By Manu Nagayach - 21st September 2025

Picture this: A maintenance crew arrives on site to repair a critical piece of equipment. The work order is ready, the tools are on hand, but one question remains—where’s the safety permit? Without it, work grinds to a halt. The delay costs time, frustrates the crew, and risks compliance if shortcuts are taken.

Scenarios like this aren’t uncommon. Safety, despite being a non-negotiable in asset-intensive industries, is often managed separately from the systems that guide day-to-day operations. Incidents may be tracked in one database, training records in another, and maintenance in Maximo. The result? Gaps, blind spots, and missed opportunities to prevent risk before it happens.

The good news: by embedding safety directly into Maximo, organizations can move from treating safety as an afterthought to making it the backbone of operational excellence. Safety is no longer just about compliance. It’s a journey of continuous improvement—and Maximo can be a powerful enabler.

Why Safety Belongs Inside Maximo

When safety is integrated into Maximo workflows, it shifts from being a “side process” to part of the operational fabric.

• Context: Hazards and risks are tied directly to assets, locations, and work orders.
• Actionability: Safety inspections don’t just capture data; they automatically trigger corrective actions.
• Visibility: Supervisors gain real-time dashboards highlighting where risks are concentrated.
• Compliance: Audit trails, permits, and sign-offs become part of everyday work rather than separate paperwork.

Instead of safety being a parallel track, it becomes inseparable from the way work is identified, planned, and executed.

Common Challenges in Safety Management

Many organizations struggle with safety integration. Here are some recurring issues I’ve seen across industries:

• Paper-Based Permits: Still common in many plants, these can be lost, delayed, or inconsistently applied.
• Inspection Fatigue: When forms are long or repetitive, frontline staff may complete them mechanically rather than thoughtfully.
• Siloed Reporting: Safety observations recorded in one system rarely talk to maintenance data in Maximo, limiting visibility.
• Reactive Mindset: Too many safety processes only come into play after an incident, not before.

Maximo, when configured effectively, can directly address these gaps.

Best Practices for Safety Management in Maximo

1. Risk Tracking at the Work Order Level

Every work order should carry its safety DNA.

• Embed safety steps in Job Plans.
• Flag hazards at the asset or location level.
• Require acknowledgement of safety tasks before technicians can begin work.

This ensures that safety is not optional—it’s mandatory and built-in.

2. Leveraging Safety Plans and Permits

Maximo’s Safety Plans allow organizations to manage PPE requirements, hot work, confined space entry, and lockout/tagout procedures.

• Automate Permit to Work generation from work orders.
• Link safety approvals to workflows so no unsafe work slips through.

The goal is to shift permits from paperwork to proactive controls.

3. Safety Inspections that Drive Action

Inspection data should never sit idle.

• Use Inspection Forms for rounds, audits, and condition monitoring.
• Trigger work orders or escalations automatically on failures.
• Analyze inspection data to spot recurring issues, closing the loop between identification and resolution.

4. Embedding Safety in Mobile Work Execution

Safety information must travel with the workforce.

• Deploy Maximo Mobile to surface hazards, PPE requirements, and checklists before work starts.
• Enable near-miss and incident capture in the field, in real time.
• Require safety confirmations before work can be closed out.

This ensures that safety checks are completed where the work actually happens.

5. Analytics for Proactive Safety Management

The real power lies in visibility.

• Track KPIs such as “Work Orders with Safety Plans Applied”, “Incidents per Asset Class”, or “Inspection Failures by Location.”
• Combine asset health and risk data with safety metrics for a holistic view.
• Provide supervisors with dashboards highlighting hotspots for intervention.

Proactive safety means acting on insights before incidents occur.

Safety as a Journey, Not a Destination

Implementing safety in Maximo isn’t a “go-live” event. It’s an ongoing evolution:

• Step 1: Digitize safety forms and link hazards directly to assets.
• Step 2: Automate permits, inspections, and escalations within workflows.
• Step 3: Integrate predictive analytics and IoT data to anticipate risks before they occur.
• Step 4: Build a culture where Maximo is trusted as both a work management and a safety management platform.

Safety excellence has no finish line. Regulations change, new technologies emerge, and organizations continuously face new risks. The mindset must be one of continuous adaptation and improvement.

Final Thoughts

Safety doesn’t belong in a separate binder or a disconnected database. It belongs where the work lives. By reimagining safety inside Maximo, organizations can transform checklists into proactive, data-driven processes that not only meet compliance requirements but also prevent incidents, protect workers, and extend asset life.

The destination may always shift, but the journey toward safer, smarter operations never stops.