The State of RAMS Engineering
A cross-industry study into how Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety is understood, applied and prioritised across the engineering lifecycle.
The results show an industry at an inflection point: RAMS is becoming more important, but traditional approaches are struggling to keep pace.
Key findings from the RAMS Industry Study
The 2024 and 2025 results show an industry in transition. RAMS is increasingly expected to influence early design decisions, improve asset performance and move beyond a compliance-only role.
RAMS is moving onto the critical engineering path.
The importance of RAMS is rising faster than organisational maturity. Awareness has increased, but many organisations are still working out how to embed RAMS effectively into engineering decision-making.
The core RAMS challenge is effectiveness, not execution.
The greater challenge is not whether RAMS analysis can be performed. It is whether RAMS outputs influence design decisions, trade-offs, cost, performance and risk priorities when those decisions are actually being made.
Complexity and knowledge gaps dominate.
The dominant challenges remain systemic: increasing system complexity, skills and resource availability, system knowledge, collaboration across teams and the quality of information received from OEMs.
RAMS must be early, integrated and continuous.
Respondents increasingly recognise the need for RAMS to be integrated with Systems Engineering and MBSE, applied earlier in design and sustained as systems evolve.
RAMS will evolve into a strategic engineering capability.
Across both years, respondents consistently expect RAMS to become more deeply embedded in early engineering design and play a stronger role in improving asset performance.
RAMS is at an inflection point.
Expectations are rising beyond what traditional document-based and siloed approaches can deliver. The opportunity now is to shift RAMS from retrospective analysis to continuous decision support.
Download the 2024–2025 Summary Report
Explore the findings behind the industry shift: why RAMS is becoming more strategically important, where organisations are struggling, and how model-based RAMS can help close the gap between analysis and engineering impact.
Download the Report
Take the 2026 RAMS Industry Study
Help shape the next view of the RAMS profession. Your response will contribute to a growing longitudinal study tracking how RAMS is changing across industries, engineering teams and organisations.