Comparesoft Podcast

Dr Sajjad Hussain, Head of Maintenance at BOS Aerospace (BOSA), joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast to delve inside aviation maintenance, where aircraft turnarounds can be as short as 25 minutes and every signature carries legal accountability.

Sajjad has spent 26 years in aviation engineering. He started as a trainee engineer at Monarch in 2000, spent 14 years in the Middle East with Etihad Airways and Oman Air, then led maintenance operations at Bombardier, Ryanair, Wizz Air and British Airways. Today he is BOSA's Head of Maintenance and regulatory post holder, leading a third-party line maintenance operation that acts as the engineering department for around 40 airlines at airports across the UK and Ireland.

In this episode, Sajjad talks about:

• How line maintenance differs from base (hangar) maintenance, and why the MEL (Minimum Equipment List) matters on every turnaround
• What a third-party aviation maintenance provider does for airlines
• Why no single aviation maintenance system covers everything
• How BOSA runs MRO Pro, Centrik and separate HR and finance tools
• The double data entry problem between airline systems and MRO systems
• Getting value from a maintenance system after it has been selected and implemented
• Where MRO software performs well (invoicing, parts traceability, tooling, authorisations) and where planning falls short
• The operational dashboard and cross-training tool he built with basic coding and AI
• Predictive maintenance, digital twins and why AI cannot sign a certificate of release to service

Damien O'Neill, Group Head of Engineering (Maintenance) at Biffa, joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast to unpack CMMS selection in the waste and recycling industry, across more than 100 sites and roughly £1bn of assets that keep the UK's recycling infrastructure running.

Drawing on 12 years as a Royal Navy marine engineer and maintenance leadership roles at EMCOR, Doncasters and ATS, Damien explains why he is reviewing his CMMS while it still works, why the technician's experience is too often an afterthought in system selection, and why the data you feed a system matters more than the system itself.

In this episode, Damien talks about:

• What CMMS selection looks like in waste and recycling maintenance
• Scaling a maintenance operation across 100+ sites through acquisition
• Why the right maintenance manager matters more than the data or the process
• The EOS meeting cadence and KPIs behind a national maintenance team
• Why proactive system review beats waiting for a CMMS to break
• Why the technician interface, not the database, is the real differentiator
• Building the "golden data set" before you move to a new CMMS
• Winning technician adoption with one system and one linear workflow
• Where AI genuinely helps in large-scale asset history and fault finding
• Making the case for maintenance investment to a cost-focused business

Doug Hanson, a former IT and ERP Director with a 40 year career across aerospace and defence manufacturing, joins the Comparesoft ERP Podcast to explain what more than 25 ERP deployments taught him about selecting, implementing and adopting the right system.

Starting as a Fortran programmer at McDonnell Douglas back when it was still called MRP II, Doug went on to lead SAP and Oracle deployments at Honeywell Aerospace and B/E Aerospace. Now retired, he talks openly about why so many ERP projects fail, and what leaders must get right before they sign a contract.

Full episode: https://comparesoft.com/erp-software/podcasts/sap-oracle-aerospace/

Jaco Schutte, ERP Manager at the Alpine Formula One Team, discusses selecting, implementing and running Microsoft Dynamics ERP inside Formula One. Jaco leads the technical and functional design of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations for a team of roughly 900 people.

He explains why an F1 team is really a manufacturing business, how the system was selected, why he aligns processes to the software before customising, how his team connects PLM and ERP in real time, and why adoption depends on people, not technology.

Israel Arrieta, Senior Maintenance Manager at TruStile Doors, joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast to unpack MTO maintenance management: what it takes to keep a made-to-order manufacturing plant reliable when almost every product coming down the line is different.

Drawing on 10 years in the US Navy as an aviation structural mechanic, then maintenance leadership in medical device manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, Israel explains how he runs a 24/7 operation across roughly 900 maintainable assets and 1000 custom doors a day with CMMS Software.

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/cmms-software/podcasts/made-to-order-manufacturing/

Chris Bates, Director of Operations and Maintenance Excellence at Binnies, joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast to unpack what water utility maintenance management really involves across a large, ageing and heavily regulated asset base.

Drawing on eight years at United Utilities, where he went from graduate mechanical engineer to Reliability Maintenance Manager and helped shape the company's predictive maintenance strategy, Chris now leads a consultancy team advising water companies on asset health.

In this episode, Chris talks about:

• What water utility maintenance management looks like, from United Utilities to Binnies
• Why you nail the requirements before you go anywhere near a CMMS
• How to select a maintenance system in a regulated, bill-payer-funded environment
• The two suites of KPIs that show a CMMS implementation is working
• Setting SMART KPIs for the first time, and letting them evolve with maturity
• Building the culture, vision and zero-blame environment that makes change stick
• Winning technicians over to condition monitoring and new maintenance tools
• Where AI helps in condition monitoring, and where it takes engineers too far from the data
• Making the case for maintenance to a C-suite that sees it as a cost centre

James Ayre, Asset Management Director at Manchester Airports Group (MAG), joins the Comparesoft Maintenance Management Podcast to unpack what airport maintenance management really involves at the UK's largest dedicated cargo hub, East Midlands Airport.

After 20 years at Rolls-Royce, from engineering apprentice to global maintenance executive, James now oversees more than 220,000 assets across Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands. In this episode, James talks about:

• What airport maintenance management looks like across a group managing over 220,000 assets
• The move from reactive repair to proactive, condition-based maintenance
• The leading and lagging KPIs he tracks, and why he brought OEE from Rolls-Royce
• How his team uses IBM Maximo and Maximo Monitor, and why clean data comes first
• Where AI genuinely fits into maintenance today, as a multiplier rather than a replacement
• Building a digital twin of the airfield to see failures below the surface
• Outsourced facilities management, team culture and having hard conversations
• Making the business case to the board: maintenance as value protection, not cost

Comparesoft: 👉 https://comparesoft.com/cmms-software/podcasts/Airport-Maintenance-Management/

Lewis O'Brien, Facilities Manager UK at Korn Ferry, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to explain how he manages suppliers and contractors across three offices, and why he still runs most of the operation on spreadsheets rather than a Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) system.

Lewis started at Korn Ferry as an Operations Assistant in March 2020 before moving into the UK Facilities Manager role, and now oversees the London, Manchester and Dublin offices. This is a candid look at a manual facilities management (FM) operation: how contractors get selected and onboarded, how work orders are raised and closed, how planned preventive maintenance (PPM) schedules get built from call-out history, and what still gets missed when it all lives in spreadsheets. In this episode, Lewis talks about:

• Running FM across offices of 1,000, 200 and 50 people, and why the small sites are not a smaller job
• Managing work orders, maintenance schedules and compliance dates on spreadsheets
• Extending an existing IT ticketing system to facilities, and why nobody pushed back on adoption
• Building trust with contractors, and how quickly it breaks
• Handling substandard work face-to-face without a blame culture
• Onboarding contractors for a Dublin office relocation from another country
• Using response time and call-out history to judge contractor performance
• Three things every new facilities manager should get right about contractor management

🔗 Listen and read more 👉 https://comparesoft.com/facilities-management-software/podcasts/supplier-contractor-management/

Rachael Lawton, Head of Estates at the Royal Armouries Museum, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to share advice for new and entry-level facilities managers, and to make the case that you do not need an expensive software system to run an estate well.

Drawing on more than two decades in facilities management (FM), from accommodation assistant to leading the estate of a national museum, Rachael explains how she runs a team of 24 on SharePoint, spreadsheets and a ticketing tool, and what really matters when you are starting is having the right team, tools, and knowledge at your disposal.

In this episode, Rachael talks about:

• Why real-world experience should come before formal FM qualifications
• How to run an effective estate without a complex or expensive set-up
• The case for keeping FM teams in-house, and when to outsource PPM servicing
• How to use KPIs that drive decisions, instead of measuring for the sake of it
• Deciding what you actually want AI to do in an FM role
• Showing the value of the FM team and winning budget from senior management
• Whether you need CAFM software yet, and how to decide

🔗 Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/facilities-management-software/podcasts/fm-team-tools-knowledge/

Aissam Drai, ERP Head at the Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), talks through his journey of selecting, implementing, and adopting an ERP system. He explains how he runs Oracle Fusion across six countries and 38 legal entities, with more than 25 integrated applications covering finance, procurement, HR, and project and performance management, at the largest broadcaster in the Middle East, and why he chose to implement it in-house.

In this episode, Aissam talks about:

• How MBC runs Oracle Fusion across six countries, with payroll configured to each country's labour laws
• Why he moved from legacy Oracle E-Business Suite to cloud as a phased early adopter, not a Big Bang (plus a comparison between SAP & Oracle Fusion)
• The three legacy pain points that drove the move: interface, customisation, and upgrades
• Why he implemented in-house after two external implementers failed, and when that model does not fit
• How a small pilot in Jordan built the momentum to win management's backing
• How he uses agentic AI to tackle shadow systems, and where AI and human-in-the-loop automation fit into ERP adoption

Listen and read more: https://comparesoft.com/erp-software/podcasts/in-house-erp-rollout/