Maintenance: Skills and strategies

A regular planned preventative maintenance (PPM) approach may not necessarily present the best option for plant and equipment and may not automatically offer best value for money. Developing any maintenance strategy centred on Operation and Maintenance manuals (O&Ms), while effectively dealing with warranty issues, may encourage management to focus on the prescriptive schedule of activity and remove the opportunity to consider the wider impact and potential benefits of adopting a more holistic approach to building and plant maintenance. 

An alternative is BFM, which encourages detailed analysis and understanding of the building, plant infrastructure, occupation/use and installed services. Analysis of these factors, along with perhaps many localised considerations, may dictate the maintenance requirement. This has the potential to lead to reduced downtime, smart operational conditions, quality adherence to any manufacturer’s warranty, quality cost in use of data and technical resource allocation. Further BFM offers a degree of flexibility usually not immediately available with PPM.  

Skill ability levels are vital in any maintenance activity. Traditionally engineers and other qualified individuals are called upon to maintain the building fabric and service plant and equipment. With a move toward more ‘plug and play’ components, both in new and refurbishment projects, an opportunity is emerging to evaluate the position of the skilled maintenance engineer, giving the individual greater ownership of operational performance. 

Analysis supports careful study of building components and their operational demand, and an excellent understanding of building use can lead to fewer hours spent on unnecessary routine PPM. Equally, it provides the opportunity to review the skills needed to monitor and manage the building. It does not, however, negate the need for skills to provide higher levels of managerial support and overview. 

The role of the unskilled person has increased in recent years and this transition to more of a technical role is beneficial to the development of BFM approach. This enhanced role does not replace apprenticeships and is there to fill the gap between unskilled and skilled.  A set of skills tailored towards specific plant to allow monitoring and understanding can go towards closing the skills gap.  

Installation, operation and maintenance of pumping systems within buildings provides a good example of where there is a gap in the skill set. For instance, the use of frequency inverters on pumps has increased in recent years in response to the requirements of energy efficiency and the EU Directive on motor efficiency. All new motors (7.5 kW to 375kW) must meet the IE3 standard or meet the IE2 standard and have a variable frequency drive (VFD) by 2015. 

This brings a major challenge to service companies who may struggle to install inverters correctly because of the large number of equipment manufacturers.  We have not caught up with training personnel in this new technology and still rely on the traditional skills to install pumps with a workforce that, in many cases, has not moved forward from established tradesman working methods. As a result, the equipment manufacturer is relied upon to install and commission pumps controlled by inverters, with the service company carrying out the remainder of the installation. At times the manufacturer cannot meet the demand of inverter expertise due to lack of trained engineers, further compounding the problem of skills shortage.

This situation also covers site-based maintenance staff who have generally less input and interaction with inverters. This is mainly left to a more senior technical person who is relied on to maintain the equipment. Many call outs for faulty inverters are easily rectified by trained competent staff. It is all very well to invest in technology that has a proven record of energy savings, but industry must invest in training personnel to install, service and maintain this equipment to the required operational standard.

Along with training for the unskilled role we need to further develop training for skilled trades personnel to allow them to enhance their abilities to work in a new technology environment. A clear plan of training aligned to new buildings and replacement plant will direct the training requirements to focus on upgrading skills. We need to research the option of bringing in apprenticeships that can be steered towards meeting the shortage of future skilled labour. An apprenticeship in building services would complement and increase in-house capabilities in maintaining old buildings and plant, as well as securing the future knowledge of site based maintenance personnel. 

The operational efficiency of both workshop and site engineers is being reviewed to enhance the operational flow of work from sales to the customer. By reviewing and updating information between sales and workshop the flow of repair items can be tracked and pushed through the repair process to the site teams. A live update of the progress on workshop items can be viewed by sales staff, workshop supervisor and the service coordinator.