Thought Piece

Defining Core Values

The Maintainers has come a long way since Andy Russell and I co-founded it on accident, back in 2015. We thought it would be useful to share some reflections on how The Maintainers community has grown, and the values that … More →

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Support for The Maintainers

The Maintainers organization – co-organized by Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel – is pleased to announce that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will be supporting some of its activities. With funding from the Sloan Foundation, we plan to build our … More →

Flipping the Script on How We Talk about Maintenance

In The Maintainers, we continue to be interested in companies working in the maintenance and repair space. Over the last few years, we’ve found a number of interesting young firms that are using digital technologies to transform maintenance practices. Today’s … More →

A Letter to POTUS on Infrastructure

Today, we are excited to republish something originally posted in January 2017 over at the Strong Towns blog, “A Letter to POTUS on Infrastructure,” by Charles Marohn. When we first read Marohn’s letter, we found it both shocking and insightful, … More →

Success as ‘Failure’: Historians, Engineers, and Maintaining the Erie Canal

This week, we have been thinking a great deal about the relationship between infrastructure, maintenance, and natural environments and landscapes. The historian of technology Ann Norton Greene told one of our favorite stories about this nexus at the first Maintainers … More →

The Reliability Challenge: Maintenance in the Broader Context of High Reliabilty Organizations

Today’s blog post is by Paul R. Schulman, a Senior Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management. Paul originally wrote these ideas in response to Andy Russell’s and Lee Vinsel’s New York Times op-ed. We … More →