We are delighted to spotlight Andrew M. Bryan, Senior Engineer at Dubai Airports, ahead of his appearance at the upcoming Lubricant Expo Middle East. Andrew M. Bryan is a highly accomplished reliability and maintenance professional. With a career spanning multiple countries and industries—including oil & gas, mining and metals (alumina, nickel, and cobalt), and aviation—Andrew brings deep technical expertise and a truly global perspective. In this exclusive interview Bryan discusses some of the key challenges he runs into and if there were no constraints, what changes or innovations he would introduce to DXB by 2035.
A certified CRE, PMP, CMRP, MLE, and ASSE 6010 professional, Andrew specialises in reliability engineering, condition monitoring, and operational readiness for both greenfield and brownfield projects. He is passionate about applying RCA, RAM analysis, LEAN tools, and condition-based maintenance techniques to drive continuous improvement, enhance process safety, and optimise asset performance.
Tell us about yourself — what are your key priorities and responsibilities within your role?
I’m a Mechanical Engineer with about 15 years of experience in reliability engineering, condition monitoring, and nondestructive testing across heavy industries and critical infrastructure. In my current role, my focus is on ensuring asset reliability and operational continuity at Dubai Airports — one of the busiest and most dynamic aviation hubs globally.
My priorities revolve around strengthening the integrity of rotating equipment, optimizing maintenance strategies, and embedding predictive and proactive reliability practices. I work closely with multidisciplinary teams to translate data from condition monitoring and inspections into actionable insights that enhance uptime, reduce lifecycle costs, and improve asset performance within a complex operational environment.
What are some of the key challenges you run into?
One of the primary challenges involves harmonising operational availability with scheduled maintenance periods. In environments that operate continuously, such as airports, the tolerance for downtime is exceptionally minimal. Furthermore, the varying duty cycles of equipment and diverse environmental conditions introduce an element of unpredictability into degradation models. Another significant challenge is effectively connecting data with decision-making, ensuring that insights derived from condition monitoring, lubrication analysis, and inspection data are consistently integrated and acted upon. Lastly, cultivating the next generation of skilled maintenance professionals capable of interpreting advanced diagnostic technologies continues to be an important objective.
What technologies (IoT sensors, digital twins, condition monitoring, AI) are you deploying or exploring at Dubai Airports to raise reliability?
We’re actively advancing the digitalization of reliability through several initiatives. These include deploying IoT-based vibration and lubrication sensors for real-time condition monitoring of critical rotating assets.
We are also exploring the integration of digital twins to model equipment behavior and simulate degradation scenarios, allowing us to optimize maintenance schedules before failures occur. AI-driven analytics are being piloted to correlate lubricant quality parameters with asset health, helping us move further from predictive toward prescriptive maintenance.
Ultimately, the aim is to build a closed-loop reliability ecosystem — where data, diagnostics, and decisions are seamlessly connected.
Events like Lubricant Expo Middle East are vital because they create a bridge between technology developers, end-users, and reliability professionals. Lubrication remains one of the most under-appreciated yet impactful aspects of asset reliability.
If you had no constraints, what changes or innovations would you introduce to reimagine asset reliability & systems for an airport like DXB in 2035?
If constraints were lifted, I’d reimagine airport reliability as a fully autonomous ecosystem — where every asset, from baggage conveyors to HVAC systems and airfield ground support equipment, continuously communicates its health status through embedded sensors.
A central AI reliability hub would integrate this data with digital twins to predict system-wide performance, automatically trigger maintenance workflows, and order spares via connected supply chains. Lubrication management would become entirely condition-driven — smart lubricants with self-reporting properties could indicate contamination or viscosity shifts in real time.
Essentially, by 2035, the goal would be to transition from human-reactive maintenance to autonomous reliability orchestration.
Why are events like Lubricant Expo Middle East important for your industry?
Events like Lubricant Expo Middle East are vital because they create a bridge between technology developers, end-users, and reliability professionals. Lubrication remains one of the most under-appreciated yet impactful aspects of asset reliability.
These platforms allow us to exchange field experiences, explore new lubricant technologies and additive chemistries, and understand how digital tools are transforming lubrication management from a maintenance task into a strategic reliability lever.
For an ecosystem as asset-intensive and operationally critical as aviation, this kind of collaboration and knowledge sharing directly contributes to safer, more efficient, and sustainable operations.
Don’t miss the opportunity to hear from Andrew Bryan on stage at the Lubricant Expo Middle East, where he will speak in the session: Optimizing Equipment Reliability With Lubrication Management, on Tuesday 20 January at 2:50pm – 4:05pm.
