AAOM Handbook

SS.02 Specify Functional Life

Context

The purpose of a Service Strategy is to identify the most cost effective way to manage threats related to a process. The objective is to deliver the safe, cost effective life required from processes that the Business is accountable for, or relies upon. Achieving this entails; • protecting people from harm, • protecting the environment from harm, • maintaining stakeholder support (investors, communities and regulators), • preserving the Effectiveness of the process, • preserving the Efficiency of the process, and • preserving the operational life of the process. A process that is owned and operated by the Business should obviously be included in the consideration of threats. Perhaps it is not always as obvious that processes that are owned and/or operated by other parties can be significant to the performance or sustainability of the Business, and these should also be included in the consideration of probable threats. Third party owned and/or operated processes may include services such as power, water, roads, transport, contracted activities etc. If our objective is to deliver the safe, cost effective process life required by the Business then we must define what the required Functional Life of each process is, i.e. for what period is the function/service provided by the process required. The Functional Life can be longer than the viable life of the physical assets currently in service i, a condition that will highlight that asset life extension or replacement will be required during the Functional Life. Some processes may be required to provide a Functional Life beyond the production life of an operation. For example, tailings dams may need to provide secure containment for years after production of tailings at an operation has ceased.

Purpose

To specify the Functional Life required of a process.

Quantity

• One Functional Life for each process that the Business is either accountable for or relies upon.

Quality

The Functional Life is defined by the latest year that the functions/services of a process must be provided.

A functional Life shall be specified for each process, i.e. an element within the Business Structure (down to Productive Unit level) and for each third party