A fresh approach to BMS maintenance

Switching to a Performance Based BMS Maintenance routine has the potential to save thousands of dollars in maintenance costs per year.

Precise Air’s Building Performance Optimisation team reviewed the traditional BMS Preventative Maintenance programmes in place with two differing customers – a portfolio customer and a single facility customer – who were trying to find ways to reduce the cost of their BMS maintenance.

Building Performance Optimisation Manager, Wissam Salama, worked closely with the BMS providers and facility managers to identify where savings could be made. “We assessed the value of each the tasks performed and determined that more than 35% were redundant and skilled resources were underutilised,” said Wissam, “that is, highly skilled technicians were duplicating checks across the system and completing simplistic tasks.”

“Traditional BMS maintenance incorporates reviews on a large number of point to point checks for the sake of checking the point,” explained Wissam. “That is, it focuses on checking that ‘what is working…is working’ and prioritises maintenance over higher risk tasks. This is not only ‘labour hour’ intensive, it yields minimal benefit to the client and also fails to recognise where improvements can be made.”

Alternatively, Performance Based Maintenance checks for abnormalities through present and historical data, giving the operator a better insight into where the systems can be optimised. It is not about replacing existing systems, but maximising what is already in place.

“Our approach is to analyse the building prior to making any changes, to establish baselines and current parameters. Then we carry out a risk assessment on the whole BMS, rating the critical points and concentrating on these points rather than the whole system.  We then re-scope the BMS maintenance tasks to focus on identifying abnormalities, alarm management and improving performance and redistribute lower level BMS activities to HVAC technicians,” continued Wissam. “This delivers considerable savings direct to our clients, reducing labour hours by up to 35% annually and reducing administration and paperwork while achieving the same outcomes.”

“Precise Air is not aiming to be a BMS provider. Rather, we are focused on working with the existing BMS provider and the facility manager to come up with a more efficient process. Increasingly this means we are taking on responsibility for managing the BMS provider, giving facility managers the added advantage of one point of contact (or one service call) for all HVAC related BMS calls,” continued Wissam. “We are already on site maintaining the HVAC equipment and can quickly assess whether it is a lower level BMS issue that our HVAC technician can fix, or whether it is a higher level task that requires a service call from the BMS provider… we take control of the entire process until it is rectified.”

If you would like to find out more about switching to a Performance Based BMS Maintenance routine, contact Wissam Salama on 1300 728 25, or read our case study: BMS Performance Based Maintenance

Precise Air’s in-house Building Performance Optimisation team includes NABERS assessors, qualified engineers and technicians who are at the forefront of technological change. Our team assess and fine tune your systems to maximise their performance and ensure you meet your obligations.