At the same time, the tools of integrity management, namely sensors, data and predictive models, are exactly the tools needed to cut waste and report on climate risk. This post looks ahead at where sustainable practices in asset integrity are heading, and offers five grounded predictions for the coming years, along with what Asset Owners can start doing now.

What Do We Mean by Sustainable Asset Integrity?

Sustainable asset integrity is the practice of managing assets so they deliver the longest safe, productive life for the least environmental cost. It connects two ideas that used to sit in separate focus areas: keeping assets fit for service; and reducing an organisation’s environmental footprint.

The link between them is embodied carbon, the emissions locked into an asset when it is built. Each tonne of steel releases on the order of 1.9 tonnes of CO₂ on average (Worldsteel), and cement production accounts for roughly 8% of global CO₂ emissions. For heavy infrastructure, much of the whole-life carbon is spent before the asset ever operates. That drastically reframes integrity work: every year of safe life extended on an existing asset is a year the carbon spike of demolition and rebuild is avoided. Managing integrity well is, increasingly, a sustainability decision.

Prediction 1: Life Extension Will Be Recognised as a Decarbonisation Strategy

Life extension has always been justified on cost. Over the coming decade, it will increasingly be justified on carbon as well. Because the embodied emissions of steel and concrete are so high, safely extending the life of an existing structure, pipeline or vessel avoids the emissions of replacing it. The 2024 revision of the ISO 55000 asset-management standards reflects this shift, folding sustainability and circular-economy thinking into the core principles of asset management. Expect avoided embodied carbon to start appearing alongside deferred capital as a formal benefit of integrity programs.

Prediction 2: Digital Twins, Predictive Analytics and Remote Inspection Will Cut Both Waste and Emissions

Condition-based and predictive maintenance are displacing fixed-calendar maintenance, and the sustainability dividend is significant. McKinsey has reported that predictive maintenance typically reduces machine downtime by 30–50% and extends equipment life by 20–40%. Every avoided failure and every extended life avoids material and emissions. Remote and robotic inspection compounds the effect: studies have found drone-based inspection can cut inspection-related CO2 by around 50%, and replacing helicopter power-line inspection with drones has saved hundreds of tonnes of CO2 a year for a single utility.

Digital Twins will become Context Twins. Context twins are virtual models fed by live condition data, and are forecast by market analysts to grow quickly through 2030. Their real value here is doing more integrity assurance with fewer physical interventions, and continuous corrosion sensing is part of the same shift from calendar-based to evidence-based inspection.

Prediction 3: Existing Assets Will Be Repurposed and Requalified Across Industries

The energy transition does not only mean new assets; it means reusing the ones we already have, and the pattern reaches well beyond oil and gas. In the energy sector, DNV forecasts that more than 50% of hydrogen pipelines globally will be repurposed natural-gas lines, up to 80% in some regions, at a cost of just 10–35% of new construction, while carbon capture and storage drives similar demand for integrity-managed CO2 transport, with the IEA projecting large growth in capture and storage capacity by 2030.

The same thinking is spreading across industries: offshore oil and gas platforms and subsea infrastructure assessed for reuse as offshore wind or CCS hubs; water pipelines, reservoirs and treatment assets kept in service rather than replaced; mining process plant, tanks and tailings infrastructure re-rated for new ore bodies or new duties; and bridges, wharves and buildings life-extended instead of demolished.

Repurposing is inherently sustainable because it reuses embodied carbon rather than spending it again, but it changes the rules an asset was designed and inspected against. A new duty can bring different loads, pressures, temperatures, fluids, or contaminants, and with them degradation mechanisms the original integrity plan never accounted for, from new corrosion and cracking mechanisms through fatigue to, in the case of hydrogen, embrittlement. Defects that were tolerable under the original service can become critical under the new one. Expect requalification and fitness-for-service assessment of existing assets, backed by service-specific integrity standards, to become a major stream of engineering work across every asset-intensive industry.

Prediction 4: Coatings and Corrosion Control Will Get Measurably Greener

Corrosion protection is quietly becoming a sustainability discipline. Low-VOC and zero-VOC coatings, below 50 g/L and 5 g/L respectively, are replacing solvent-heavy systems, and long-life coating technologies can extend recoat intervals dramatically; some fluoropolymer topcoats are rated for 30 to 60 years without repainting, against the two or three repaint cycles a conventional system would need in the same period. Fewer recoats means less material, less waste, and fewer emissions across an asset’s life. Alongside this, renewable-powered cathodic protection and bio-based corrosion inhibitors are moving from niche to mainstream. The theme is consistent: protect the asset for longer, with less environmental cost per year of protection.

Prediction 5: Integrity Data Will Become Sustainability-Reporting Data

Perhaps the biggest shift is in reporting. In 2023, the ISSB issued IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures, consolidating the earlier TCFD recommendations, and it requires companies to disclose the physical-climate exposure of their assets across short, medium, and long horizons. That is a question integrity teams already answer every day: what condition are the assets in, what is their remaining life, and how resilient are they? Over the next few years, the inspection, condition-monitoring, and remaining-life data held in integrity systems will increasingly feed directly into corporate climate and sustainability disclosures. Integrity data, in other words, could become audited business data.

What Operators Can Do Now

• Treat life extension as a carbon decision as well as a cost one, and start recording the emissions avoided by keeping assets in service.
• Prioritise condition-based over calendar-based maintenance where you can; it reduces both unnecessary intervention and unnecessary emissions.
• Make integrity data clean and structured now; it could soon be feeding sustainability reporting, not just maintenance planning.
• If you are repurposing an asset or changing its duty, plan the integrity requalification early, because the degradation mechanisms under the new service can differ from those the asset was originally designed for.

The next decade of asset integrity will be defined by a single realisation: the most sustainable asset is usually the one you already own, kept safely in service. Life extension, predictive and remote inspection, repurposing and requalifying existing assets, greener coatings, and integrity data flowing into climate disclosure are not separate trends; they are facets of the same shift, in which integrity management becomes a core part of how organisations decarbonise. Operators who build clean data, condition-based decision-making, and independent technical judgement into their integrity programs now will be best placed to meet both their safety obligations and their sustainability commitments.

Thinking about how to extend asset life, move from calendar-based to evidence-based inspection, or prepare your integrity data for sustainability reporting? TECHT works with asset-intensive operators to do exactly that.

Call 08 6383 9870, or email info@techt.com.au to discuss how we could work with you on what an asset integrity and condition-monitoring strategy built around your assets would look like.

Sources

• Embodied carbon of cement (~8% of global CO2) and steel (~7–9%; 1.5–3 t CO2 per tonne): IEA; SEI/UNIDO Industrial Analytics Platform; Nature, “Cement and steel — nine steps to net zero” (2022); World Economic Forum (2024).
• ISO 55000 / 55001:2024 (asset management; sustainability and circular economy): iso.org.
• Predictive maintenance downtime −30–50%, life +20–40%: McKinsey & Company, “Manufacturing: Analytics unleashes productivity and profitability.”
• Drone inspection CO2 reductions (~50%; helicopter-to-drone savings): OnePetro/ADIP; AirPixels; Airpelago.
• Digital-twin market growth forecasts (attributed to market analysts): MarketsandMarkets; Data Bridge Market Research.
• Hydrogen pipeline repurposing (>50%, up to 80%; 10–35% of new-build cost) and hydrogen embrittlement: DNV, “Repurposing onshore pipelines for hydrogen”; DNV H2Pipe JIP. dnv.com.
• CCS capture and storage growth to 2030: IEA, “CCUS projects around the world are reaching new milestones.” iea.org.
• Low-VOC and long-life coatings: AMPP ProtectPerform, “Sustainable Corrosion Protection”; PCI Magazine, “Long-Life Coatings.”
• IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures (2023), consolidating TCFD: IFRS Foundation. ifrs.org.

Yet many organisations continue to rely on static inspection reports that quickly become outdated and disconnected from day-to-day maintenance activities. Modern asset management requires more than identifying defects. It requires understanding risk, prioritising repairs, tracking corrective actions, and demonstrating that issues have been effectively closed out.

At TECHT, our Chartered Professional Engineers (CPEng) have more than 20 years of experience supporting mining operations throughout Western Australia and internationally. We combine multidisciplinary engineering expertise with our proprietary Structural Asset Integrity Reporting System (SAIRS) to transform inspections into actionable asset intelligence.

In this article, we’ll explain what SAIRS is, why it is changing the way mining companies manage structural and corrosion risks, and how integrating engineering expertise with digital asset management helps organisations reduce risk, improve reliability, and maximise maintenance investment.

Structural and Corrosion Engineering for Proactive Risk Reduction

The Structural Asset Integrity Reporting System (SAIRS) is TECHT’s integrated engineering and digital reporting platform designed specifically for managing structural integrity and corrosion throughout the asset lifecycle.

What is SAIRS, and Why Does it Matter?

Rather than producing a traditional inspection report that sits on a shelf, SAIRS creates a living integrity management system.

Every inspection finding is:

• Captured digitally
• Geolocated within a Digital Twin
• Assigned a quantified engineering risk
• Linked directly to corrective actions
• Tracked through to verified close-out

The result is complete visibility of your structural health, allowing engineering and maintenance teams to focus on reducing risk rather than simply documenting defects. For processing plants, ports, marine facilities, industrial infrastructure and mining operations, this means maintenance decisions become evidence-based rather than reactive.

Why Traditional Inspection Reports Fall Short

Traditional structural and corrosion inspections typically follow a familiar process.

• Inspect the asset
• Produce a report
• Recommend repairs
• Archive the report

Unfortunately, many recommendations never progress beyond the report, and not only do actions become difficult to track, but risk registers also become outdated, and inspection history becomes fragmented, adding to maintenance priorities changing without engineering justification.

The consequence is that deterioration continues until failures become operational problems. SAIRS closes this gap by making inspections part of an ongoing integrity management process rather than a once-off engineering exercise.

How SAIRS Delivers Proactive Asset Integrity

Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Engineering Inspections

Asset integrity is a multi-disciplinary problem, where corrosion affects structural performance, structural deterioration affects mechanical reliability, and process chemistry influences material degradation.

All of TECHT’s inspections are undertaken by experienced corrosion engineers, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, materials engineers, chemical engineers and other specialists who work together to identify issues that individual discipline inspections often miss.

These reports are then reviewed and endorsed by experienced Chartered Professional Engineers.

Digital Identification and Geotagging

Every defect identified during inspection is recorded within SAIRS. Each issue includes:

• GPS or plant location
• Structural component
• Photographs
• Corrosion mechanism
• Engineering assessment
• Risk ranking
• Recommended action

This creates a Digital Twin of the facility where engineers can navigate directly to each issue from anywhere in the world.

AI-Assisted Engineering Recommendations

One of SAIRS’ most powerful capabilities is the integration of artificial intelligence to assist engineers in developing corrective actions. Using the inspection data, AI can help generate:

• Repair scopes
• Inspection recommendations
• Material specifications
• Coating recommendations
• Engineering work packs
• Draft maintenance tasks

Every recommendation remains subject to engineering review and approval by qualified TECHT engineers, ensuring technical accuracy while dramatically reducing reporting time.

Risk-Based Prioritisation

Not every defect requires immediate repair. SAIRS applies TECHT’s proprietary Risk Priority Number (RPN) methodology to objectively quantify risk. This allows maintenance teams to prioritise work based upon:

• Safety
• Structural consequence
• Likelihood of failure
• Remaining life
• Operational impact
• Business risk

Rather than repairing everything, organisations can confidently repair the right things first.

Integration with Existing Maintenance Systems

One of the biggest challenges in asset management is ensuring engineering recommendations actually become maintenance activities.

SAIRS integrates directly with existing Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), including SAP, Pronto, IBM Maximo, and other maintenance platforms.

Inspection findings can automatically become maintenance notifications or work orders, providing complete traceability from defect identification through to verified completion. Every recommendation is accountable, and nothing gets lost.

Verification and Close Out

The inspection is not complete when the report is issued. It is complete when the risk has been reduced.
SAIRS tracks:

• Open issues
• Repair progress
• Verification inspections
• Quality assurance
• Engineering acceptance
• Risk reduction

This supports the full Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle aligned with ISO 55000 Asset Management principles.

Why Mining Operations in Western Australia Choose SAIRS

Mining environments present some of the harshest operating conditions in the world. With high abrasion, aggressive chemical exposure, corrosive process water, fatigue loading, and heavy structural demands.

TECHT has spent more than two decades supporting Western Australian mining operations with practical engineering solutions that recognise the realities of brownfield operating environments.

Our multidisciplinary engineering team understands how structural deterioration develops, how corrosion mechanisms interact with operating conditions, and how to prioritise maintenance where it delivers the greatest reduction in operational risk.

Key Benefits of SAIRS

Organisations implementing SAIRS benefit from:

• Earlier identification of structural deterioration
• Improved corrosion management
• Objective engineering risk prioritisation
• Digital Twin visualisation
• AI-assisted engineering documentation
• Integration with SAP and Pronto
• Complete action traceability
• Reduced maintenance backlog
• Improved audit compliance
• Better allocation of maintenance budgets

Most importantly, SAIRS changes integrity management from reactive maintenance to proactive risk reduction-tips for Building a Proactive Structural Integrity Program.

If your organisation is looking to improve structural asset management, consider inspecting before defects become failures, integrating inspection data into your maintenance systems, and prioritising repairs using engineering risk rather than age.

You should also consider verifying that every corrective action has been completed, and use multidisciplinary engineering to understand the whole asset, not just individual defects.

Asset integrity should never end with an inspection report – the true value comes from turning engineering observations into measurable reductions in operational risk.

TECHT’s Structural Asset Integrity Reporting System (SAIRS) combines experienced Chartered Professional Engineers, multidisciplinary engineering expertise, Digital Twin technology, AI-assisted engineering workflows, and seamless CMMS integration to provide a complete lifecycle approach to structural and corrosion management.

Whether you’re managing a single processing plant or a portfolio of mining assets, SAIRS gives you the visibility, traceability, and engineering confidence needed to make informed maintenance decisions before failures occur.

Ready to Move Beyond Static Inspection Reports?

If you’re looking to build a proactive structural and corrosion management program, TECHT can help.

Our DeTECHT Structural Integrity Audits and Corrosion Management Audits combine experienced Chartered Professional Engineers, multidisciplinary engineering expertise, and the SAIRS digital platform to help mining operations identify risk earlier, prioritise maintenance effectively, and verify corrective actions through to completion.

Contact TECHT today to arrange a consultation or learn more about how SAIRS can be integrated with your existing SAP, Pronto, or other maintenance management systems.