This International Standard provides a comprehensive basis for the collection of reliability and maintenance (RM) data in a standard format for equipment in all facilities and operations within the petroleum, natural gas and petrochemical industries during the operational life cycle of equipment. It describes data-collection principles and associated terms and definitions that constitute a “reliability language” that can be useful for communicating operational experience. The failure modes defined in the normative part of this International Standard can be used as a “reliability thesaurus” for various quantitative as well as qualitative applications. This International Standard also describes data quality control and assurance practices to provide guidance for the user. Standardization of data-collection practices facilitates the exchange of information between parties, e.g. plants, owners, manufacturers and contractors. This International Standard establishes requirements that any inhouse or commercially available RM data system is required to meet when designed for RM data exchange. Examples, guidelines and principles for the exchange and merging of such RM data are addressed. Annex A contains a summary of equipment that this International Standard covers. • This International Standard recommends a minimum amount of data that is required to be collected and it focuses on two main issues: ? data requirements for the type of data to be collected for use in various analysis methodologies; ? standardized data format to facilitate the exchange of reliability and maintenance data between plants, owners, manufacturers and contractors. • The following main categories of data are to be collected: ? equipment data, e.g. equipment taxonomy, equipment attributes; ? failure data, e.g. failure cause, failure consequence; ? maintenance data, e.g. maintenance action, resources used, maintenance consequence, down time. NOTE Clause 9 gives further details on data content and data format. • The main areas where such data are used are the following: ? reliability, e.g. failure events and failure mechanisms; ? availability/efficiency, e.g. equipment availability, system availability, plant production availability; ? maintenance, e.g. corrective and preventive maintenance, maintenance supportability; ? safety and environment, e.g. equipment failures with adverse consequences for safety and/or environment. • This International Standard does not apply to the following: ? data on (direct) cost issues; ? data from laboratory testing and manufacturing (e.g. accelerated lifetime testing); ? complete equipment data sheets (only data seen relevant for assessing the reliability performance are included); ? additional on-service data that an operator, on an individual basis, can consider useful for operation and maintenance; ? methods for analysing and applying RM data (however, principles for how to calculate some basic reliability and maintenance parameters are included in the annexes).