For chemical facilities like yours, making the right maintenance decisions is critical for preventing risk. Facilities are often operating under high regulatory pressures, tight margins, mounting safety expectations and a growing skills gap in the workforce.
Because chemical facilities handle hazardous materials, failures can lead to catastrophic safety, environmental and financial consequences. A January 2025 explosion at a refinery in Texas resulted in a lawsuit that claims safety protocols were violated, possibly leading to the incident. A November 2023 report uncovered 825 hazardous chemical incidents in the U.S. since January 2021. Across industry reports and studies, improper maintenance is often a common factor and risk.
Compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Management (PSM) standard and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP) rule is legally mandated, making maintenance a top priority. This article explores critical challenges in the chemical industry and the trends reshaping chemical facility maintenance. Keep reading to find out how a connected computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), one with native enterprise asset management (EAM) integrations, can help you overcome some of the biggest barriers.
Key takeaways
- Chemical facilities face strict compliance demands. OSHA PSM and EPA RMP requirements make audit readiness and complete maintenance records essential.
- Operational pressures compound the risk. Aging assets, complex turnarounds, talent shortages and reactive maintenance increase downtime, costs and safety exposure.
- Disconnected systems create blind spots. Fragmented documents and data make it harder to prove PSM mechanical integrity and keep teams working from current procedures.
- A connected CMMS addresses these challenges. Integrating a CMMS with EAM and engineering document management tools centralizes work orders, documents, compliance workflows and asset data in one place.
Download: The Strategic Role of Connected Systems in Modern Manufacturing
Key operational and regulatory challenges in the chemical industry
Chemical facilities are up against tight regulatory scrutiny and high operational risks, but the everyday realities create obstacles. Aging assets, shrinking teams and disconnected systems all increase downtime, costs and exposure. The toughest hurdles include regulatory compliance, mechanical integrity, turnarounds, talent shortages, reactive maintenance, document control, cybersecurity and sustainability.
OSHA PSM and EPA RMP compliance
More than a legal necessity, compliance requirements are essential for preventing catastrophic events. Audit readiness is the name of the game, but manual processes and scattered records leave facilities vulnerable. The challenge lies in showing PSM mechanical integrity, tracking corrective actions and always maintaining updated documentation. Under OSHA PSM mechanical integrity requirements, facilities must document every inspection and test performed on covered process equipment, including the date, the name of the person who performed it, the equipment identifier, a description of the work and the results.
Mechanical integrity and lifecycle asset management
Aging infrastructure, unpredictable degradation of components and the need to maintain inspection, repair and replacement records that span decades mean asset histories must be reliable. Otherwise, teams cannot identify root causes, prioritize critical equipment or proactively plan maintenance. PSM mechanical integrity rules also require inspection and testing frequencies that follow manufacturer recommendations and good engineering practices, with more frequent inspections when prior operating experience shows a need.
Complex, high-cost turnarounds
Turnarounds are necessary but disruptive, as they often involve hundreds of contractors and thousands of work orders. Poor planning, fragmented data and a lack of real-time visibility can lead to increases in safety risks and overruns in both cost and schedule.
Talent shortages and knowledge gaps
The chemical industry is facing a workforce where skilled talent is shrinking. Experienced workers are retiring with fewer new entrants joining the field. Resulting knowledge gaps make it harder to maintain operational excellence and transfer critical institutional knowledge, reducing maintenance quality.
Reactive maintenance
Too many chemical facilities still rely on reactive maintenance, addressing issues only after they occur. The result is an increase in both downtime and costs. Excessive or poorly managed alarms overwhelm staff, causing alarm fatigue that increases the risk of missed alerts.
Document control and fragmented data
If teams are working from incorrect information, it impacts safety, compliance and operational decisions. Outdated procedures, mismatched versioning and disconnected files can cause error rates to quickly rise.
Cybersecurity risk
Maintenance and engineering systems are becoming more connected and data-driven, so protecting sensitive information from cyber threats is increasingly difficult. Legacy equipment, disparate solutions and unsecured integrations create pathways for unauthorized access or data tampering that can disrupt operational continuity.
Energy efficiency and sustainability pressure
To meet environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals you have to implement continuous monitoring and optimization. But many facilities lack the integrated systems needed to analyze consumption trends, identify inefficiencies and make improvements without compromising safety or compliance.
Five trends reshaping how maintenance gets done in the chemical sector
As you navigate chemical industry challenges and complexities, consider five workforce and technology trends that are changing the approach to maintenance and compliance. With these shifts come new tools to help anticipate issues sooner, work more efficiently and strengthen resilience.
- Predictive and prescriptive maintenance powered by AI and industrial internet of things (IIoT): Move from reacting to failures to predicting them with sensor data and AI that surface anomalies, prioritize alerts and understand why an issue may occur.
- Connected systems, digital twins and real-time visibility: Enable more accurate planning, faster troubleshooting and better lifecycle decision-making via a unified view of maintenance, engineering and operations data.
- Automation and knowledge capture: Offset workforce gaps by using automated workflows, digital procedures and guided maintenance to standardize best practices and preserve institutional knowledge.
- Cybersecurity maturity in operational technology environments: Strengthen protections and reduce risk across connected systems through secure-by-design integrations, cloud security frameworks and modern access controls.
- ESG and energy optimization: Reduce energy waste, support sustainability goals and improve equipment efficiency through analytics and continuous monitoring that will not compromise safety for compliance.
Related Read: What is Preventive Maintenance? A Practical Guide
How a modern, connected CMMS can solve the biggest challenges in the chemical industry
A CMMS that integrates with EAM tools, such as Accruent Maintenance Connection, can help you cut downtime, reduce risks and lean into proactive, data-driven maintenance strategies. Unifying work execution, engineering information, compliance workflows and real-time asset insights gives you the structure and visibility needed to run more safely and efficiently.
Get connected, streamlined maintenance management
Work orders and maintenance scheduling can be done in one place, and integrated compliance workflows support OSHA PSM and EPA RMP. You can leverage role-based access and audit trails so every inspection, approval and corrective action is documented and defensible during an audit.
Establish a single source of truth for engineering information
With a seamless integration between a CMMS and an engineering document management system (EDMS), like Maintenance Connection (CMMS) and Accruent RedEye (EDMS), you get a secure, cloud-based repository to house all documents, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and process safety information (PSI). This lets everyone work from the latest, approved versions. Automated workflows and version control support management of change (MOC) processes to reduce errors and audit risk, while mobile access lets your teams get up-to-date documents during maintenance, improving safety and efficiency.
Enable predictive and condition-based maintenance
You can connect internet of things (IoT) sensors and AI models directly into your CMMS for all critical assets. Real-time condition data triggers automated alerts and work orders so you can address issues before they lead to downtime. AI-driven predictive alerts and alarm triage also help reduce alarm fatigue and false positives.
Improve turnaround planning and execution
Multi-year planning tools integrate with maintenance schedules and work orders link directly to document packages. This promotes tighter coordination with contractors and internal teams to reduce schedule overruns. Real-time progress tracking and compliance evidence capture strengthen safety controls.
Optimize energy and sustainability performance
Using a connected CMMS allows you to continuously monitor energy consumption. By integrating your CMMS with an IoT platform such as Accruent Observe, you can better understand trends and analytics for data-driven insights that help you make decisions to reduce waste and meet ESG goals.
Improve cybersecurity to safeguard data
Secure, role-based permissions, controlled workflows and audit trails maintain the health of maintenance and engineering data as well as prevent unauthorized changes. Built-in cloud-native security standards such as encrypted data storage, single sign-on (SSO) support with Auth0 by Okta and authenticated application programming interfaces (APIs) make integrations seamless and keep data protected.
Related Read: Go Beyond Maintenance: How Modern Corporations can Power Strategic Facilities Management with a CMMS
Build a safe, resilient chemical facility
The bottom-line impact of a modern, connected CMMS solution is about having the right digital infrastructure to stay ahead of increasingly complex challenges in the chemical industry. A robust CMMS that easily scales to EAM capabilities serves as the foundation of connected, compliant and insight-driven maintenance for your facilities.
The goal is to:
- Reduce unplanned downtime with predictive insights
- Strengthen compliance and audit readiness
- Make turnarounds faster and safer with fewer surprises
- Improve workforce productivity in the face of talent shortages
- Reduce risk exposure across operations, safety and cybersecurity
- Progress further toward sustainability and energy objectives
Working in an asset-intensive environment, your next step is to leverage purpose-built tools that centralize operations, eliminate silos and boost digital transformation.
If you are ready to explore how a connected CMMS solution that integrates with EAM tools can solve your maintenance challenges, book a demo today.
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