What is asset criticality?
Asset criticality is how much the failure of an asset matters — to safety, to compliance, and to the operation of the building. It determines maintenance priority and replacement planning.
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<img src="https://facilityoptix.co.uk/glossary/asset-criticality/diagram.svg" alt="asset criticality — diagram from FacilityOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://facilityoptix.co.uk/glossary/asset-criticality">What is asset criticality?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://facilityoptix.co.uk">FacilityOptix</a>
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</figure>It is what makes a maintenance regime affordable. Not everything can be maintained to the same standard, and criticality is the basis on which that is decided deliberately rather than by whatever gets attention.
Statutory assets sit outside the trade-off. An asset whose maintenance is required by law is not discretionary regardless of how little it affects the operation.
Redundancy changes it. Two boilers where one would do is a different criticality from a single one, and a regime that ignores that spends the same effort in both cases.
In practice
An estate where every asset is rated critical.
The rating was applied at handover by somebody being cautious, and it means the schedule gives equal weight to a lift and a hand dryer.
Criticality is only useful if it discriminates, and a register where everything is critical has recorded no judgement at all.
The test is what actually happens when the asset fails, including whether anybody notices.
What goes wrong in practice
- Everything treated as equally critical, which means nothing is prioritised.
- Statutory tasks included in a criticality trade-off.
- Criticality set at survey and never revisited as the building's use changed.