ENERGY SAVING EQUIPMENT Rescue planning
From externally fitted pre-filtration media to effective maintenance and refurbishment activities, John Grenville, managing director of ECEX examines the main measures and supporting equipment that can boost the efficiency of HVAC plant.
T
he law of diminishing returns dictates that a building’s energy saving capacity will fall over time unless the structure and its services are properly maintained. In normal times, this is not an issue – most facilities managers have in place a system of preventive and/or predictive maintenance to support their properties.
But the arrival of Covid-19 caused significant
disruption to the maintenance sector with building owners and occupiers regularly struggling to manage and maintain unoccupied properties. This has complicated the building maintenance process and, as a result, this vital function has frequently been neglected. Property consultancy Cluttons says that one of the challenges posed by the pandemic was a widespread lack of availability of materials, and initial uncertainty over whether construction sites could even remain open. “This,” it adds, “often led to significant delays to scheduled site visits or for remedial work to be undertaken. Most contractors continued to respond to emergencies, but costs increased.
22 January 2022 •
www.acr-news.com
Social distancing restricted workers’ access to buildings, adding to costs and lengthening timescales.”
Now, however, the signs are that we are
emerging from the worst effects of the virus, and it is time to reassess the situation, particularly in view of the pressing need for better energy conservation to reduce greenhouse emissions and fight climate change. A key element in any well-implemented
building maintenance strategy is safeguarding the efficiency of HVAC plant and this essentially involves five steps: Q Implement an audit to determine where your customer is now in terms of HVAC maintenance.
Q Discuss and decide with the customer what they want their maintenance strategy to achieve.
Q Plan how to get there. Q Implement the plan. Q Return to step one to complete the continuous improvement cycle.
So, maintenance begins with a diagnostic – basically, an appraisal of current maintenance
activities – followed by a broad-brush initial assessment to identify areas for improvement, then a detailed justification of individual projects selecting specific methods to achieve overall business objectives. This last point is critical – your customer’s
maintenance strategy can’t operate in isolation; it must be firmly rooted in their business plan. As for specific maintenance tasks, a good place
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