Building a Strong Predictive Maintenance Plan to Get the Most from Your Equipment

Building maintenance has advanced significantly since the beginning of the 21^st century. Facility managers traditionally looked at maintenance issues from a corrective perspective, responding to tenant complaints or unforeseen equipment failures as they occurred. While certain critical building equipment was routinely inspected according to manufacturer recommendations, this was largely time-based rather than condition-based maintenance.

The evolution of smart building technology now makes it possible to predict rather than just react to problems. To develop predictive maintenance plans, facility managers need the right resources and the right strategy.

Creating a Predictive Maintenance Plan

Smart building maintenance solutions require reliable analysis of building data. When that analysis is performed by a smart building management platform with machine learning (ML) capabilities, your predictive maintenance plan continuously becomes more accurate and efficient.

A robust predictive maintenance plan depends on:

• Data collection and storage
• Data processing and active monitoring
• Fault detection and diagnosis

With the right tools for each of these steps, maintenance is transformed.

Data Collection and Storage

Predictive maintenance begins with collecting reliable data on a building’s physical systems, environmental conditions, and how tenants use the facilities. In addition to building equipment and meters, the most valuable data sources include IoT sensors and other smart devices that collect information on the building, its immediate surroundings, and occupant behavior. 

After collection, building data must be stored. Depending on the infrastructure available, this can happen in the cloud, on-premises, or a hybrid of these two strategies. However, future-focused stakeholders are increasingly migrating to cloud-based systems to take advantage of their affordability, scalability, security, and reliability.

Data Processing and Active Monitoring 

Prior to processing, raw data must be cleaned and normalized. It can then be sent to a smart building platform for analysis. An intelligent platform actively monitors all connected systems to produce meaningful insights and guidance on how to improve building operations and efficiency. 

Smart building platforms use advanced data models to evaluate the probability of failures within a building’s systems. ML-driven software will continuously integrate new information to refine its understanding of the building and improve its predictive capabilities. The more data you have, the better your predictive maintenance plan will be.

Fault Detection and Diagnosis

Identifying irregularities within smart building systems requires robust fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) capabilities. A smart building management platform that continuously analyzes building data quickly catches anomalies and notifies stakeholders of actual or anticipated problems, often long before they result in equipment breakdown. Significantly, it doesn’t just tell you something is wrong; it prioritizes alarms, isolates the root cause of issues, and identifies possible solutions. This is particularly valuable in dynamic, interconnected building environments, where traditional troubleshooting can be time-consuming and laborious. 

According to a 2019 study, building owners and facility managers who invest in tools with advanced FDD can achieve a median savings of 7% across building portfolios. However, the savings can be much higher, and the benefits go far beyond cost. These include:

• Better allocation of maintenance resources
• Less reliance on human intervention
• Earlier intervention
• Less downtime
• Reduced energy waste
• Better equipment performance
• Prolonged equipment life
• Fewer resources spent on unnecessary maintenance checks
• Higher tenant satisfaction

The most advanced smart building platforms, like onPoint, maximize these benefits by transforming FDD into insights about how to make your building work better. These insights act as a road map to ensure you achieve your goals.

Ultimately, the result is a better building and a better preservation of assets, reduction of associated operating costs, and improved environmental conditions.

The Future of Building Maintenance

Smart technology is the future of building maintenance. By replacing wasteful routine inspections and providing a meaningful way to prevent malfunctions, a data-driven predictive maintenance plan can revolutionize how your building functions. 

Capitalizing on this potential means investing in the right smart building management software. A mobile-first platform that features cutting-edge FDD, machine learning, user-friendly interfaces ensures your team has the capabilities you need to take building maintenance to the next level.

Buildings IOT offers state-of-the-art software and digital services to help you implement a robust predictive maintenance plan. Contact our team of experts to learn more about what we can do for you.