A Typical Service Visit
The traditional approach
There are three reasons for employing a contractor to carry out maintenance on your HVAC plant:
- To minimise breakdowns and therefore reduce production downtime
- To maximise energy efficiency
- To ensure compliance with environmental (and other) regulations
Maintenance contracts are traditionally structured around a planned programme of routine maintenance, based on a number of visits per annum at a fixed annual cost.
Additional costs are incurred for repair costs, usually based on an hourly rate plus mileage. These additional costs can, in some cases, add up to more than the cost of the routine servicing.
What’s wrong with this approach?
There is no incentive for the contractor to minimise the number of breakdowns.
Too many maintenance contractors quote artificially low prices for routine maintenance because they expect to make their profit on repair work and spares.
The higher the number of breakdowns, the more profit the contractor makes!
Where is the client benefit in that?
The solution
Structure the contract to target improvements in efficiency. Give the contractor an incentive to maximise efficiency.
Measure plant efficiency, benchmark it, report it, optimise it.
Measure breakdown expenditure and call-outs, and include targets for reducing these.
Show the client benefit, not just the cost.
How EMS works
The technical support we provide:
- Routine visits: we’ll provide you with a planned schedule of routine visits for your approval
- Reporting procedure: upon completion of each routine visit, a service report sheet for each individual system will be completed, identifying the service status of each item of equipment, and detailing any remedial works required.
- Breakdown visits: should you have reason to call us out to attend to a breakdown, our service co-ordinator will advise you when a service engineer will attend site.
- Repair work: every effort will be made during the initial breakdown visit to restore the air conditioning or refrigeration plant to working order.
The energy and environmental support we provide:
- Control of fluorinated gases (F Gas regulations): the refrigerant contained within your air conditioning or refrigeration equipment will include F gases, now classed as hazardous waste and subject to environmental legislation, which means that you (as the user) have a responsibility to ensure that leaks are minimised. We take care of this for you as part of our service and, as members of REFCOM, are regularly audited to ensure compliance on your behalf of the legislation.
- R22 phase-out: some of your air conditioning or refrigeration equipment may contain R22 refrigerant, which is being phased out under environmental legislation due to its ozone depletion potential. Our service engineers are trained in giving you on-site advice regarding this, and we offer advice to you on recommended replacement strategies.
- Energy costs: our service engineers are trained in identifying possible improvements to air conditioning or refrigeration equipment operation to improve efficiency, and therefore reduce running costs. The engineers feed information back to our technical department, the suggested improvements costed on a capital investment versus running cost basis, and a report submitted to you for discussion.
