Of maintenance as risk management
While this article may be considered a follow-up on last month’s editorial on fire safety, it is clear that risk prevention has become a recurring theme at the conferences we attend (usually real estate or industrial maintenance events), as well as during our customers meetings. This is good news, considering that we at Siveco have spent years telling our clients they should look at the impact of their technical decisions on the business rather than just direct expenditures.
Last week we attended a very nicely organized seminar on Property Maintenance and Management, but curiously none of the excellent speakers really spoke about maintenance. Instead, we listened to an excellent presentation detailing the different aspects of facility management in industrial, retail mall and office buildings; another on why international retailers in China chose to own property rather than lease it; and two topics on fire safety.
Our General Manager Bruno Lhopiteau was in the room that day and spoke to several other attendees with senior maintenance background. During the final panel discussion, Bruno tried to bridge the gap between the initial topic of maintenance and the various presentations. He asked several questions and commented on the following subjects which speakers had touched upon:
-The importance of involving maintenance early, from the construction stage to compensate some of the weaknesses of local engineering companies (e.g. design issues and the lack of as-built documentation) which can heavily impact maintenance (“the baby was born with a lot of defects” as the representative of a major retailer put it). This was covered, from an industrial point-of-view, in a previous Reliability issue.
-The link between fire safety and maintenance: surveys conducted by international certification agency Bureau Veritas finds 40% of the buildings inspected non-compliant with fire safety laws, mostly for technical reasons (fire fighting systems not working for one reason or another), highlighting the need to better maintain fire equipment. On the other hand, the current fire law required regular checks, i.e. preventive maintenance activities. Often overlooked, the fact that electrical system failures are a major cause of fire: proper maintenance of those systems should be the priority.
-The limited profit margins of Facility Management service providers, which tend to compete on cost and are faced with an increase of their expenses (labor cost), while they often cannot increase their price year after year (see our August editorial). One solution to this problem may be for the FM supplier to take some of the risks, e.g. the cost of energy, in effect becoming an ESCO (Energy Service Company) business with a greater opportunity to make profits. Most multinational FM suppliers are not ready to adopt this model, unusual for them abroad. Cash-rich local companies, such as those with strong property developer or state-owned background, are likely to take the lead.
Simplified overview of the FM value chain
-Whether you own or manage properties, the need to build and implement standard ways of working, one of the goals being to be less dependent on people (lack of skills in the market, high turnover rate). This involves well structured and repeated training at all level in the organization. Using a support system (for example a CMMS or FMS) helps, rather than just a paper handbook which will stay untouched on the shelf.
-Conclusive remarks on how the seemingly out-of-fashion and unattractive maintenance profession turns out to be at the core of most of today’s buzzwords like “Green” or “Sustainability” and media headlines like “Fire Safety”. All the fancy talk boils down to doing a good maintenance job, a fact unfortunately often left ignored… leaving most such initiatives unfinished.
Each of these topics deserves its own article: most will probably be covered in one form or another in our coming newsletters since we have come across all the cases above (and many more) as part of customers assignments in the past few months, either working for property owners or service companies.
