IDCON founder, prolific author, and known as the 'Godfather of Reliability'
"MAINSTREAM is the world's most valuable Maintenance & Reliability Conference"
New research names twelve obstacles holding British industry back – from the retirement wave to a reactive culture nobody can break – as MAINSTREAM UK returns on 20–21 October.
When MAINSTREAM brought three decades of international maintenance and reliability expertise to British shores last October, more than 300 practitioners came to Birmingham. This year the event doubles: 500+ have already booked, and 95% of expo floor space was gone before the program was complete.
Behind that growth sits a body of research that has hardened. MAINSTREAM's 2026 UK study – drawn from surveys and roundtables – identifies twelve obstacles now defining the state of British and Irish industry. The most exposed nerve: 71% of respondents report no dedicated reliability engineering function at all.
The findings make uncomfortable reading. Reactive maintenance remains the dominant operating mode despite universal agreement that it is costly, unsafe and unsustainable. Practitioners describe maintenance as a "necessary evil" – celebrated when assets run, blamed when they fail, defunded when things are quiet. Obsolescence, not age, has emerged as the primary risk driver, with control system obsolescence creating multi-million-pound liabilities organisations keep deferring. The retirement wave has arrived, taking technical knowledge, asset history and operational judgement that exist nowhere in any system.
"The barrier is not knowledge," the research team notes. "It's culture, incentives and leadership continuity."
Two new themes were elevated this year: change management capability – the recognition that failure to sustain improvement is a people problem, not a technical one – and the absence of a documented long-term asset strategy, itself a root cause of much of the rest.
Every session addresses these themes directly. Headlining is Ed Van Cise, NASA's 78th Flight Director, on Maintenance and Reliability at the permanent Moon Base NASA is establishing at the lunar south pole – an environment whose obsolescence and spares problems mirror those on British factory floors. Drew Troyer, the highest-rated speaker of 2025, returns with his Data to Dollars framework for organisations that are data rich but information poor. Russell Raath, formerly of Harvard professor John Kotter's global consulting business, examines why strategies stall.
The UK and Irish contingent is formidable. United Utilities' Chief Maintenance Officer Phil White is joined by Emily-Jo Howarth (Southern Water), Sven Brown (Severn Trent), Ross McCorrisken (Scottish Water) and Gerald Doocey (Affinity Water). Richard Barber brings Drax Power Station's perspective, Damien O'Neill speaks for Biffa, and food manufacturing is represented by David Stephens (Premier Foods), Jo Gillard (Finsbury Foods) and Sam Smith (The Compleat Food Group). Dan Everest (Greater Anglia), James Ayre (East Midlands Airport), Jonathan Watkinson (Babcock), Garrett Fitzgerald (Eli Lilly, Ireland) and Audrey Kelleher (BioMarin) complete a cross-sector line-up.
The event delivers 70 case studies and sessions, six specialised tracks, six workshops, hands-on tutorials in the Education Pavilion, peer-to-peer Xchange sessions and a 50-partner expo, plus year-round MAINSTREAM Community membership and post-conference access to all content.
MAINSTREAM UK takes place 20–21 October 2026 in Birmingham. Full details at https://www.mainstreamcommunity.com/uk-summit/home
