Back to Basics to Save Energy
Back to Basics to Save Energy
What do managing building assets and going to the dentist have in common? AE Smith’s Antoni Pisa shares his insights into how proactive maintenance prevents pain and suffering as well as reducing energy use |
| 17 Feb 2010 |
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| With such a focus on reducing the environmental impact of our buildings and remarkable new technology that’s available, it’s very easy to overlook a simpler approach to saving costs and reducing energy use. This is often the case when it comes to managing and maintaining existing buildings - and particularly heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems that can account for up to 70% of all energy consumed in a commercial building.* Many of the customers I work with initially believe improving the environmental performance of their existing building and decreasing costs related to their air conditioning and mechanical services comes solely from expensive upgrades to plant and equipment. They often underplay or overlook the major role quality maintenance plays. Quality maintenance is definitely not glamorous, but getting back to basics and understanding the critical importance of maintenance can help achieve and maintain a building’s environmental performance objectives. It can also markedly reduce the total cost of owning and operating your HVAC system. Paying your mechanical services the attention it deserves will return dividends. Making a maintenance program really work for you should follow a Proactive Preventative Maintenance process. If customers are unclear about the real value and benefits of adopting a Proactive Preventative Maintenance program I often ask them about their relationship with their dentist. To look after the health and long term life of our teeth, we’re urged to brush and floss regularly (preventative maintenance) to help keep plaque and decay at bay. Similarly, regular visits to your dentist for thorough check ups on the health of your teeth (proactive maintenance) helps detect any problems at early stages and maintain the long term life of your teeth – and avoid major problems that have a large price tag attached. How often have you heard horror stories (or indeed experienced them yourself) where a visit to the dentist is only at crisis point, when you’re experiencing dental pain that’s matched by a very high bill to fix the major problem. This major problem and high costs could have most likely been avoided if a Proactive Preventative Maintenance approach had been taken. So applying that methodology to your major building assets, the best maintenance solution is about doing the right actions at the right times to prevent increases in avoidable running, repair and replacement costs. Using specialist maintenance only when there’s a major problem to fix is not the best approach and typically expensive. And while every facility is unique, here are four things to bear in mind when developing a Proactive Preventative Maintenance program that will help manage costs, reduce energy and extend the longevity of your mechanical services equipment: |
| 1. Good communication with your maintenance provider |
| Good two way communication is essential to establishing a program that understands the implications and priorities surrounding your HVAC systems. Your maintenance provider should be seeking to not only understand the plant and equipment you have, but also how you use it. To help with troubleshooting issues for instance, it would be important to know higher priority must be given to cooling a warehouse holding perishable stock than the management offices. Too often, maintenance programs don’t necessarily take into account how equipment is used in a building and just focuses on technical specifications. |
| 2. Horses for courses |
| Every building, every system and the components within those systems have different operating needs and profiles - yet we tend to treat everything the same. A piece of equipment that’s required to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will require a different maintenance approach to that same equipment running just five days a week for four hours. A major part of establishing an effective maintenance program is anchored around defining purposes for each piece of equipment - from how many occupants are in a building to operating hours; equipment selection, acceptable performance levels and more. One size does not fit all. |
| 3. Check on legal requirements |
| There are a variety of statutory regulations that need to be adhered to and these differ from state to state in Australia including regulatory compliance with Essential Safety Measures and other Australian Standards and Building Codes. Failure to comply can result in fines and potentially expose you and your business to litigation. |
| 4. Set KPI’s |
| A Proactive Preventative Maintenance program is about delivering outcomes. Often customers can’t recognise what benefits they would receive from specialist maintenance. Ultimately, you should be seeing a reduction in costs. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with your chosen supplier around energy savings, repair bills and overall equipment performance with your maintenance provider. It’s not unreasonable to expect at least a 10% reduction in the amount of energy consumed and in many instances, up to a 50% saving in the total cost of repairs and maintenance to equipment depending on its age. Want to learn more about the most cost effective thing you can do right now for your existing building? Contact Antoni Pisa on 03 9271 1920 for more information about reducing both energy consumption and the total owning and operating costs related to your facility’s HVAC and mechanical services using a Proactive Preventative Maintenance program designed by AE Smith. |
| * Australian Government 2009, ‘ESD Operations Guide for Owners, Managers and Tenants’. |
