John. Answer is Yes.
Solution = Trust approved system + plenty of evidence to justify decision
Good example is Physiotherapy. They like to adhere to their professional association recommendations (which unfortunatley have not moved too much with the times to reflect the technological advances in the last twenty years)
This is where a good risk system (databased) will come into its own. You can justify the basline scoring because it empirical/widely used + accepted/part of nationel directives etc.
You can then use your own evidence (ie we have performance/safety checked your 'xyz model interferentials twice/year for the last x years and have not found any to be out of spec/require adjustment. Our (Trust approved) risk system indicates that such testing is not warranted for the risks and dependencies involved)
ie under such a scenario, we would Modify the maintenance element of the risk scoring to reflect this 'reality'. It may show that I should lengthen inspection periods/eliminate altogether.
If you have the necessary authority (Trust approval for your system) AND the evidence, it is my experience that most managers accept the logic/rationale (and would if needed justify it to their own associations).
This does not mean that you can rest on your laurels once you succeed in modifying particular elements of your maintenance programme. On the contrary, your reporting systems then need to become more sensitive to failure modes (ie if you have lengthened PV frequency, or eliminated altogether). Are you subsequently seeing fault calls/failures that you could attribute to such action?
More KPI's for you to measure.
