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View the complete Preventive Maintenance Webinar Microsite!
Supercharge Your Preventive Maintenance
Sarah Fisher: Marketing Communications Director at Building Engines
Tony Shaker: Founder & CEO of ENfinity Partners
Sarah: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today for our Real Estate Operations Masters Series. Today’s topic is one that we’ve have been hearing a lot about in the current economic climate: Best Practices for a Preventive Maintenance Program. I think we can all agree that a comprehensive PM program is a fundamental part of building management, and more importantly preserving NOI.
According to a study by Jones Lang Lasalle, an organization that adheres to a structured preventive maintenance program will experience a 545% return over time. Sounds great in theory, but the problem is, most organizations either don't know how to get started, are using an outdated system of pm that relies on engineers thumbing through maintenance catalogs, or are relying more on breakdown maintenance than proactive maintenance. The excuse is usually either lack of time or lack of money. But as Tony Shaker is going to speak to, with a little effort up front you can establish a proactive culture of maintenance that will actually save time and money.
My name is Sarah Fisher, Marketing Communications Director at Building Engines, and we are sponsoring today’s presentation. This Webinar is part of a regularly scheduled thought leadership series where we look to contribute to the markets we work in by presenting expert content from industry leaders on a variety of important building and facilities operations topics, at no charge to you.
We are pleased and fortunate to have with us as today’s guest presenter, Tony Shaker, Founder & CEO of ENfinity Partners.Tony Shaker has been in the facility services business for a bit over 35 years, with significant experience in commercial retail, government, higher educational institutional facilities throughout North America. he owned his own company, which he started based on PM and energy. Today, after selling those companies, he has opened up a new company- a boutique energy firm that takes into account issues of energy as well as preventative maintenance as it relates to energy consumption in buildings.
Sarah: Tony, as we look at the topic of preventative maintenance, where should we start?
TONY: OK, I think probably at the highest level, I would comment that PM, while considered to be fairly fundamental, isn't clearly understood. The comment that I would make to that point is you need to ask yourself, do I understand what I'm doing, not just doing it? Or in other words, what are we trying to accomplish?
To this point, when you're looking to conducting preventative maintenance on the assets within your facility, we're doing it for two basic reasons. We're doing it to prevent failures and we're doing it to maintain or even extend the asset's lifecycle. Meaning that we've got significant dollars invested in the facility itself, and we're looking to maintain the estimated lifecycle of that equipment.
TONY: There are five basic components of a PM program: a comprehensive job plan or task list for each asset; an annual master plan with estimated labor and material components; an inventory of emergency spare parts; tools and equipment to accomplish the PM tasks; most importantly, trained technicians to perform the assigned work in a professional and safe manner.
1. TASK LIST
When I refer to a comprehensive job plan, I'm referring to not just a checklist but a group of tasks that indicate what the condition of the equipment is, and measuring it against that, such as having pressure range scales. On pumps, as another example, or pressure drop across the filter bank, or a coil. So those are things that really tell us what we're doing. In addition to the checklist, we're looking for some very strategic components to determine how well the equipment is truly performing.
2. MASTER PLAN
Another point is having an annual or a master plan with estimated labor and material components to accomplish the work. Many people argue that I am too busy to do the preventative maintenance. However, it should be routine and understood, meaning that when you develop the annual plan, you have an estimated labor component. That way, you can judge the amount of work your staff is doing or needs to do during the course of the year, in addition to what I'll refer to as unscheduled maintenance, or unscheduled work orders that come in from the tenants within the facility.
3. PARTS INVENTORY
Another point is, in order to conduct the PM properly, is to have an adequate inventory of parts. In particular, emergency spare parts. Emergency spare parts should be inventoried, part of the program, and only for those areas that would be considered emergencies, such as data center equipment or whatever is required within that particular building to keep the building going so it's productive for the company.
4. TOOLS & EQUIPMENT
Another point, and I see this all the time, is truly having the tools and equipment to accomplish the task. If you have the tools, they can be put in carts, they can be put in kits, or other configurations that allow the technician to do the work properly.
5. TRAINING & DOCUMENTATION
Lastly, and I think this is extremely important, is trained technicians that perform the assigned work in a professional and safe manner. Meaning that these technicians, whether they are trained on day one or not, they could be led around by a senior individual, explaining to the individual how to perform the work. Or there is plenty of off-site or on-site training programs that are available to companies to train the technicians to do the work in a workman-like manner.
So with those five components, what we really said is we're taking care of the assets within the building so that we do not have failures, or reduce failures, in maintaining the lifecycle of the equipment.
Sarah: Why aren't people doing this today in general?
TONY: I think there are several reasons, that people do not do PM work. The first, and the one that I hear most, is we don't have time. That adage really can't be supported. The idea of not having time means that you're doing something else. And my suspicion is you have so many unscheduled work orders to accomplish, you do not do the PM. The unscheduled work orders are probably equipment failures, or in many cases, are equipment failures. And if you did the work, did the PM, you would not have those failures. So the argument of not having enough time really isn't supported very well.
The second reason is PM costs money. And my argument is, yes, it does, but the money is well-spent, meaning that you are maintaining the asset, so you have less equipment downtime, which ensures the productivity of the facility. The third -- and this is the one that probably has some good reason to it -- is I don't have the labor to accomplish the work. My argument is, if you do the annual master plan, it will make a determination how much labor you do need and when that labor is needed. With that, you have a strategic argument either to ask for more labor from your superior or rearrange your staff so that the functions in the preventative maintenance program are in fact accomplished on time.
Sarah: Tony, who typically is responsible for defining the program and goals?
TONY: Generally speaking, it would be the facility management people. But in many cases, they don't think about a program. They think about something that came across their desk, or something they picked up in a training session, or something they learned from their peers. My argument is that doesn't get you to where you go. You need to sit back and analyze where I am today. Simply done, it's to profile the use of your energy using your monthly bills over a 12-month period. Certainly profile them for usage, profile them for demand, or you could profile them for cost. Once you know where you are, you might want to consider -- and this is what I support -- benchmarking where you are against industry standards. Industry standards are readily available for any number of facility management organizations. If you recognize that I am performing or using energy at a higher level than the benchmarks would indicate, that's when you should absolutely take a good, strong look at what is going on in my building, how is it being operated, what's the condition of the equipment, how am I buying my power? And answering the question, should I be doing this, should I be doing that? Again, with in mind, you have a goal to reach, and that goal could be over a year, could be over several years. All depends on what the issues are, what they're going to cost, what the ROI is, and what the management of the facility will allow you to do. All of those are components that you need to take into consideration.
Sarah: Now, what I'd like to do if we could is connect how important it is to be able to go online to the manufacturer with a broader theme of coming back into all of the supporting elements to your ideas around a PM program -- having the task list online, having the master plan and documentation online, having the parts inventory. And then I think the other thing that we're starting to see, which you could speak to, perhaps, is mobility and the trend to outfit people with mobile devices.
TONY: It's customary for people in the facilities business to have rows of catalogs within their office or within their workshops so they can refer to them. Quite often, those catalogs are not updated because the representative of that particular company doesn't feel that he has the time or can or will come in and update the equipment that you have there, or the data for the equipment you have there. By providing a link on the tasking sheet to the manufacturer is easily done. It's nothing more than their web address. With their web address, you can recognize, what work needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and you can also order parts or contact the manufacturer with specific issues that you might have that are on those three components.
TONY: When we talk about the components of a PM program, it certainly goes beyond the issue of a task list or a job plan. Certainly we should have an equipment history. Not only does it say that we've done the work, but it also says if there's any corrective work done on that asset or group of assets, that there's a history of it, so it's reflected next time I do my PM. The next piece of it is really having an inventory by asset of the materials that you believe are required to do that work properly. There's ways of doing this that would yield a task list or the three components that I've just mentioned to you on a desktop or a laptop computer, if that is what appeals to you. Or if you had mobile devices that would give you the same information, you could conduct it and send the information -- conduct the PM and then send the information back to the database to update the database that the work was either done or changed the inventory, or even if I've done some corrective work.
One of the advantages of having a mobile device to do this is, first of all, you have a record that's not a paper document. That document will in fact update everything within the system. Two, it will tell you that you have an order or a work order to do a specific amount of work or type of work, which in fact updates it. And you don't need to come back to the office, or the workshop, to be given another work order. You can clearly do the work and be more efficient by doing one job, then simply going to another job without having to come back to the office. The other piece of it, with the link on your mobile device, you can contact or download information from the manufacturer, for one. And two, there should be a list of parts and tools that you will be required to do the work efficiently. And that, too, should be on the screen of your mobile device. In my view and in my experience, this is happening all the time now in efficient preventative maintenance facilities. The technicians are trained to operate their mobile device -- and actually see the view of being able to do a job more efficiently by having a mobile device as opposed to coming back and picking up a piece of paper, checking it off, and returning it to the office. So we go beyond the task list but we have more information, we complete the work more efficiently, and we've updated all of our records to pore through what we've done automatically through the mobile device.
Sarah: It seems a major trend today is from period and sequential sets of activity to real time actions. How are you seeing this trend?
TONY: Well, I think the key word here is "real time," meaning that when you pick up that mobile handheld, or in fact if you're using a desktop or a laptop, you punch in an address and you have access to an enormous amount of information. The information that performed the task. You find out what the equipment history is, so you can provide budgets if you need to be. You'll know it's an inventory, if I need to do the work. So the business itself is not, let's say, archaic, but very advanced, especially for sophisticated systems that require you to do more sophisticated work in a shorter period of time.
To be more efficient, you really need an integrated program to conduct preventative maintenance. The efficiency has come because I've got several databases that I can reach into for information. The databases are automatically updated when I do work. And so that all helps the technician to get the work done, as opposed to poring over catalogs or calling up vendor or trying to make decisions that he shouldn't be making, or seeking a professional response or a good technical response, before making adjustments that are outside the scope of his work.
Sarah: Tony, let's talk a little bit about training. Training can be a daunting topic to companies. One, do I have the people that can do the training? The knowledge to do the training. Two, when do I have the time? And three, if I train somebody, does it stick?
TONY: I'm going to come back and talk about those five components, or certainly one of them, and that's train technicians to perform the assigned work. While many people believe that training is an expense that we can't bear, training is readily available to you today over the internet. One view of it is to put a link into each one of the job plans or task lists that links you up with the manufacturer of the equipment, or that specific piece of equipment. When you do that, you can be online, following directions about how to perform the work, ways to do the work, or, just as importantly, how to order parts for something that may have broken during the course of operation. So training today is readily available.
Another consideration training is -- particularly for group training, small or large -- would be to contact the manufacturer who, in many cases, will come right to your site, perform the technical training in front of you or your group at the piece of equipment that you're specifically looking for training on. This has been going on for years, in particular with building automation systems, heavy equipment, like chillers and boilers. And the same can be done for variables, [B drives?], boxes, pumps, and things of that sort. Training, while considered daunting at times, is very easily accomplished by the methods that I've suggested.
Trained technicians are truly part of a culture that is saying that I don't want to be reactive; I want to plan what I do every day. No different than coming to work every day and going home in the evening. You're scheduled to do it, it makes sense to you, and that's why you do it. The issue of being over-reactive really takes into the issue or the subject of the unscheduled work orders. Those are four things that are outside of the PM program. In essence, we start off with a leadership issue, we start off with a cultural issue, meaning that you need to recognize what we're really trying to accomplish with the PM program. As I mentioned earlier, preventing failures is key. The second one is maintaining or even extending the asset's lifestyle -- is also key. If the leadership understands these two components or subjects, then you will have a planned, well thought-out program of maintenance within the facility.
Sarah: One of the areas that we've talked a lot about is the fact that managing facilities today is more complex than 10-15 years ago, but also the market conditions are impacting the business. Can you speak to this a little?
TONY: I think so. In the first area of systems -- being more sophisticated than they were some years back or even from year to year -- today, we may be performing PM on an electronic board within the control system of a piece of equipment versus going in and greasing and oiling or changing belts. So when we talk about trained technicians, it's critical to understand that systems are advancing and the technicians themselves need to advance and make training available for them to do it. In the area of where we are today, certainly the pressures of today's economy are affecting how well things are done. With a good understanding of equipment, one might consider using a level of predictive maintenance to determine when the maintenance maybe be done. As an example, many people think that changing filters four times a year is very adequate. However, if by simply adding a pressure-drop component to a filter bank, one might recognize that I only need to change the filters twice a year, therefore reducing cost as well as the inventory of materials to do the work.
Sarah: Tony, what we’re really talking about is risk management. How does this fit in to PM considerations?
TONY: I've experienced any number of facilities that believe that breakdown maintenance is the maintenance program that they practice. I'm not a believer in that. First of all, by having an adequate PM program, studies have shown you'll reduce your energy by 10% or more. Two, you're preserving the lifecycle of the equipment, which can be very costly going forward. And two, you're guaranteeing, to some point, the productivity of the environment that that piece of equipment or groups of equipment serve. So the idea of not having a PM program really doesn't make a lot of sense. Within the PM program, if we're looking to reduce risk, it's not just time-based maintenance, but in fact, considering doing predictive maintenance. Predictive maintenance with certain assets examples would be oil testing, effective water treatment, vibration testing. So, when you take those into consideration, you're saying, I am doing these things but I've noticed the degradation of the oil, which will affect the equipment, or water treatment, or even vibration testing on heavy equipment, such as water chillers and big fans and cooling towers, that would suggest that the motor is going out of alignment or the frame is broken or we have bad bearings. Those are the things that can in fact reduce things, even beyond the area of time-based preventative maintenance. My suggestion is, wherever possible, these are the types of things that you should be looking at. In consideration of all of that, you look at your facility -- time-based maintenance is something that is acceptable. But as an example, you may be in a working environment that the conditions are such that the equipment degradates all by itself because, as an example, saltwater. Or, as an example, you're operating more hours than you would normally do in your particular area of the country. So, the idea of looking at things beyond the task sheet, or refining the task sheet to accept those kinds of thoughts, is very important to reduce risk.
Sarah: Tony, let’s get practical. What are the first steps someone can take to get a PM Program started, to make this more than just an educational exercise?
TONY: The foundation of all of this, whether you do your PM manually or it's computerized or you're using software as a service, is you really need a list of all of your equipment and all of the critical components. AC1 is not AC1. AC1 is manufactured by. It's got a coil size. It's got a motor. It's got a motor horsepower. It's operating at a certain voltage. It may require a certain kind of lubricant. Size of belt. What does it serve or those critical areas within your facility that you might consider to be an emergency. So you can make a determination what kind of spare parts I have. So the very beginning is really to collect all of the equipment information. And in my experience, that's what people have the greatest difficulty doing. It's either time or not understanding it. There's alternatives to you doing it. It's by taking someone else -- a provider, as an example -- to come in and collect that equipment. Once that equipment is collected, now you can start building a program of tasks and time-based maintenance, building and predictive maintenance, and making a determination whether you want to be computerized or you want to do it manually. In today's world, to me it makes absolutely no sense to do it manually. With the databases where parts, equipment history, and tasking, having multiple databases, either on a mobile unit or a central station or using software as a service, is truly the better way to perform maintenance in today's more sophisticated world.
TONY: Everybody's heard the story, and people have heard the story before, and in many different ways, but I think the decision that is most important is to say to yourself, strategically, what am I trying to accomplish, not just what am I doing. Again, that should suggest I want to have a comprehensive preventative maintenance program put in place, and that's going to be the foundation of my organization so that I can prevent failures, and, too, maintain the assets to the lifecycle that they were estimated at. If you can follow that rule, you will have accomplished the needs for maintenance within your facility.
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