Super maintenance problems are finally getting super attention and resources. After the 34 minute delay at this year’s Super Bowl and the recent stranded cruise ship fiasco in the Gulf, the maintenance crisis is now becoming regular satire content on Saturday Night Live.

With the passing of ISO 55000 and future regulations, more impetus will be focused in the boardrooms to fully understand the challenges and issues confronting their maintenance needs. In addition, more sensitivity will be felt to develop stronger skilled internal resources and build solid pipelines of skilled talent in regions around the world.

Now that the general public, rather than only engineering and maintenance professionals, better understand our challenges, more resources and support to address and mitigate the maintenance and skills crises that inhibit economic prosperity and put everyone at risk will be forthcoming.

That is why we are excited to announce the alliance between SkillTV and Reliabilityweb.com. Together, we are going to help regions across the U.S. and abroad implement proven strategies and strive to pilot new approaches to expand the number of skilled workers, tap into retiring workers’ resources, and help incumbent workers with breakthrough training techniques to generate more productivity, reduce costs and increase safety levels. We will be sharing new videos and more profiles of innovative people, companies, or organizations so more companies can take advantage and emulate these approaches. Later this year, we will be launching a series of books called “GIVE WORK A CHANCE” to inspire more approaches, develop solid pipelines, increase reliability performance and help mitigate the skills and maintenance crises.

We also will be supporting workforce development and economic development efforts to upgrade and develop more skilled workers. In the future we hope to create short courses to be added to community colleges’ continuing education departments to help develop the electromechanical, troubleshooting and predictive skills necessary for the new generation of quality technicians to address the current and increasingly sophisticated future technical requirements.

In addition, we will be supporting the virtual members of the Association of Maintenance Professions (AMP) by creating new online information, services, tools and resources to help advance the maintenance profession with the latest technologies. We also will be working in the trenches by consulting with groups around the world and providing additional support to generate more funding, resources and attention to their challenges so more solutions are implemented.

Each time a major disaster occurs, it further validates our mission and generates more to our movement to upgrade maintenance reliability efforts. Already, the NFL is requiring additional maintenance reliability planning for future Super Bowls and that has spread to other major events to implement safeguards as well. The whole cruise ship industry will be implementing future measures to avoid similar disasters during the peak cruise season.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama rolled out a program to investigate and prioritize fixes for infrastructure challenges. So now we are no longer working in isolation with minimal support, as more are learning that without strong maintenance reliability efforts, economic growth stagnates and people are at peril.