance for an experienced audience to hear why this generation chose maintenance and

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reliability – and to test the assumptions both generations hold about each other. Expect candour, a few uncomfortable truths, and plenty of audience interaction.

Why this work? What actually attracts and keeps young engineers in reliability when consulting, renewables and big tech are all calling.

Senses vs. screens. Our research found 85% of professionals worry younger engineers over-rely on AI for equipment health (31% “very concerned”). When do they trust the dashboard, and when their own eyes, ears and hands?

The “why” generation. This generation wants the why behind a procedure, not just the steps. A risk to safety culture? Or the curiosity the profession needs?

Closing the knowledge gap. With the apprenticeship pipeline in crisis, how do experienced engineers pass on tacit knowledge to people who may not stay forty years?

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Panel Session

The Data Paradox: Why More Isn’t Better Across industries, maintenance and reliability leaders are navigating a growing paradox: organisations have more operational data than ever before, yet confidence in decision-making continues to decline.

Even with advanced systems in place, teams often find themselves spending more time validating and

Danielle White Manager Maintenance Services, BHP

reconciling data than actually using it to drive insights. This panel will explore the widening gap between data collection and effective utilisation across sectors such as mining, energy, utilities, and infrastructure.

Rapid digitisation hasn’t just increased the volume of data - it has also introduced fragmentation, inconsistency, and a loss of historical context. Field technicians and engineers are feeling the impact, with increasing demands around data entry and quality checks. In many cases, technology risks overshadowing experience and intuition, while poor data quality begins to undermine trust in analytics

Jodie Jinette Head of Asset Management, Melbourne Airport

and maintenance decisions.

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Our panel will examine the root causes behind this “data quality versus quantity” challenge. Drawing on real-world experiences, they’ll discuss how clearer governance, stronger alignment to purpose, and improved data standards can transform raw data into meaningful, actionable intelligence. The

Ali Walsh Head of Asset Strategy and Insight, SA Power Networks

conversation will also look at how aligning data strategies with operational and business priorities can rebuild trust and ensure data genuinely supports better outcomes.

By challenging common assumptions about digital maturity, this session reframes what it really means to be “data-driven”- shifting the focus from accumulation to relevance, and ultimately helping organisations

Supratim Mukhopadhyay VP of Sales, Octave

regain confidence and clarity in their maintenance data ecosystems.

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Panel Session

The Knowledge Exodus – Sustaining Capability in Asset Management The asset management profession is haemorrhaging its institutional memory - and no documentation program, AI tool, or training initiative can fully replace what is being lost. 25,000 engineers are set to retire within five years and apprentice completions are down 45% since 2012. It is a crisis unfolding in real time across every workshop, control room, and maintenance planning office.

The knowledge most at risk cannot be written into a procedure manual. It is the engineer who recognises an abnormal bearing sound, the planner who recalls a supplier’s gaskets failing under specific conditions fifteen years ago, or the tradie veteran whose forty years of contextual judgement is about to walk out

Kass Nofz Group Manager Asset & Materials Management Fortescue

Mark Scown National Reliability Manager George Weston Foods

the door - and the twenty-three-year-old expected to fill that void with a YouTube video and a CMMS

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login.

57

Panel Session

The People Behind Reliability: Rebuilding Maintenance Culture for the Future Maintenance organisations pride themselves on data-driven decision making. But while we monitor equipment condition down to the smallest detail, many organisations still have no visibility over workload sustainability or team wellbeing.

Alberto Landeaux Global Director Reliability Ports & Terminals, DP World (UAE)

Experienced workers are leaving. Younger generations are questioning whether the profession offers a sustainable future. At the same time, maintenance teams are being asked to deliver more with fewer resources, under increasing operational pressure.

This panel session explores one of the most confronting questions facing maintenance leaders today: what happens when the workforce becomes the unmeasured critical asset?

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Combining industry research, operational insights and real-world examples, this session examines the direct relationship between workforce, competencies, reliability and performance. It argues that the future of maintenance excellence will not simply depend on better technology or systems — but on whether organisations are prepared to finally measure, value and invest in the humans behind the work.

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Panel Session

The Execution Gap: Why Reliability Still Breaks Down on the Shop Floor Most organisations have documented maintenance strategies, sophisticated systems and well-defined processes. Yet on the shop floor, the reality often looks very different.

Maintenance teams continue to lose significant time waiting for parts, chasing information, responding

Jess Tandy Leader - Overhead Distribution North West, TasNetworks

reactively and working around broken processes. In many cases, leaders know exactly what needs to happen — but struggle to create the operational discipline required to sustain it.

This panel discussion examines why execution remains one of the biggest unresolved challenges in maintenance and reliability. Why do organisations continue to compromise planning disciplines under pressure? Why are accountability structures often unclear? And why do so many digital transformation

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programs fail to improve frontline execution?

Drawing on real operational experience, panelists will debate the cultural, behavioural and leadership factors driving the execution discipline gap — and explore what it actually takes to build organisations where reliability practices are not just documented, but consistently lived every day.

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Debate

AI Greenhorns vs Experienced Maintenance & Reliability Professionals Exploring organisations increasingly employing personnel heavily reliant on AI tools — what are the opportunities, challenges and threats? Is AI simply an enabler that helps us work smarter, or are we becoming too dependent on it? Could this create major operational risk in the future, or is it simply

Dave Bartolo Managing Director, Bartconsult

helping organisations manage capability and bandwidth challenges more effectively?

We’re setting up a live debate between two sides; Pro-AI Reliance: AI boosts productivity, enhances capability, and helps organisations manage skills and resource gaps.

Against AI Reliance: Overreliance on AI can weaken human expertise and create risks if systems fail or produce inaccurate outputs.

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Each side will make their case with strong, opposing views!

After that, it’s over to you. We’ll open the floor to the audience - to your opinions, questions, and perspectives. Nothing is off limits. Let battle commence!

Adjudicator: Dave Bartolo

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Debate

Middle Management: Bottleneck or Backbone in Asset Intensive Organisations In asset-intensive organisations, supervisors and superintendents sit at the fault line between executives’ ambition and worker’s reality. Are they the bottleneck holding us back, or the untapped lever for performance, engagement, and execution? Join this fast-paced, interactive debate to challenge

Cameron Esman Head of Asset Management, Ventia

assumptions, share experiences, and help shape a collective view on one of the most critical—and overlooked—forces in asset management.

Each side will make their case with strong, opposing views!

After that, it’s over to you. We’ll open the floor to the audience — to your opinions, questions, and

Sylvia Miles Manager, Asset Management Contestable, AusNet

perspectives. Nothing is off limits. Let battle commence!

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Drew Hellyer Manager Asset Data & Assurance, Aurizon

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Workshops

Data to Dollars – Converting Data into Verified Value Many organizations are data rich but information poor, collecting vast amounts of operational data without extracting meaningful insights or converting it into financial returns. This framework transforms raw data into actionable insights, informed decisions, targeted actions, and verified value, turning data

Drew Troyer Contributing Editor, Reliable (US)

into dollars.

By ensuring data integrity, leveraging predictive analytics, and implementing precision maintenance strategies, businesses can shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive asset optimization—enhancing reliability, reducing costs, increasing safety, improving sustainability, and protecting organizational reputation.

Embedding this data-to-value methodology enables organizations to make evidence-based decisions

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that drive profitability and long-term resilience.

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Workshops

Reliability for Non-Reliability Professionals Ever wondered about what Reliability really means and how it drives Asset Performance, Cost and Risk?

This Master Class is actually not a Master Class – it is not for people wanting to master Reliability, but rather for those than haven’t quite grasped what it is really all about and why it matters. We will cover

John Searls Managing Principal, John Searls Consulting

the very basics of Reliability. You will not suddenly become a Reliability Engineer, but you will have an

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introduction to the key concepts, terms and enough knowledge to ask sensible questions.

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Workshops

Leading with High Trust and Genuine Care to Influence Safety Culture Safety policies, rules, systems, procedures, and training are developed with the best intentions: to enhance overall safety performance and ensure everyone returns home safely each day.

Brian Ropitini Chief Executive, ETEL Transformers

As an executive leader overseeing multiple major hazard facilities in both New Zealand and Canada, I've learned from personal experience how challenging it can be to ensure that my own behaviours align with and enhance the intended safety culture. My key learnings can be summarised as: • Even the best written rules, policies and procedures are not enough to prevent mistakes.

• How I responded could enhance or limit our ability to learn when mistakes occur.

• Often there are other, unnoticed, environmental and cultural aspects of the workplace that shape behaviours – it is often after an incident that these become known.

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• A high level of trust and genuine care in the workplace is critical for genuine progress. Even wellintended leaders can inadvertently communicate or act in ways that conflict with the intended culture.

Leaders' behaviour strongly influences the safety culture, determining the daily reality employees experience.

This workshop aims to equip leaders with practical guidance on what to do—and what to avoid—when fostering a desirable safety culture in their organisations.

Participants will gain insights and tools to: • Foster a high-trust workplace that underpins the desired safety culture.

• Develop behaviours that align with their intended safety culture.

• Avoid behaviours that undermine the desired safety culture.

• Arm themselves with strategies to address behaviours that could derail the desired safety culture 64

Watch MAINSTREAM Conference in 2 minutes

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Xchange Xchange sessions are designed and curated for deeper discussion around crowd-sourced topics. They are 90-minute, interactive and moderated by a facilitator. All are limited in numbers to ensure maximum engagement, learning and exchange.

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1

Capturing Institutional Knowledge

2

From Data Rich to Decision Ready

3

From Pilot to Production: What Scaled AI Actually Looks Like

4

From Supervisor to Leader: Building the Capability Your Frontline Needs

5

People Metrics on the Dashboard: Measuring What Actually Matters

6

Speaking the CFO's Language: Turning Reliability into a Business Conversation

7

Rebuilding the Trades Pipeline: Structural Solutions That Are Working

8

Human Factors and Error in Maintenance: Understanding Why Good People Make Mistakes

9

The Silent Reliability Killer: Why Lubrication Deserves Strategic Attention

10

Precision Maintenance: The Discipline Behind Repeatable Reliability

11

The Art and Science of Great Planning and Scheduling

12

Shutdown Excellence: Scope Discipline, Cost Control, and What Good Looks Like

13

Preparing Maintenance Teams for Assets That Don't Exist Yet

14

Designing Teams for Shorter Tenures: Building Capability at Speed

15

Building a Workforce That Reflects the Future, Not the Past

16

Making Maintenance a Destination Career

17

FIFO, Fatigue, and the Path Forward: Addressing Wellbeing Head-On

18

Analytics-Ready: How to Know When Your Data Can Support the Dashboards

19

Predictive Analytics in Practice

20

Operational Readiness: Commissioning Assets That Are Ready to Maintain From Day One

67

Who sponsors MAINSTREAM?

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Diamond Partner

Get Your Tickets 70

MAINSTREAM Conference 6-7 August 2026

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Advisory Team

Melissa Aspinall

Mgr – System & Scheme Performance Maintenance and Reliability, Water Corp

Jess Tandy Leader - Overhead Distribution North West, Tasnetworks

Scott Wikman

General Manager Network, Gladstone Area Water Board

Sylvia Miles

Dr. Lutfiye Manli

Tim Hart

Executive General Manager SEQ Assets, Queensland Rail

Manager Asset Management System, Powerlink Queensland

General Manager Asset Maintenance, Energy Queensland

Dr Carla Boehl

Paul Ascione

Chloe Franks

Stuart Smith

Senior Manager Asset Care & Utilities, Pfizer

General Manager Asset Management, Powerlink Queensland

Superintendent Integrated Closures, Aurizon

Manager - Asset Management System & Assurance, Dept of Transport & Planning Vic

Neha Sharma

Cameron Esman

Asset Strategy Manager, Port of Melbourne

Head of Asset Management, Ventia

Stoj Naumoski

Martin Sassenberg

Drew Hellyer

Manager Asset Data & Assurance, Aurizon

Josh Butler

Manager, Asset Management Manager - Northern Operations, Rio Tinto Contestable, AusNet

Dave Smale

Digital Transformation Coordinator, BlueScope Steel

Stuart McQuade

Colin Crisafulli

Danielle White

Head of Hydro, AGL Hydro

Substation Assets Manager, Endeavour Energy

Manager Maintenance Services, BHP

Manager, Asset Management & Assurance, Queensland Sugar

Claire May

Manager Asset Management, AGL

2026

Dr Nazrul Island

Tony Pitt

Team Manager Water Resources & Dam Safety Water Services, Townsville City Council

Maintenance Manager, Stawell Gold Mines

Jodie Jinnette Head of Asset Management, Melbourne Airport

Yolanda Babnik

Michael Johnstone

Chief Operating Officer, Ego Pharmaceuticals

General Manager Asset Strategy, Transurban

Head of Renewables and Firming Operations, CS Energy

Scott Milliner

Anthony Murphy

Mark Hanes

Jason Zoroje

Head of Maintenance & Outages, AGL

Ironmaking Maintenance Superintendent, New Zealand Steel

General Manager Operations, Genesis Energy

Asset Management System Manager, Metro Trains Melbourne

Andy Jewell

Julian James

Ryan Astley

Jeff Buckett

Andrew Compson

National Electrical & Instrument Reliability Manager, Visy Pulp & Paper

General Manager - Grid Investment, Energy Queensland

Maintenance Manager - Assets, ElectraNet

Principal - Work Management, AGL Energy

Asset Management Lead, Engineering Function, BAE Systems

Glen Fleming

Ali Walsh

Russell Noon

Dave Mate

Leanne Corner

Tracey Kostecki

Tamara Ostarjas

Head of Asset Strategy and Insight, SA Power Networks

Group Reliability Engineer, Glencore

Asset Performance Manager, Endeavour Energy

Performance and Data Analytics Manager, BHP

Manager Work Management Systems, Wilmar Sugar

ASM Planning Manager, Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal

Looking back on

30 Years...

The State of Asset Management Australia & NZ Download your report to understand best practices, compare your companies’ performance and working environment to those inside and outside your industry, and make informed and effective decisions around your assets and your people.

Go to: https://www.mainstreamcommunity.com/conference/topics

76

Get in touch with

Our team Lisa Irving

Meike Paternotte

MAINSTREAM Founder +61 411 883 266

Community Engagement Manager +61 474 446 696

lisa@mainstreamcommunity.com

meike@mainstreamcommunity.com

Ian Collier

Ansumi De Bruin

Program Director

Community Manager

+44 7901 150 405

+27 837 002 282

ian@mainstreamcommunity.com

ansumi.debruin@mainstreamcommunity.com

Guy Freebody

Val McMullan

Director of Partnerships

Speaker Care Manager

+61 433 755 653

+61 418 876 286

guy@mainstreamcommunity.com

val@mainstreamcommunity.com

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6 - 7 August 2026 CENTREPIECE Melbourne Park

https://www.mainstreamcommunity.com/conference/home