Mohamed Chihaoui
IBM · Asset Lifecycle Management

Mohamed Chihaoui

Customer Success Engineer at IBM · Riyadh · Middle East & Africa

I help enterprises and government organisations get real value from IBM Maximo Application Suite, Maximo Real Estate & Facilities and IBM Envizi. My focus is AI-enabled asset management: predictive maintenance, condition monitoring and anomaly-driven work automation that turn sensor and operational data into executed maintenance.

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14+years with IBM Maximo
4regions: Middle East, North Africa, Europe, North America
16IBM certifications and badges
3languages: Arabic, English, French

At IBM

Customer Success Engineer, Asset Lifecycle Management

Since March 2024 I have owned the technical relationship across IBM's Asset Lifecycle Management portfolio for enterprise and government accounts in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East & Africa region. That covers solution design, technical pre-sales, partner enablement, adoption and expansion.

  • AI and IoT alarm-to-ticket for a national electricity utility. End-to-end architecture that turns device telemetry into executed maintenance: event streaming → asset monitoring → work management → field mobile. Delivered with IBM Expert Labs and a global systems integrator.
  • 531-requirement reliability programme. Led the technical qualification and capability positioning for asset reliability and performance management at the same utility.
  • Reference win at a leading Saudi bank. AI-led positioning and proposal for MAS Manage and Mobile, integrated with ATM monitoring, BMS, core financial systems and ITSM.
  • Mega-scale international airport. EAM fit-sizing and solution design across construction, real estate and aviation operations, with sustainability and emissions reporting.
  • MAS SaaS migration framework. Discovery instruments, deviation schedules and sizing models for a major real estate developer moving to MAS SaaS.
  • Regional strategy. Entitlement analysis across more than 100 Saudi Maximo customers to target cloud conversions, plus the regional go-to-market technical framework for the ALM portfolio.
Maximo Application SuiteMaximo Health & PredictMaximo Monitor Visual InspectionMaximo AI ServiceMREF / TRIRIGA IBM EnviziwatsonxRed Hat OpenShift

Expertise

From platform engineering to AI-driven maintenance

AI & predictive asset managementPredictive maintenance, asset health, RCM, anomaly-to-work-order automation, Maximo Predict / Health / Monitor / Visual Inspection, watsonx with MAS.
Connected asset operationsIoT and condition-based maintenance, event streaming, alarm-to-ticket, SCADA and BMS integration, mobile field execution.
Enterprise asset managementMAS Manage and Mobile, Maximo 7.6 industry solutions (Transportation, Service Provider, HSE), MREF / TRIRIGA, Envizi, MRO Inventory Optimization.
Integration & custom engineeringMaximo Integration Framework, REST / OSLC, Maximo Enterprise Adapter for SAP, Oracle EBS, Java MBO customisation, automation scripting, BIRT and Cognos.
Platform & cloudMAS on Red Hat OpenShift, WebSphere, DB2, Oracle and SQL Server, clustering and upgrades, SaaS and on-premises, AppPoints sizing.
Technical sales & customer successFit-sizing, technical qualification, RFP / RFI response, discovery workshops, demonstrations, executive briefings, partner enablement.

Experience

Fourteen years delivering Maximo at scale

Customer Success Engineer, Asset Lifecycle Management

IBM · Riyadh · March 2024 to present

Technical owner for MAS, MREF and Envizi across Middle East & Africa: solution design, pre-sales, partner enablement and adoption.

IT Development Manager

SNC-Lavalin / AtkinsRéalis · Riyadh Metro (Royal Commission for Riyadh City) · 2021 to 2024

Consultancy lead for the CMMS function on the Riyadh Metro programme, about 2,000 users: Maximo readiness and technical database handover from construction to operations and maintenance.

Senior Technical Consultant

eSolutions MEA · Riyadh · 2016 to 2021

Technical lead across Maximo, TRIRIGA and Control Desk implementations in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, covering architecture, development teams, integration with SAP, Oracle, BMS and SCADA, and pre-sales.

KAFD · Saudi Railways · KAUST · National Housing Company · Arabian Castles · Central Electricity Generating Co. (Jordan) · Vinnell Arabia · Riyadh Airports · King Fahad Medical City and more

IBM Maximo Consultant

Smartech · Tunis · 2012 to 2016

Maximo implementation, J2EE customisation and integration for European and North American clients.

Dalkia (EDF Group) · Bell Canada · Lafarge · Faurecia · Northland Power · Port de Montréal and more

Blog posts · IBM Community

Hands-on guides, built on live systems

Each post walks through a real IBM product on a running system, with real screens and data. All of them are published on my IBM Community blog.

Maximo AI

Maximo AI Service, end to endWhat it is, how it runs on OpenShift, and how to use it Give the Maximo Assistant a tool of your ownAn automation script, published through MCP, that runs SQL queries Start a Maximo workflow from the AssistantA workflow process published as an MCP tool

Maximo Health, Predict & integration

Fix, replace or wait?Maximo Health and Predict, set up and explained Maximo Predict, one full exampleFrom a Jupyter notebook to a predicted failure date Maximo integration: from sensor readings to work ordersUnderstanding MIF, JMS, Kafka and MQTT

Maximo Real Estate & Facilities

One building, both sides of the leaseLease administration Half-empty floors, full rentSpace planning From building condition to a funded projectCapital planning Renew, move, buy or sell?Portfolio transactions Maintenance in MREFOne cold room, three people, and the plan behind the routine Reporting in MREFOne tool for lists, reports and charts Reading and writing MREF workflowsHow a record makes things happen Your first MREF appA Key Register from scratch Getting data in and out of MREFData Integrator, Integration Objects, DataConnect and OSLC The MREF Class LoaderYour own code and pages, without rebuilding The MREF Admin Console, page by pageA guide for Maximo people

Sustainability

IBM Envizi in six use casesFrom a gas bill to a reduction plan

MAS Control Room

My own lab for IBM Maximo

One console for a whole Maximo lab

The Control Room is the platform I built to run my lab. It installs and operates IBM Maximo Application Suite on Red Hat OpenShift and on local pods, with backup and restore, "gold" database tracks that bring up Manage or MREF unattended, and per-instance Db2, Oracle and SQL Server. It also runs Real Estate & Facilities, AI Service, Monitor, Health and Predict, plus BI (Grafana, Superset, BIRT), sizing and architecture tools, and a Cloudflare tunnel that publishes each environment on its own maximo.me.uk address.

Every demo and blog post was built and captured there, and I use it to run proofs of concept for customers.

Open the Control Room (sign-in required)
  • InstallFull MAS suite, step by step, on OpenShift
  • Gold tracksManage in about 1h40 and MREF in about 44 min, unattended
  • OperatePods, images, logs, backups and restores, verify audit
  • DemoLive proofs of concept for customers and partners

Certifications & education

Certified across the IBM asset and AI portfolio

Professional certifications

  • IBM Certified Infrastructure Deployment Professional, Maximo Asset Management V7.6 (2020)
  • IBM Certified Associate, Maximo Asset Management V7.5 (2013)

Asset lifecycle management

  • Maximo EAM to Manage Upgrade, Technical Sales Advanced (2025)
  • Maximo Application Suite, Technical Sales Intermediate (2025)
  • MAS and RHOCP Deployment Technical Essentials (2024)
  • MRO Inventory Optimization, Technical Sales Intermediate (2025)
  • Maximo Real Estate and Facilities and TRIRIGA, Sales Foundation (2025)

AI & sustainability

  • Maximo Visual Inspection, Technical Sales Intermediate (2024)
  • IBM watsonx Essentials (2024)
  • watsonx.governance, Technical Sales Intermediate (2024)
  • watsonx Orchestrate, Sales Foundation (2024)
  • IBM Envizi, Technical Sales Intermediate (2025)
  • IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite, Technical Sales Intermediate (2025)

Education

  • National Engineering Degree (Software Engineering & Information Systems), ISI, Université de Tunis El Manar
  • Maîtrise, Applied Computer Science in Management, ISG Tunis

Contact

Let's talk

If you are planning, upgrading or getting more from IBM Maximo, or want to explore AI for your assets, I'm happy to hear from you. That includes companies, partners and anyone with an opportunity to discuss.

MAS implementation & upgradeAI & predictive maintenance Maximo Real Estate & FacilitiesProofs of concept & demos Partner enablementSpeaking & workshopsCareer opportunities
Email me Connect on LinkedIn

Based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia · Arabic, English and French