Fluor's Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) engineering model is a technique used to quantify reliability and identify specific means for design enhancement. The technique involves a systems engineering approach, whereby a pre-defined system is broken down into its component parts to determine how each of these, and combinations thereof, affect the whole. In this manner, Fluor's RAM analyst can determine all of the causes of potential outages and evaluate the criticality of each.