ISO 14224:2006 provides a comprehensive basis for the collection of reliability and maintenance (RM) data in a standard format for equipment in all facilities and operations within the petroleum, natural gas and petrochemical industries during the operational life cycle of equipment. It describes data-collection principles and associated terms and definitions that constitute a "reliability language" that can be useful for communicating operational experience. The failure modes defined in ISO 14224:2006 can be used as a "reliability thesaurus" for various quantitative as well as qualitative applications. ISO 14224:2006 also describes data quality control and assurance practices to provide guidance for the user.

Standardization of data-collection practices facilitates the exchange of information between parties, e.g. plants, owners, manufacturers and contractors. ISO 14224:2006 establishes requirements that any in-house or commercially available RM data system is required to meet when designed for RM data exchange. Examples, guidelines and principles for the exchange and merging of such RM data are addressed.

ISO 14224:2006 recommends a minimum amount of data that is required to be collected and focuses on the two main issues: data requirements for the type of data to be collected for use in various analysis methodologies and standardized data format to facilitate the exchange of reliability and maintenance data between plants, owners, manufacturers and contractors.

The following main categories of data are to be collected: equipment data, e.g. equipment taxonomy, equipment attributes; failure data, e.g. failure cause, failure consequence; maintenance data, e.g. maintenance action, resources used, maintenance consequence, down time.

ISO 14224:2006 does not apply to data on (direct) cost issues; data from laboratory testing and manufacturing (e.g. accelerated lifetime testing); complete equipment data sheets (only data seen relevant for assessing the reliability performance are included); additional on-service data that an operator, on an individual basis, can consider useful for operation and maintenance; and methods for analysing and applying RM data (however, principles for how to calculate some basic reliability and maintenance parameters are included).