In today’s environment, organizations face mounting challenges to reconcile economic efficiency with ecological responsibility and social sustainability. Upgrade Engineering offers a promising alternative to traditional maintenance strategies by combining technical upgrades with broader organizational and strategic sustainability goals. Through a qualitative and exploratory research design that includes in-depth expert interviews across various industrial sectors and a systematic literature review, a lifecycle-based information model was developed. This model describes the information and data needs from the planning stage through construction, usage, and improvement phases. The findings reveal that adopting an integrated data infrastructure that captures both quantitative sensor readings and qualitative expert feedback is essential for effective decision-making and continuous improvement. The study concludes with practical recommendations and emphasizes the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration. Future research should further investigate the interrelationships between the information collected in the plant life cycle phases and the technical, economic, and social dimensions of Upgrade Engineering in order to be able to steer upgrade decisions even more effectively.