Something is going on here. I can't quite figure out if it's a growing appreciation of building maintenance and the trades or if it's just a series of nice coincidences. Whatever it is, it's worth a closer look.
A comment from myFacilitiesnet member ieqwoman on one of my previous blogs leads me to note several recent events related to the maintenance management profession. The events aren't directly linked, but they all seem to point in the same direction about the way organizations and the general public think of — and support — maintenance and engineering. The events:
• Maintain to Sustain. ieqwoman noted the comments of William A. Harrison, ASHRAE's president. Among his points is that organizations will not be able to deliver on the promise of sustainable facilities without considering the long-term maintenance and operation of a facility during the planning and design phases. One quote from Harrison: "We are introducing new and innovative sustainable products and systems every week. We must accept the task of educating the people who operate these sophisticated systems in the technical fundamentals that will enable them to make good decisions." You can read his comments here.
• Maintenance and ARRA. The enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) signals a change. Public discussions of ways to address K-12 deferred maintenance were rare before the end of 2008. And the general public rarely gave much thought to the benefits energy efficiency in institutional and commercial buildings. The ARRA put money where those discussions should have been, and it threw a national spotlight on the national benefits of properly maintaining schools.
• Trades Talk. I attended an event in January that featured lots of discussion about the need to re-establish the building trades as a viable career option — not a Plan B or C — for a new generation of workers. Mike Lowe, host of "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel, spoke to the attendees of the national meeting for Grainger, the MRO supply company. Rowe and Grainger have teamed up to raise the public's awareness of and appreciation of maintenance. Rowe also had launched www.mikeroweworks.com to deliver that message.
As I said, something is going on here.
But maybe it's less important to figure out exactly what it is than to figure out how to keep it going and build on whatever momentum we have going.
Maintenance seems to get left behind in the excitement of new technologies. My fear is the construction of a new infrastructure designed to handle the load of our current inefficiencies. Imagine getting a "green" award for building the largest wind turbine in the county attached to a 60% optimized building. I think it is happening.
I have a process to optimize buildings that I started using around 1984. I am happy to share it. Thank you, Bernie
Link: www.dailyoperations.us/coaching1.htm
Hi Bernie,
My name is Stephen Kleva, president and CEO of Insparisk, a national safety inspection company. We manage safety inspection for boilers, elevators, fire detection/suppression systems, building facades, HVAC equipment, and electrical panels. Our subsidiary City Spec, Inc. is the leading provider of inspections on low-pressure boilers within NYC.
I can offer our perspective on the importance of maintenance as they relates to mandated and voluntary inspection of building systems and equipment. In our experience in working in New York City for more than a decade, it is not uncommon for facility managers not to know which inspections are mandated, how frequently they must be performed or when they are due. This is one of the reasons NYC boiler inspection laws recently got stricter.
We have found several common causes and issues: 1) the laws pertaining to buildings and equipment can be very cumbersome, if not overwhelming, as they can be up to hundreds of pages long, 2) Fully understanding or interpreting the laws can be difficult, and 3) job turnover amongst facility managers makes it harder for inspection reminders to reach the right person.
We have found that technology can help track and manage information on inspections and preventative maintenance activities, which leads to data and information that is more easily accessible and more visible and can more easily support decision making. Inspection- and maintenance-related documents and information can be easily archived and located, significantly reducing incidents of misfiled or lost documents.
A wide variety of applications and functionality is available at many price points today. Applications enable facility managers to better manage and verify their maintenance activities including repairs, routine inspections, and preventive maintenance and report them to other stakeholders.
Significantly, insurance companies, property owners and real estate managers benefit from a comprehensive electronic record of safety inspection and maintenance activities. If liability questions arise, electronic records enable audit trails and accountability that help decision makers/an organization defend itself by showing that all required maintenance was performed in accordance with manufacturer's specifications, legal requirements and on schedule.
Maintenance activities can easily be prompted, email reminders automatically sent to ensure that maintenance is performed according to schedule, management can monitor the status of activities, and communication amongst all relevant stakeholders is facilitated.
Hope our perspective helps. Let me know if you have any follow up questions.
I think that if some of these youngsters get introduced to all the technologies that are really beginning to catch on in the mechanical and electrical fields, that would be a powerful message. Its like the automotive repair industry. Working on today's cars is really a high-tech job. Moderm building maintenance encompasses a lot of cutting edge technology.