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By Derrick Chen
Going green has become an important criterion for buildings and
facilities. Commercial property owners and managers are responding by
joining the green movement and seeking LEED certification for their
properties. One critical step of this process is putting an effective
preventive maintenance (PM) program in place. As an added benefit, an
effective PM program is critical to preserving and enhancing the value and
cash flow of properties. The actual performance of maintenance activities
and the accurate tracking of asset history, however, often remain
mysterious and inaccessible as competing priorities take precedence.
Due in large part to the environmental movement, owners and managers have
new incentives to put more efficient practices in place. Green buildings
not only minimize environmental impact for future generations, but they
also have been demonstrated to lower operating costs, boost rental rates,
increase sales values, and even improve occupancy rates, according to
studies by the White Salmon, WA-based New Buildings Institute and CoStar
Group, Bethesda, MD.
While new construction can incorporate energy efficiency and other green
criteria into a building's design (sometimes at only a small cost premium),
retrofitting an existing building or facility, which has pre-existing
systems and practices, to meet certification is a potentially disruptive
and costly challenge. That's why the first step toward green certification
for existing buildings is maintenance and operations, not
necessarily renovations and retrofits.
The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED for Existing Buildings Operations
& Maintenance (LEED-EB O&M) program promotes sustainable building
operations through energy and water efficiency, waste and recycling, green
cleaning and custodial protocols, and sustainable purchasing. Organizing
and executing the checklist of certification items across many properties
or facilities is a daunting task.
Portfolio owners may face an overwhelming volume of equipment and required
maintenance activities scattered across several geographical areas being
maintained by a mix of staff and outside vendors. As an example, one owner
with 70 properties manages more than 100,000 pieces of equipment with
overlapping annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and seasonal activities
that are performed by 175 staff members plus outside vendors. An additional
challenge is setting and tracking maintenance standards and guidelines
across a portfolio.
A natural reaction to this situation is to put tools in place to manage the
mess. If the selected tool isn't easy to set up and use, however, it may
end up sitting on the shelf and gathering dust as yet another permanent
item on the "to-do" list.
For commercial property owners and managers, there are six simple steps
that can make a difference in implementing and continuing a maintenance
program critical to preserving asset value, optimizing equipment life,
increasing budgeting accuracy, and, ultimately, bringing a new level of
efficiency to your organization.
Principle 1: Clear Division of Responsibilities
There are three essential roles that need to be filled, each with its own
responsibilities. The division of responsibilities allows each role to view
and manage activities as efficiently as possible while preserving standards
and tracking activities down to the task level.
The initial division of responsibilities and its application to a specific
set of assets requires some upfront planning, but by clearly defining roles
and identifying maintenance standards, a systematic deployment of those
standards to your specific situation becomes simple.
Principle 2: Focus on Critical Assets First
Focus primarily on equipment with a high impact on tenant satisfaction and
property value as a first step. For commercial properties, this means
focusing on three areas with the greatest impact:
- Life
and fire safety (keeping tenants and building occupants safe).
- Elevators
(getting tenants where they need to go).
- HVAC
(keeping building occupants comfortable).
Once a routine is established, completing your program across other
areas of concern can proceed quickly.
Principle 3: Set Standards and Track Exceptions
Because priorities differ and special situations arise, be both strict and
flexible at the same time by setting up standard maintenance procedures
(ideally based on industry standards created by RSMeans or organizations
such as BOMA Intl.). For green certification, select a standard such as the
LEED-EB O&M.
Then, propagate the standards to all properties with the intention that
they be customized based on specific equipment and requirements. To
maintain flexibility, allow schedules to float, if necessary, so work can
be distributed sensibly. Then, track exceptions to standards to monitor
skipped tasks or measurements for management oversight.
Principle 4: Invite Your Vendors In
One key criterion for an effective, long-term maintenance solution is to
involve your vendors and leverage their resources. By ensuring that vendors
can access your system and become part of the reporting and oversight
infrastructure, you can adjust skill sets and optimize cost controls while
ensuring a smoothly working system. Dispatching work to vendors should be
as easy as dispatching to your own staff. As an added benefit, you should
be able to monitor vendor completion and quality with objective measures
based on an accurate and complete history of activities.
Principle 5: Don't Tie Your Field Teams to a Desk
With low-cost, highly effective wireless options, mobile workers should
have options to accept and complete paperwork online, wirelessly, or by
paper, if necessary. Ideally, mobile solutions will be completely
integrated into the workflow and won't require typing on small form factor
devices. Reducing paper processing, with its inevitable keying errors and
inefficiency, is an added green benefit.
Cutting-edge wireless enablement may be out of reach because of cost
considerations. The work-order system you choose should be able to
streamline your paper-based system and also give a seamless upward
migration path for the time when adding a mobile solution becomes a
priority.
One additional note on field adoption of a wireless solution: Make sure to
evaluate the field requirements for mobile dispatching. E-mail-based
dispatching is often inefficient because work orders are buried in spam or
other nonessential communications. Select a system that segregates work
orders into a separate priority queue. Many systems also require typing as
part of a response, which is challenging for engineers who are less
comfortable with complex electronic devices. Instead, select a system that
minimizes or eliminates the need to type when accepting or completing work.
Principle 6: Keep it Simple
Ultimately, a successful PM program will rely on choosing a system that is
easy to set up, easy to grasp and use by all parties, and easy to expand
and grow as your portfolio and ambitions do. Ideally, you should select a
platform that integrates with other systems and leverages your existing
data.
In many respects, green maintenance is similar to traditional procedures
with differences in focus rather than technique. Switching to a green
paradigm requires additional training and changes in the selection of
products, but is obtainable with your current resources and staff.
Thankfully, motivating owners and managers to make these changes has become
an easier job as environmental awareness has blossomed.
One of the biggest effects of evaluating green certification from an asset
perspective is looking at a building or facility as a whole. Reducing
environmental impact and promoting good practices are more a matter of
little improvements adding up than of large dramatic capital projects. The
role of a PM plan is to organize these efforts so that a cumulative benefit
is realized, and choosing a flexible PM management system is an excellent
first step.
By putting these six practices in place, an effective PM
program can be a simple, low-cost start toward going green. Now is the time
to begin the process of increasing efficiency, saving money, and improving
value, all while reducing our impact on Mother Earth.
Derrick Chen is CEO at New York City-based Workspeed Management LLC (www.workspeed.com).
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