Preparing maintenance from the construction stage

Note that in this article we indifferently use the terms MMS or CMMS. Interested readers may want to see this article (http://www.sivecochina.com/en/company/profile/cmms-eam-fm/).

Experience has shown that the earlier reliability and maintainability are taken into account in a construction project, the better. These should be specifically addressed from the design stage of a project, as illustrated below.

This approach, which consists in paying more attention to maintenance earlier in the project, to reduce future operation cost, differs markedly from that of Chinese engineering and construction companies, which emphasize cost control during construction with progressive adjustments and modifications of the design as the project moves ahead. Local EPC companies still lack an overall lifecycle perspective, hence the difficulty to obtain as-built drawings or preventive maintenance recommendation from them.

While the resulting speed and cost advantage has proven critical to support the country’s fast development, this construction-driven approach has also led to problems – most notably in terms of safety (deadly accidents at various construction sites have made headlines in the past few years) and maintenance (early replacement of major equipment, spiraling cost and reliability problems after a few years of operation). Partly as a result of this lack of preparation, maintenance is often purely reactive (firefighting) in the operation phase.

As a direct consequence of this lack of early concern for maintenance during construction, we observe that the quickest reliability improvements obtained during Siveco project in China are those related to design or installation problems, which should have been identified during commissioning, but instead go undetected for years. Quick fixes are applied, problems go unreported and no analysis is ever carried out. By conducting systematic root cause analysis, we are able to identify the problems and trace them back to construction issues.

Based on a long experience of greenfield infrastructure projects all over the world and lessons learnt in China in the past 10 years, Siveco has developed a specific expertise working alongside EPC companies and their equipment suppliers during the construction phase, ensuring smooth transfer of technical documentation from construction to operation, supporting plant commissioning and start-up with an accurate technical database and enforcing good maintenance practice from day one. Siveco China teams supports both owners and EPC companies to better prepare operations. An ongoing case with China National Electric Equipment Corporation (CNEEC) in Malaysia was covered in a previous newsletter; another project with China International Water and Electric Corporation (WEC) in Sudan appears in our latest news. The same approach was employed with SwireSITA’s waste incinerator in Shanghai Chemical Park and the ongoing project to build the new French Embassy in Beijing.

In China more than anywhere else, the CMMS turns out to be the ideal tool to bring structure to what would otherwise be perceived as a very abstract concept (“Prepare for maintenance? But the equipment has not yet been delivered!”). A concrete (deliverable) system, the CMMS allows us to clearly define steps in the maintenance preparation project. The “high-tech factor” introduced by the CMMS is of course a key motivator for engineers involved in the project.

The figure below summarizes the Siveco approach for maintenance preparation during a construction project based on the utilization of the CMMS:

The major benefits of this approach are highlighted below:

By working directly with suppliers, detailed and accurate technical documentation (specifications, contracts, spare-parts lists, etc.) can be made available to operation engineers in a structured manner directly in the MMS, instead of being stored in containers, in shelves or even missing. This has a direct and immediate impact on the accuracy and efficiency of the work as well as on day-to-day decisions (where to purchase a part, how to disconnect an equipment etc.)

The construction phase is obviously the best time to integrate the MMS with automation and supervision systems (DCS, SCADA, ISCS, BMS) that contain essential data for maintenance planning, as both systems can be designed and build accordingly. Large cost savings can be expected compared to similar integration performed in operation (with an existing supervision system). More importantly, more advanced functionality can be obtained, such as a full HMI integration (operators can access technical documentation directly from their supervision HMI) and more meaningful data transfer (e.g. traditional interfaces will transfer alarms and measurements to the CMMS indiscriminately, while in a joint implementation, the process will be designed to match the maintenance strategy).

Working jointly with SCADA suppliers remains Siveco’s privileged way to involve in large infrastructure projects. Siveco boasts a long history of cooperation with leading automation vendors in various industries (ABB, Alstom and GE in the power industry, PCVue and Singapore Technologies in urban transportation and many more). For more on this topic, see our article in this month’s COSWIN Tips and Tricks section.

The MMS can be used before operation starts, with a focus on safety management: before work can be performed, a supervisor must approve related Work Permits in the MMS, detailing the qualifications, tools, safety measures and other PPE required. By doing so, the supervisor takes the responsibility for the safety of the job and the traceability of the decision is ensured. In the event of an accident or near-miss, the event and its circumstances will be systematically documented and analyzed, leading to a Corrective Action Report or Hazard Report, with clear actions for improvement. Again, even near-misses are clearly documented and fully traceable decision paths.

The MMS is the main tool to support this process. Safety audits are then greatly simplified and can be carried out at any time – the lack of proper documentation being a punishable offense in itself. This ideas was further developed in an article published last year in Gongkong magazine (in Chinese only).

Engineers supervising the commissioning process can be equipped with mobiles, allowing them to record each step of the process and corrective actions if required, ensuring follow-up of actions performed by the construction company or equipment suppliers. Faults occurring at an early stage – commissioning, trial runs – can be accurately documented in the MMS historical database. Without a proper historical record, information will be lacking for future diagnosis, resulting in delays and temporary fixes rather than permanent resolutions of problems (for example design problems may not be identified and quick fixes may be applied instead, a very common practice in China).

For a major infrastructure project, such as a metro line, the approach described above could easily save millions of RMB every year in indirect or consequential losses: downtime, increased repair costs, recurring problems etc. By taking maintenance into account early, it takes less time to get into the “useful lifetime” part of the famous reliability “bath-tub” curve, while the “wearing out” part will be delayed.

Tags： construction、safety、integration