One question has followed me throughout my career: how do you prevent a failure before it happens?
Whether the asset is a downhole tool, a machine on a production line, or a piece of critical infrastructure, the real challenge is the same. It is not repairing what breaks. It is anticipating it.
The real cost of failure
Every failure has a price: lost production, higher operational risk, unplanned maintenance costs, and shorter equipment life. Now that industrial competitiveness has become a strategic issue for many countries, these losses can no longer be accepted as a normal cost of doing business.
I am convinced that the future of industry belongs to those who can foresee problems, prevent them, and adapt, not to those who react fastest once an incident has happened.
Why we built jll.spear
That conviction was one of the main reasons my partners and I founded jll.spear in Bordeaux, France, in 2021. The group monitors and maintains industrial infrastructure using data, AI, IoT, and geospatial technologies.
We expected industrial resilience and sovereignty to move to the top of the agenda in many countries, bringing a major wave of investment in production capacity, critical infrastructure, and strategic technologies. But building new assets is not enough. Their performance, resilience, and durability over decades must be guaranteed too.
Asset integrity at GOWell
The same vision later led me to join GOWell as Chief Technology Officer.
At GOWell, asset integrity is not one business line among others. It is a core focus of our technology development. Reliability, safety, and longevity have to be designed into a solution from the start, not added afterward. For the wells our technologies evaluate, across oil and gas, geothermal, underground storage, and carbon storage, that means understanding the condition of every barrier long before it becomes a risk.
Maintenance is not a cost center
I have often seen maintenance treated as a cost center. In my experience, it is one of the strongest levers for creating value. Done well, asset integrity:
- extends equipment life
- reduces operational risk
- improves availability and performance
- prepares infrastructure for increasingly demanding operating conditions
- reduces environmental impact through more efficient use of resources
From reactive to predictive
This is an exciting time. Digital technologies, AI, advanced monitoring systems, and predictive analytics are changing how industrial infrastructure is managed.
For the first time, we can move from maintenance that is mostly reactive or scheduled to a predictive approach that identifies risks before they become incidents. Used well, technology helps organizations make better decisions, reduce risk, extend asset life, and strengthen their resilience.
The common thread
From jll.spear to my role as CTO of GOWell, one thing has not changed: putting technological innovation to work for an industry that is more resilient, more efficient, and more self-reliant.
Asset integrity is a technical, economic, environmental, and strategic issue all at once. I believe it is one of the fields where engineering, digital tools, and AI can make the most lasting difference to the industry of tomorrow.
This article was first published in French: De l’innovation industrielle à l’intégrité des actifs.