The organization should define policies, procedures and work instructions in order to ensure that it has an effective maintenance program taking into consideration at a minimum the following:
- Obligations as defined in SLAs.
- Cost of downtime.
- Risk tolerance/appetite.
- Age of equipment.
- Allowable operating conditions.
- Internal (in-house staff)/external (vendors/contractors) capacity and capabilities (qualified by experience and/or certification).
- Recommended maintenance schedule and instructions of the manufacturer.
- Budget.
- Environmental conditions.
The organization should ensure sufficient budget is allocated to execute maintenance programs which take into consideration local code, manufacturer requirements/guidelines and best practices. The organization should consider at a minimum the following;
- The maintenance cost review should be part of the equipment purchase selection process to avoid unexpected maintenance cost after purchase of the equipment.
- The full maintenance cost, including potential (regular) refurbishments and consumables should be determined.
- The maintenance cost review should cover as long a period as possible, ideally spanning from the date of purchase until the end-of-service life of the equipment, as stated by the OEM .
- The maintenance cost should be benchmarked, if required, taking into consideration change of maintenance programs and/or industry best practices for price increases over time based on exchange rates, inflation etc.
Based on the policies, an effective facilities maintenance program should be developed and maintained. It should, at a minimum, address the following:
- Maintenance program options defined for each and every piece of equipment.
- A detailed schedule for execution of the maintenance-related programs, including trigger dates for annual life cycle reviews.
- Skills, knowledge, certifications and other requirements for personnel executing the program.
- SOPs and MOPs.
- Requirements for (onsite) spares.
- Details of parameters to be monitored and recorded.
- Reporting details (e.g. format, monitoring points and intervals).
Where work instructions are defined for maintenance activities, the instructions should be:
- Detailed, specific and listed ‘step-by-step’.
- Use consistent terminology across all documents of the organization.
- Where possible, have illustrations to provide more clarification/guidance.
- Validated by a person/persons other than those who wrote the work instruction.
- Reviewed on a regular basis, or after a change, which may impact the work instruction.
