"Preventive maintenance", along with "capital renewal," are fundamental strategies for facility management. But what exactly are you preventing? The common answer is failure. But how do you define "failure?":
- Lights-out, dead-stop, send everyone home and close the doors catastrophe?
- Roof leak in server room, computers ruined, data lost?
- Inefficient operation?
- Incorrect use?
- Inconvenience?
How you define failure determines the level, focus, and costs of maintenance processes. The facility manager should not only prevent failure but also anticipate user demands, system stress, technology limits, and varying conditions of use. Perhaps a more appropriate term to use is "pre-emptive maintenance." Timely and correct maintenance is an investment that extends asset life and creates the option to incur capital expenditure at the last gasp of assets' operational effectiveness, when they are completely work or woefully inadequate or hopelessly obsolete.
Facility condition assessments (and energy studies) provide a baseline profile of the current state for setting both maintenance standards and prioirities. We have defined four tiers of condition assessments, ranging from a basic technical review to a comprehensive program. Each tier has a specific scope of work, a specific work product or solution, and costs. For more information, contact us (Garry Brinton, gbrinton@facplan.com).
