FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
PUTTING PLANS INTO ACTION
Putting a successful M&E plan into action means carefully balancing engineering expertise with technology driven proactive and preventative management. At the heart of this must be a highly skilled team of technicians on the ground, who can ensure buildings run to their optimum performance.
This often means applying a flexible approach to building management, ensuring downtime is reduced and supporting the buildings’ everyday operations, while enhancing the maintenance of assets, and reducing energy or meeting carbon reduction targets.
The most effective way to do this is through a proactive approach. For several clients we have delivered remote Building Management System (BMS) analytics paired with our dedicated Technical Operations Centre [TOC] or refocused an existing engineer to be wholly focused on the building and energy performance.
On one project we provided a full-time controls engineer, who worked with the site team Monday to Friday. Their role was to ensure optimum performance of plant on site such as boilers and air handling units, and to constantly review time schedules, meaning no overrun of plant to parts of the building that were not occupied 24/7, leading to substantial energy savings.
For another customer, we put together a programme of proactive digital maintenance to more closely control and monitor central building assets. By doing this we were able to make earlier interventions, helping to save energy, improve asset operation and resolve faults much more quickly.
Not only does this lead to immediate improvements in building performance and service delivery, but this data led focus also helps identify projects where further improvements can be made.
In our own work we have found it useful to keep these responsibilities separate to those of the maintenance teams working on the ground, allowing one team to focus on where savings can be made and another team to focus on delivery, while ensuring a constant dialogue between the two teams.
For one customer this meant employing dedicated BMS analytics which constantly reviewed the status of all connected plant and equipment, raising critical alerts directly to the helpdesk. This ensured resource was dispatched quickly to investigate and rectify any issues that threatened optimal performance.
Having this close control of key systems and plant required our engineering team to have a detailed understanding of the connected systems. This enabled them to manage system usage and operations to more effectively reduce energy consumption throughout our client’s buildings.
In addition to leveraging asset data for improvements in building performance, a focus on data combined with technical experience delivers valuable insights into the lifecycle of the assets within our control. Drawing from this knowledge, we can apply a bespoke planned maintenance approach, tailored for each sector and customer we work with. This enables our team to have the maximum impact while providing the right level of maintenance in context of both the condition and performance of the asset. As a by-product, we are able to advise our customers with an intelligent view of future capex spend and shape how future net zero targets can be achieved.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF M&E MAINTENANCE
Managing M&E assets can be incredibly complex for FM teams. However, with so many vital parts of a building’s fabric coming under this banner, the effective management of these assets can be crucial to meeting a business’s objectives, while being a critical part of the puzzle in reaching net zero targets. By combining construction and engineering expertise with technology-driven proactive and preventative management and crucially, backing this up with a vastly experienced team, you can ensure buildings perform to the highest possible standards and meet their full potential.
