Operational Experience
Experience gained from long-term work with a specific operation and its deviations.
What it means
Operational experience forms a memory of deviations: what happened, when, how it was handled, and with what result. It allows risks to be recognized before they materialize.
Why it matters
Experience shortens the time between a symptom and the right response — with a direct impact on availability and safety.
A real-world example
An operator recognizes, from a slight change in noise, that a failure is coming — one they experienced five years ago.
Practical knowledge needed for safe and reliable day-to-day operations.
Systematically turning one's own experience into knowledge usable in the future.
Unspoken knowledge and experience that exists only in people's heads.
Systematically finding and eliminating the root cause of a problem.
Insights gathered from past projects, incidents, or deviations and turned into usable knowledge.