Dr. Nicholas Anthony John Hastings has worked for over 45 years in the field of engineering asset management. His early career was in the British Army, where he attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the University of Cambridge and served in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. He worked initially in maintenance management and later in asset management policy, focussing on planning for the on-going sustainment of equipment fleets, through repair/replace decision making and related logistic issues.
In 1994 he took up the Mount Isa Mines Chair in Maintenance Engineering at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He subsequently worked on asset related projects in mining, electricity supply, water supply, gas extraction and processing and defence. Following his retirement from full time university work, he was awarded the Medal of the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia for contributions to reliability and engineering asset management. In 2009 he was an expert witness on asset management issues for the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission into the Black Saturday bushfires, Australia's worst bushfire disaster.
He is a director of Albany Interactive Pty. Ltd., a consultancy firm in engineering asset management and is an external lecturer in Asset Management Systems at Central Queensland University.