At corporate level, this does not generate more turnover, but it does significantly reduce costs, which is another way of creating value. Safety, health, and environment An increasingly important value driver for maintenance is safety, health, and environment (SHE) in VDM terminology. Compliance with legal directives covering SHE creates value in two ways. Firstly, it avoids the imposition of government penalties for breaches of legislation. Secondly, a good SHE policy has a positive effect on retention of the License to Operate. This is something else that has value, because it increases the likelihood of future cash flows actually materializing. Without a License to Operate, there will be no future cash flows and thus no value. Problem here is that it does not take the other error type into account (related to a lower false safety trip rate, but higher accident rate). It is very controversial to put a value on human life and therefore this VDM theory is just like the ALARP logic dangerous to use and might not be accepted by all legislation world-wide (specially in the US). The importance of the SHE value driver becomes apparent when looking at the recent incident with the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico; the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Poor maintenance is believed to be the cause of one of the biggest oil spills in history, causing massive damage to the environment. Total accumulated consequence costs (both clean-up costs and loss of company value) are estimated on 12 billion. Cost control Even though maintenance is not a cost center in itself, it does gobble up a lot of money. The maintenance budget consists mainly of wage and training costs of technicians, managers and indirect personnel, the costs of spare parts and tools and the costs of contracted personnel and outsourced work. Savings on the maintenance budget automatically generate free cash flows in the future and, by consequence, value. The savings are achievable by having a smarter Preventive maintenance program, higher technician productivity, lower procurement prices for materials and services and the right ratio of the number of technicians, managers and indirect personnel. Controlling maintenance costs is called "Cost Control" in VDM. Resource allocation Finally, maintenance can create value through the smarter management of resources. This is called "Resource Allocation" in VDM. It is not about the consumption of resources, because that is already covered in the Cost Control value driver.