Best Practice Guide

Food and Beverage Growers and Processors

Commissioning

Office Buildings

Operations and maintenance (O&M) refers to actions and planning related to the upkeep and control of a building and its equipment systems. A recent survey suggests that facility managers spend as much as 28 percent of their time on O&M issues, making it their number one professional responsibility. All too often, however, the focus of O&M is on the repair or replacement of broken equipment, not on upkeep.

An effective O&M program can reduce annual utility bills by 5 to 20 percent without any capital investment in equipment upgrades. Energy efficiency and water use efficiency measures undertaken as part of O&M tend to be no-cost or low-cost, and many can be easily implemented by in-house staff. Compared to capital-intensive equipment upgrades, O&M programs offer quick payback on investment and can be adopted with minimal executive oversight.

The benefits of O&M are many. Effective O&M programs tend to catch and fix equipment problems before building occupants notice and complain. This, in turn, reduces time facility staff must spend on callbacks. O&M also prolongs the useful life of equipment and minimizes downtime stemming from repair and replacement. Because building systems are optimized, compliance with environmental, health and safety regulations is easier to attain and the risk and liability associated with problems in indoor air quality are diminished.

The U.S. Department of Energy has developed a useful list of steps for planning and implementing an O&M program:

  • Develop a master equipment list identifying all equipment in the facility.
  • Prioritize the list based on importance to operations.
  • Assign components on the list into logical groupings.
  • Determine the type and number of maintenance activities required and periodicity using the manufacturer's technical manuals, machinery history, root cause analysis findings (Why did it fail?), and good engineering judgment.
  • Assess the size of maintenance staff.
  • Identify tasks that may be performed by operations and maintenance personnel.
  • Analyze equipment failure modes and effects.
  • Identify effective maintenance tasks or mitigation strategies.

There are two important tools for any O&M program that should be mentioned: diagnostics and metering. Diagnostics measure the condition of equipment and equipment systems in a building. Typical predictive diagnostic technologies include thermography, oil analysis, ultra sound analysis, vibration analysis, motor analysis, and trending. Diagnostics can be carried out by qualified in-house staff or by outside contractors. In-house staff should contact the local utility to see what support might be available. The Tool Lending Library at PG&E, for example, offers an inventory of more than 4000 diagnostic measurement tools free-of-charge to assist people with short-term energy efficiency projects. Tools available include data loggers and instantaneous meters to measure power, temperature, relative humidity, lighting and motor run-time, liquid and air flow and pressure, and the combustion efficiency of furnaces and boilers.

Metering and submetering provide information about actual energy use in a building. Conventional meters provide only aggregate information for a building or campus. By investing in submetering, building owners and managers can greatly improve the quality and quantity of information, which in turn can lead to economic savings as high as 20 percent, depending on how that information is used. Submetering records total consumption like a conventional meter, but can also track time-of-use, peak demand, load surveys (time-series data), and power outages. This information can alert facility staff to unusual fluctuations that might be due to equipment malfunction or tampering. Submeters allow energy use and costs to be isolated so that a specific area or building system can be tracked independently, useful for dividing actual utility costs between tenants or when conducting diagnostics. Submeters also help facility staff to manage energy use through load scheduling (operating energy-intensive equipment during off-peak hours) or demand-side management load control (reducing the operation of energy-intensive equipment during peak hours).

Four Models of Maintenance Programs

Four Models of Maintenance Programs

  1. Reactive maintenance: repair or replace worn equipment as it fails; costs are roughly $18/horsepower/year.
  2. Preventive maintenance: avoid equipment failure by scheduling routine maintenance so that equipment life is prolonged; saves about 12-18 percent over reactive maintenance; costs about $13/horsepower/year.
  3. Predictive maintenance: examines and tests the current condition of equipment before determining what, if any, maintenance should be undertaken; saves about 8 to 12 percent over preventive and 30 to 40 percent over reactive; eliminates 70 to 75 percent of equipment breakdowns; reduces downtime by 35 to 40 percent; improves productivity due to equipment system optimization by 20 to 25 percent; costs about $9/horsepower/year.
  4. Reliability centered maintenance (RCM): like predictive maintenance, but takes into account that it is more cost-effective to repair and replace inexpensive or unimportant parts only as needed; RCM typically costs about $6/horsepower/year.

Tips for Energy-Efficient Operations

Tips for Energy-Efficient Operations


  • Specify energy goals and objectives in contracts with any energy services company.
  • Keep building documentation up-to-date, like mechanical and electrical drawings, O&M manuals, sequence of operations and control strategies.
  • Train facility staff in energy efficiency and provide them with the tools and technologies they need to be effective.
  • In buildings equipped with enhanced automation, make sure that controls are fully utilized and have correct set points.
  • Periodically schedule building tune-ups or recommissioning to ensure that systems are properly integrated and functioning as designed.


Resources

U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Federal Energy Management Program. O&M Best Practices: A Guide to Achieving Operational Efficiency. Release 2.0. July 2004.

Northwest Food Processors Association Efficiency Practices website offers useful information and tips for the food processing industry.

Portland Energy Conservation, Inc., 15 O&M Best Practices for Commercial Office Buildings.

Pacific Gas and Electric, Pacific Energy Center, Tool Lending Library has thousands of measurement tools available for short-term energy projects.

Buildings.Com, Survey Reveals Key Functions that are Most Time-Consuming for Real Estate Managers.