Asset Integrity Management Systems (AIMS) – R&D

The importance of having a good AIMS in place within your organisation cannot be understated, and with a wealth of options in the public domain, there is no shortage of potential software offerings which can be utilised for this purpose.

However, it may be the case that finding such a suitable solution as readily available is particularly difficult if you have specific proprietary intricacies that need to be met in your management policy and strategy; such as ensuring suitable integration into other software solutions in the company’s overarching management suite, or the addition of new elements of inspection and integrity assurance that would not be generically covered by available technology. Perhaps this could be specific types of asset that need accommodation that cannot be configured in existing solutions, unique defects that require a further granularity for consideration, or even ensuring more performant and efficient data/file communications in a highly time sensitive environment where every second might count, depending on the asset in question.

To that end, you may be forced to consider either developing your own dedicated internal AIMS, or building atop pre-existing solutions to achieve previously infeasible levels of capability and functionality. This type of substantial software development can potentially be eligible within the HMRC R&D Tax Relief Scheme – dependant on the level of work involved, and if the end goals represent a tangible technological advance in comparison to the native offerings in industry and, if building atop an existing solution, what your software developers have managed to build from scratch to push that respective technology forward.

It is not the commercial or business process in building out strategies and management processes which should be considered – but the actual software development effort that may be expended, going beyond configuration or expected use of available AIMS software to create new capabilities for associated platforms, frameworks, and languages which are used as a foundation to build upon.

If you have had to undertake an unexpected amount of substantial development effort that was laden with headaches to meet your company’s requirements from their foundational technology basis, it may be worth having a discussion with your accountant, or relevant financial advisors, for exploring the potential to make a claim under the HMRC R&D Tax Relief Scheme.

Read the latest issue of the OGV Energy magazine HERE