Veolia: -45% downtime across 12 sites

Treating and distributing drinking water is unlike any other activity. Every hour of downtime at a production plant can disrupt service to thousands of households. Every regulatory non-conformity exposes the operator to sanctions and undermines public trust.

For Veolia, world leader in water services, mastering industrial maintenance is a strategic challenge. Beyond economic performance, it is a matter of public service continuity and public health.

Twelve sites, as many heterogeneous practices

The project scope covered twelve drinking water production sites in France, spread across several regions. Largely the result of successive acquisitions, each site had built its own maintenance culture:

• maintenance methods that differed from one site to another, with no group-wide logic;
• supplier contracts negotiated locally, without pooling;
• regulatory ARS traceability that needed strengthening on some sites;
• no ability to compare performance across sites in order to identify best practices.

For several years, the technical management had been looking to harmonize without breaking what was working. A previous project had failed, perceived as too centralized and top-down. The challenge was therefore as human as it was technical.

Harmonize processes, pool purchases

The MAINTEX approach was built on two structuring principles. First, start from existing best practices at the most performant sites, rather than imposing a theoretical model. Then, quickly demonstrate the economic value of harmonization to bring local teams on board.

Four workstreams ran in parallel:

1. the creation of a unified catalog of equipment and spare parts;
2. the deployment of preventive workflows compliant with ARS regulation;
3. the consolidation of parts purchasing at group level, with renegotiation of supplier contracts;
4. the creation of comparative dashboards between sites to stimulate positive emulation.

Measurable impact in the first months

The first results appeared quickly on the procurement side. Consolidating contracts at group level generated 28% savings on parts purchases, simply by leveraging volume effects.

On the operational side, harmonizing preventive workflows significantly reduced unplanned downtime. Technicians, better equipped and better informed, became more productive without working harder.

MAINTEX enabled us to unify our maintenance processes across all our treatment plants, while preserving the autonomy of local teams. This is exactly the balance we were looking for.

A new group standard

Beyond the numbers, the project created a shared culture between the twelve sites. Best practices from one site now spread naturally to others. ARS audits are prepared with serenity. New site managers have a clear framework to steer their scope.

The model is now being extended to other perimeters of the group, with the goal of progressively covering all drinking water production and wastewater treatment sites.