Operations and Maintenance Manuals

Most infrastructure assets have long lives. Other than the occasional strategic planning functions required, the operations and maintenance of the assets are the most frequently performed functions in the life cycle.

In many cases, operational manuals consist of hard copy textual files and diagrams (schematics) located in major facilities and operational centres.

An electronic operations and maintenance manual system is the most appropriate, including text and suitable schematics, that is directly linked to the asset register system.

Electronic or on-line manuals should include access to:

• Normal operating parameters
• Normal and abnormal start-up and shutdown
• Preventative maintenance procedures and schedules
• Breakdown and emergency maintenance procedures
• Emergency or failure response plans
• Links to organizations risk assessment and management strategy.

For more complex operational problems, expert systems will help operators.

Operations Functionality

The operations system should have the following functionality:

• Asset's function, strategy and objective? How should the asset be operated:
  • During start up?
  • Normal operation?
  • Emergency conditions? (Failure management plans)
  • Shut down situations?
• Performance monitoring
• Operational requirements/tasks
  • What is required?
  • When is it required?
  • Who should do it?
  • How should it be done (procedures)
  • Time it should take
  • What materials and equipment is required?
  • Does the task relate to a shut down situation?
  • Is a critical path/project management plan required?
• Asset utilisation
  • What is the design performance/capacity?
  • What is the current utilisation/usage/demand?
  • When will the demand exceed the design capacity?
• Ability to monitor costs or consumption of:
  • Energy
  • Chemicals
  • Labour etc.

The ultimate objective is to achieve effective performance monitoring and the optimisation of the operations.

Maintenance Functionality

All assets, particularly dynamic assets need to be regularly maintained to preserve their condition and to provide the desired level of service or performance for the effective life of the asset.

Maintenance can also involve restoration activities that return a deteriorated item to a serviceable condition.

A maintenance information system should have the following functionality:

• Unplanned maintenance
  • Emergency corrective
  • Scheduled corrective
• Preventive planned maintenance procedures/schedules
  • What is required?
  • When should it be done eg. time/meter or CM
  • Who should do it? skills etc.
  • How should it be done?
  • What time should it take?
• Predictive planned maintenance procedures/schedules
  • Condition monitoring procedures
  • CM analysis and action
• Spare parts/inventory
  • Inventory control system
  • Booking of materials in store
  • Purchasing materials not in store
  • Indicating parts required
• Maintenance optimisation and analysis
  • Links to FMECA analysis
  • Cause (of failure) analysis and reduction
  • Activity (to overcome failure) analysis
  • Down time/unproductive time records
  • Mean time between failures.

An information system should ideally contain all the above features.

It should also have a history of all maintenance activities detailing all costs, resource requirement and statistical reporting on the performance or utilisation of the asset.