Preventative maintenance is an extremely familiar idea for any facility manager or plant manager. At its core, it's a simple idea: proactively maintain, fix, and review equipment and processes to mitigate future risk and issues while driving ROI. But like so many other simple ideas, preventative maintenance can be an ongoing challenge. Put into practice, preventative maintenance requires a deep understanding of your plant floor, a large amount of data to be organized and analyzed, and time and dedication needed to complete, schedule, and prioritize tasks.
So, where do you even start?
We asked our Electrical Services team what preventative maintenance measures they would recommend to drive ROI for facilities. Here's what they had to say:
Preventative Maintenance Checklist
As Needed
- Perform a Power Quality Study.
- Perform equipment and safety upgrades.
- Change smoke and carbon monoxide detector batteries (local system, unsupervised).
Weekly
- Ensure plant floor environment conditions are good (leaks, safety hazards, deterioration, dust, garbage, etc).
Monthly
- Exercise your generator for 30 minutes, paying close attention to unusual oil pressure, leaks, alerts, temperature, or noises.
- Check your generator's oil and coolant levels.
- Take a sample from your coolant tank and test the concentration. If your coolant liquid is off, drain the reservoir and refill it with fluid matching equipment specifications.
- Check your starting battery voltage, drive belt tension, and drain any exhaust condensate.
- Restock all first aid kits.
- Inspect fall protection harnesses and kits, eyewash stations and bottles, and respirators.
Quarterly
- Clean the crankcase breather on your generator to eliminate excessive engine pressure and avoid premature component wear.
- Inspect all site lighting including exit, interior, and exterior lighting for proper operation and illumination.
Annually
- Perform an IR Thermography Report report on facility electrical systems and critical equipment.
- Inspect control panel interior components for damage, correctly torque all wire terminations.
- Inspect, clean, and torque all connections in Switchgear.
- Electrical panelboards should be inspected, clean and all connections torqued.
- Ensure all safety signs and labels are in good condition.
- Test fire alarm and sprinkler system.
- Test building alarm system.
- Test smoke and monoxide detectors.
- Inspect your generator components for damage, leaks, condensation, loose connections.
- Have your transformer cleaned and the oil tested.
- Exercise your generator with a full load (aka. at full capacity) for 15 to 20 minutes. This allows the lubricant to heat up to operating temperature and circulate throughout the engine. Change your generator oil, oil filter, coolant filter, air filter, battery voltage, belt tension, fuel filter.
Every Five Years
- Perform an Arc Flash Study (per OSHA and NFPA 70E).
Still unsure of where to start? Or are there some items you need help checking off? Our team is here to help. Email us to set up a free consultation.
Learn more about Preventative Maintenance.
Download our Preventative Maintenance PDF Checklist.
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