Maintenance risk reduction for effective facilities management

Abstract

PurposeInsufficient investment in facilities management organizations lead to postponement of major repairs and replacements of facilities. Lack of centralized information within an organization on the assessment of deficiencies and conditions in the facilities causes these projects to be carried out at the cost of critical replacements and repairs. This paper aims to describe a facilities condition assessment methodology and a tool.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the physical condition and maintenance deficiencies of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) type of equipment are assessed at its component level using failure checkpoints. The existing conditions of six cooling towers located at West Virginia University were assessed at the component level and an overall condition score was generated by the tool.FindingsThe tool helped to assess checkpoints on the components and identify the potential risk component and its impact.Research limitations/implicationsWhen facilities managers initiate this structured assessment methodology based on a periodic frequency, the facilities availability and life is maximized apart from reducing overall risk.Practical implicationsThe contributions of this paper include the use of a common and comprehensive methodology for HVAC physical condition assessments and risk assessment of component failure impact.Originality/valueThis paper eliminates the most evident scoring limitations in the literature such as “equal numbers or ties,” “summation of lower priority scores exceeding the higher priority score,” and the need for a “cost estimator.” A unique formula was determined for the scoring technique.