What Should You Expect From an Experienced RCM Facilitator?

Before I put in my two cents, I would like to know what you all think in regard to this subject or if you have a similar story, please feel free to share your experience.

I recently had two separate customers share with me stories about hiring people/consultants who claimed to be "RCM Experts", in both cases their "expert" turned out to have very little experience actually facilitating a RCM analysis. One had attended a RCM public offering, recorded their analysis in MS Excel, and worked with their RCM team 1 day a week for 14 weeks and in the team delivered a PM focused maintenance strategy because their facilitator told them that they were "not ready for PdM and it would cost too much for them to get started".

There were lots of red flags within the 14 weeks that they worked on this project but the pressing questions were not asked until after the team presented their new maintenance strategy. Following this disappointment they did a little homework and found out their experienced facilitator could not provide a single reference in regard to his RCM experience other than his 3 day course certificate.

Company number two was slightly more aggressive in making the discovery that their newly hired RCM expert had little to no experience facilitating the RCM process. It turns out that company number 2 has a few certified CMRP's and one happened to attend the RCM team training that was being put on by their newly hired consultant. After a few pressing questions it turned out that Mr. RCM Expert was a new hire and had yet to attend formal RCM training and had never even sat in on a single RCM analysis!

After hearing two stories within 1 month I figured that others must have had similar experiences. I don't know about you, but any time we hired a consultant I expect and expert in that subject to show up. Getting anything less is fraudulent.