Ongoing preventative maintenance procedures should be part of the business plan of large facilities, particularly those where the safety of the public is at stake, says Adriaan Scheeres, CEO of asset maintenance management specialist PRAGMA.
A recent television expos'e on Gold Reef City`s maintenance procedures illustrated an approach to maintenance that is not uncommon in industry: running equipment to failure rather than implementing a properly designed maintenance strategy consisting of a combination of asset-specific maintenance tactics.
"Research has shown that a reactive rather than proactive approach to maintenance is about three times more expensive in the long-term. But money aside, when people`s lives are at stake, there can be no compromise on safety," says Scheeres.
The Occupational Health & Safety Act of 2003 holds the owner of any structure or facility responsible to maintain its original safety status and to have it assessed annually.
Scheeres says regular condition assessment plays a vital role in facilities management - without it the risk of undermining the long-term sustainability of a facility and its assets is substantially increased. Assessing the condition of a facility plays a crucial role in maximising the lifecycle of its assets and the longevity of the facility itself.
An in-depth knowledge of the assets of a facility is invaluable to management, enabling them to work from an accurate, detailed knowledge base for precise benchmarking, short- and long-term financial forecasting and the identification and evaluation of trends for future asset maintenance planning.
The benefits of ongoing condition assessment have long been enjoyed across industries, from large mining houses to small manufacturing concerns. Technology, however, has transformed the scope of facilities management with the integration of electronic condition assessment and mobile data capturing technology for asset management.
The seamless integration of asset data captured on-site into a central asset management system removes the grind associated with the traditional style of condition assessment, which involved manual recording and data capture, which is cumbersome, time-consuming and leaves room for error. Once this information was captured it typically lacked the integrated platform required to optimise its business value. Integrated condition assessment, however, uses this information for effective financial planning and budgeting, optimised resource and contractor management and asset lifecycle management. These savings have a direct reflection on the bottom line.
Condition assessment needs to be fully integrated into a comprehensive asset management solution to provide a complete view of facilities management.
Traditional asset management on its own is too reactive an approach for facilities striving to match international best-practice standards. Integrated condition assessment, however, provides the ability to be proactive with a facilities management strategy.
Electronic condition assessment tools communicate with remote data loggers and barcode scanners to download collected information. This data is then collated into an asset tree for field users. Customisable values and conditions can be configured on the data loggers as different fields, guiding data collectors to ensure fast, accurate data entry for consistent quality and to remove subjectivity from the evaluation process during condition assessments.
An integrated solution runs seamlessly from field data collection points through to reporting stage for easy identification and rectification of failure root causes and for enhanced knowledge sharing.
Integrated condition assessment enables facilities management companies to achieve improved efficiencies. Savings realised through efficient planning and management can then be passed directly on to the facilities owner, together with the benefits of extended lifecycle of the assets.