Preventative maintenance on my building systems seems an essential and critical function to maintain. What's involved and how do you go "straight on" to what needs to be done and when?
Planning is the key. You need to plan and determine your steps by setting up an asset register for preventative maintenance that will:
Set the priority of work based first on the criticality of the assets then
The probability of failure
Determine what the assets support in the way of meeting the Building Codes and Fire/Life & Safety requirements
Establish what building environment is needed to keep the business functioning
Finalize the energy efficiency of your assets
What about your equipment maintenance? Priority for this area is based on the functional purpose of your:
Fire & Life Safety equipment, eyewash stations, heating and cooling systems (to maintain the environment and to regulate the human spaces)
Critical program systems (to ensure the business keeps running)
Environmental controls being optimum to determine if your energy consumption is affected by poor performance
Establishing the base-line requirements needed to estimate costs, and the time to do the work need to be included with each of the activities, for each asset
If a decision has to be made, prioritizing what equipment maintenance can wait may need to occur, or possibly run to failure in some situations.
When all your planning is done, every asset in your asset register that requires preventive maintenance will now have a scheduled and established weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual inspections and maintenance set up, based on the timing of the specific needs of each piece of equipment. This schedule will provide you with a regular routine to be followed by internal and/or external staffing resources. You may have to determine what resources are available related to what staff can do, versus what may have to be contracted, and what budget is available.
Written by:
Robb Dods
Facility Management & Asset Management Advisor
