Golden thread Records of what products were installed, how
they were expected to perform and where they are controlled from should be in the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) manuals. However, they are probably in ringbound folders or some may even be on CD – does anyone still have a working CD player in the office? By now, the emergency probably overtakes the planning, and the fi refi ghters have to go in blind and face much greater risk than they should do.
Heating/cooling failure Ventilation serving clinical areas in a hospital could be life critical. In any event, it could result in substantial fi nes for unavailability, so the facilities manager will want to resolve it as quickly as possible. If the helpdesk is receiving reports that certain spaces are uncomfortably hot, the engineers need to know which systems are supplying cooling to those areas, and to identify whether all the spaces supported by those systems are ‘out’ or if the problem is more localised. Which products might have failed; who manufactured, supplied, and fi tted them; and were they or are they under warranty? However, the maintenance engineer fi nds that the O&M folders have been compiled around work packages and suppliers, so it is difficult to find what he needs because he does not know how it was procured. Even if he finds the right section, the photocopied manufacturer’s literature covers fi ve models, with no indication of which one was used. Having found the schedules, the engineer discovers that they only reference the items on the drawings and not the products in the O&M, so he needs to guess which was used and what a safe replacement might be. Parts, such as the heat exchanger in a fan coil unit, are missing. In the end, the problem gets solved, albeit probably taking longer and costing more
than it should, but does the O&M manual get updated with information about the replacement product, its warranties and lifecycle replacement information, in the context of the system it is now part of and what it is doing? Probably not. Even if the original O&M manual were a
reliable record at completion, over the years the building, systems and assets will have changed sufficiently that, unless the O&M is updated, noone will trust it. Thus, people must rely on memory and surveys.
Reliable baseline
On new builds, because the Health and Safety (H&S)/O&M file is a deliverable for practical completion which noone wants to delay, few contractors or clients conduct a rigorous audit of the content. Things are only found to be missing when they are being looked for – which is generally when the information that is not there is needed. With regard to existing buildings, surveys are undertaken and reports delivered, but the way assets are described and the condition is recorded makes it diffi cult to compare one survey with subsequent ones to record what has changed.
The golden thread
This process can be applied, in either case, by creating an agreed baseline of required asset information at the outset and recording any changes along the way through specifi cation, design, procurement, installation, commissioning, operations and decommissioning. But for it to deliver dependable information, people cannot be relied upon to manually check that the required data is in the documentation and drawings provided. Just as accounting moved
FOCUS
Figure 1
www.frmjournal.com JUNE 2020 37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
