Task 05-10. Next Generation Control Systems for Energy Efficiency, Indoor Environmental Quality and Building Security

The Task 10 has been completed. A copy of the final report NCEMBT is available for download in our Section "Downloads".

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Maintenance costs are often not fully understood. They are looked at as an overhead cost that needs to be reduced. The consequence of this is reduction is thought to only be reduced cost. As a result, if the operations and maintenance (O&M) budget can be reduced, the overhead is reduced and the profit margins are increased. In reality, as Smith states, O&M is “an investment, an essential expense that ensures the long-term reliability and availability of operating equipment and the associated infrastructure” (Smith Jr. 1995). The current typical practice for equipment maintenance in commercial building is to perform equipment maintenance as outlined in service manuals and repair or replace failed equipment as needed. Maintenance personnel have excelled at making these reactive repairs to fix failed equipment; however, they often fail to determine the causes of the failure. Instead of this reactive nature, maintenance personnel need to be proactive and plan ahead to be more effective. Less time will be needed to repair equipment if maintenance personnel manage the equipment through a maintenance program and plan their work in advance. Planned maintenance costs three to five times less than unplanned maintenance when considering labor and materials (Burns 1992). Additionally, upon completion of a maintenance task, the task should be documented as well as the cause of the maintenance task. Through this documentation and tracking, the root cause of the failure will be identified and planned maintenance can be improved. A lack of forward thinking and planning ahead that is typically associated with a reactive maintenance program can lead to increased equipment failure, maintenance and energy costs, as well as decreased equipment life. Additionally, by considering a specific piece of equipment independently, instead of as a whole system, may cause supplementary opportunities to save energy and costs to be overlooked. Equipment is often interrelated, operating as a system of components, and should be maintained as such.

When a scheduled maintenance (SM) program is properly implemented, the aforementioned issues associated with reactive maintenance are addressed. A scheduled maintenance program is able to identify equipment degradation or failure as it begins. Furthermore, building systems are kept in optimal operating conditions when a SM program is followed. SM programs increase building performance while providing indoor air quality and occupant comfort. The increased building performance is evident in the reduction of equipment failure and downtime as well as a reduction in energy use and energy costs. Implementation of an effective SM program can reduce energy bills by five to twenty percent in commercial buildings.

There are barriers that prevent the wide-spread implementation of SM programs, despite the clear advantages that they offer to building owners and managers over traditional maintenance programs. SM programs remain a best practice in the industry, but the extent to which building owners, operators and contractors are using SM programs is not definitively known. The main reason for not implementing a SM program seems to be a lack of knowledge of the benefits and how to implement SM programs in addition to no clear way to identify the resulting cost savings generated by a SM program. More than 55 percent of companies use a reactive maintenance approach, fixing equipment when it breaks, while less than a third have a scheduled maintenance approach implemented (Sullivan et al. 2004). By identifying the barriers and making the economic case for SM programs, substantial operational savings can be achieved.
The literature survey and the unstructured, open-ended interviews that were completed as part of this work focus on the current knowledge base in the area of SM programs. Several different types of proactive maintenance programs were identified, along with guidelines for specific pieces of equipment and whole systems. Of the 182 articles found in the literature survey, many were guidelines explaining how to implement a scheduled maintenance program for pieces of equipment and the potential benefits from doing so. The findings from the survey were then sorted in to four categories: definitions, basics, benefits, and bottom-line/business. The articles were categorized by equipment application, type of information (energy savings, cost savings, benefits, in-use statistics, and guidelines), and how to market SM programs.

With the organization of the resulting articles from the literature survey, areas where there was limited information were identified in addition to barriers to the implementation of SM programs. There is an abundance of articles with guidelines for implementing a complete system-wide SM program to best maintenance practices for specific pieces of equipment. There is limited information on the maintenance costs for each type of maintenance program, cost savings and energy savings associated with them. The information is often focused on a single type of equipment, which is impractical. Areas where limited information was obtainable were supplemented with unstructured, open ended interviews of industry experts.

Industry experts were selected from a cross section of the HVAC industry. These experts included building owners and operators, HVAC contractors, article authors from the literature survey and experts from national professional organizations. These industry experts were contacted to provide anecdotal and quantifiable data regarding operations and maintenance. Additionally, the benefits of a SM program including the energy savings and the reason why SM programs are not implemented were addressed in these interviews.
 

Major Sub-awardees

This project was executed by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The Principal Investigator was Marc Popek, Research Associate
This project was completed.