FOCUS MAINTENANCE
32 JULY 2019
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Good asset maintenance does not have to depend on expensive, esoteric technology,
says Alistair Clements, CEO of REAMS. It’s about getting the basics right
Facilities managers are constantly
seeking the silver bullet that will
make their lives and jobs better. One of
their key responsibilities is overseeing
the maintenance of their buildings and
keeping costs under control and within
budget. This involves seeking new and
innovative ways to gain the most value
from assets, minimising breakdowns,
planning for the unexpected and
maximising building availability.
Current buzzwords and trends include
IoT, AI, machine learning, big data and data
mining, to name a few. These are hot topics
not just in facilities and asset management,
but also in healthcare, logistics, agriculture,
retail and manufacturing. It’s a lot to take in.
A good place to start, however, is developing
a digital road map in relation to the asset
maintenance strategy. This involves
relatively simple actions that can have a very
real impact on everyday building and estate
performance. While machine learning and
AI may seem distant and unrelatable, the
journey to get there can start now.
I was recently involved with a
manufacturing client. They have a global
footprint, but two of their manufacturing
plants are in close proximity, one on either
side of a busy road. One plant had a very
di‹ erent idea of what an asset was than
the other, even in the context of building
services maintenance. Organisations need
to define what they mean by an asset,
and what warrants identification on an
asset list. This may form part of a broader
asset management strategy, but it is still
an important step. If we don’t know what
an asset is, how can we plan an asset
management strategy? Where there is more
than one site or location, consistency is
important so that comparisons can be made.
The next stage is to compile an asset list or
inventory. This is more than a list of ‘stu‹ ’.
It will include how the assets are structured,
how they are classified, and how they relate
to the engineering systems. This should be
done in the context of the wider business
strategy: what is critical, what legislative
requirements must be met, how much do we
need to know about a particular asset? Which
assets a‹ ect interfaces and touch points with
our customers, consumers and suppliers, and
what are the risks corresponding to each?
The final step is to define the structure of
each data requirement and its syntax. This
document will form an asset hierarchy – a
tacit guidance document on what data is
required and how it is to be structured,
collated and stored. The result is a clear,
consistent and concise guidance document
for facilities and engineering stakeholders.
Ultimately, this exercise enables the FM to
answer plain language questions: how many
of a given asset do I have? Where are they?
What are they made of? How old are they?