operations and maintenance

The operations and maintenance (O&M) phase of the building begins upon turnover and
can be discussed in terms of the two primary stakeholders; occupants and operators. To support the occupants and manage building operations, building management retains an operations support staff to provide maintenance, alterations and a support center to address building related problems. This section discusses the importance of the occupant briefly, and expands upon the realm of O&M in buildings, and concludes with a
discussion of building assessment practices.

The Importance of the Occupant

In the aforementioned National Institute of Building Sciences 1998 report, a simplified study shows the relative impacts of Department of Defense (DOD) facility first costs and the expenses necessary to retain the DOD employee. Assuming 100 SF for an employee and first costs of $200/SF, the cost per employee to construct the facility is $20,000. The cost to retain the employee amounts to $60,000 per year. Relatively small, one-time costs that make a facility easier to use and results in more productive employees can pay large dividends when considering that after seven years, the employee represents 95% of the costs.

Romm & Browning’s RMI report Greening the Building and the Bottom Line identifies eight projects that focused on efficient lighting, heating and cooling resulted in substantial productivity gains and reduced absenteeism. In particular, lighting upgrades proved to deliver energy savings with new technology, and reduce employee eye fatigue by installing indirect lighting.

The Importance of Facility Management

Operations and maintenance (O&M) costs represent the greatest expenditures to an owner over the life of a building, typically amounting to six times that of the initial expense (U.S. Federal Facilities Council, 2001). Operations expenses are typically broken down into seven categories; custodial, maintenance, utilities, roads and grounds, security, administration (i.e., management fees), and fixed expenses (i.e., property tax, insurance), as in Figure 3-1. Discretionary spending categories (defined to include utilities, maintenance, custodial, and roads and grounds) makeup 53% of the cost to operate a building. Of this discretionary spending, energy and maintenance expenses each represent 41% of the cost to operate a building, as seen in the breakdown in Figure 3-1. For buildings 300,000 SF to 599,999 SF in the Washington, DC area, annual energy and maintenance expenses average $1.81/SF and $1.73/SF respectively (BOMA 2005).

Maintenance keeps building systems operating, periodically replacing components to remove contaminants and fixing broken parts. Maintenance is a necessary expense to preserve the integrity of a facility. There are various approaches used by facilities management, including predictive maintenance, reliability centered maintenance and the use of building automation, all of which use different variables to identify the timing of the maintenance performed (Drury 1999).

Predictive maintenance relies on sensors to indicate excessive contaminates in air or varying flow rates. This method relies on the component’s design to identify the optimal replacement time, maximizing component life and cost-effective tasks. Reliability centered maintenance relies on the analysis of all potential failures for a system. Judging from all failure modes, reliability centered maintenance focuses on component designs to determine the optimum maintenance period – the key difference being that there is minimal consultation with actual
sensor data. While reliability centered maintenance and predictive maintenance each have their own benefits, the method typically is chosen from the capability of existing building systems. The same is true for maintenance through building automation, which requires extensive sensing and automated maintenance capabilities. These three maintenance techniques show that incorporating building maintenance needs into the initial design and construction of a facility is critical to achieving efficient system performance for the life of the facility.

The relative expense of building construction and building operation illustrates the potential savings that facility managers can generate for building owners. The Federal Energy Management Program (Sullivan et al 2004) identifies common areas for improvement in their best practices guide, with an emphasis on the installation of building metering. The installation of building metering on a new project requires additional first costs, but the long-term value of metering to identify problems in system operation justifies the initial expense. However, building
metering does not  provide any added value alone, it must be used as a tool by facility management that is educated in the operating conditions of the building as an entire system.

Commissioning, Recommissioning and Continuous Commissioning

Equipment manuals, parts lists and vendors are key components of the commissioning documents, but do not illustrate the interconnectedness, or the integrated nature, of all systems within the building. As a result, the traditional project delivery methods hinder the development of a relationship between commissioning agent, designers, constructors and the O&M team (Duggan and Blayden 2001). As a result, the O&M team may inadvertently make changes to the building that set off a cascading series of events resulting in inefficient performance and poor indoor conditions.

As systems fall out of balance during the operation of the facility, building performance declines. When budgets permit, recommissioning can be procured to bring the system back to balance. Recommissioning restores building performance, but without further action the level of performance can not be sustained. In this regard, continuous commissioning seeks to improve overall system operation and control to meet the needs of the current users (FEMP 2002).

The Federal Energy Management Program outlines six steps to the continuous commissioning process:
• Develop the CCSM plan and form the project team,
• Develop performance baselines,
• Conduct system measurements and develop CCSM measures,
• Implement CCSM measures,
• Document comfort improvements and energy savings, and
• Keep the commissioning continuous.

This process thoroughly analyzes system performance and the concerns of building operators, but does not incorporate the building occupants. Therefore the impacts of the continuous commissioning process, as outlined, will be limited to improving system efficiency, with no guarantee of an improvement to occupant satisfaction, or system effectiveness.