From March to September 2001 the Facilities and Operations Directorate for the Laboratory equipped 14 power operators each with a PDA to use in its management of operator tours, maintenance checklists, and dispatch work throughout the two million-sf facility.

"Our evaluation at the end of the pilot program's implementation showed a return equal to our initial investment in only 10 months," says Erik Anderson, manager of Integrated Information for the Facilities and Operations Directorate at PNNL, whose job it is to ensure that facilities management has the technical support it needs.

Delivering Support for Breakthrough Science

Managed and operated by Battelle on behalf of the Department of Energy's Office of Science, PNNL is one of nine multiprogram national laboratories that deliver breakthrough science and technology to meet key national needs. The Facilities and Operations Directorate manages the maintenance and support of the laboratory with nine craft disciplines and five core teams designed according to categories reflecting the internal business culture at PNNL.

Although the core teams vary in size due to physical scope such as building size and type, they are generally comprised of a building manager, a building engineer, a facility project manager, and a work control specialist. Each team also has administrative and safety support staff; craft members are assigned on an as-needed basis. Each core team manages a set of buildings and is responsible for all maintenance including building, grounds, transportation, and convenience services. Team members work with maintenance personnel to service the buildings.

"We needed to manage our business better," says Anderson, "and to do that we needed better data."

The Pilot Plan

To improve the efficiency of its support mission at PNNL, the Facilities and Operations Directorate designed its handheld PDA pilot program to accomplish six specific goals:

• Foster data-driven maintenance
• Reduce paperwork
• Reduce the volume of information needing review by building engineers
• Deliver maintenance instructions to crafts
• Collect building performance readings in the field
• Pass information from handheld devices to PNNL's computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), MAXIMO by MRO Software

"We needed to get the core teams' personnel out into the field more where they could look at what was happening in their facilities," says Anderson. "We had to find a way to reduce paperwork, eliminate unnecessary work, and generally improve productivity."

PNNL invested $103,000 in hardware, software, and in set-up activities from March to May 2001. Set-up included installing the software, training personnel, and setting up condition checkpoints and routes within MAXIMO. The routes enable delivery of the condition checkpoints on the PDA screens in an order logical to the way core team personnel make their way through a building. Once set-up was completed, field operations ran from June to September, the end of PNNL's fiscal year.

"Setting up the condition checkpoints was the key to getting the whole thing started," says Anderson, "because it is from them we record the performance data that is uploaded back into MAXIMO."

The pilot program employed 14 power operators, the only craft involved in the pilot as they are the technicians responsible for the laboratory's primary systems such as boilers, chillers, pumps, and airflow. Power operators work 12-hour shifts on various "tours" or routes. There are six tours: three are both a day and night shift for 24-hour coverage; the other three are day shift only.

The power operators were equipped with Hewlett-Packard Jornada PDAs. To facilitate information flow to and from MAXIMO, the PDAs were equipped with Service and Maintenance Automation using Revolutionary Technology (S.M.A.R.T.ä) software by Syclo. (See sidebar "PNNL Uses S.M.A.R.T. Technology")

On the Job

A tour operator typically enters a measurement or highlights a status code from a reading at a checkpoint. The operator can perform a quick data analysis in the field by using a S.M.A.R.T. screen that displays the last seven readings. Capturing more than seven readings slows the PDA's processing time, so any analysis requiring more extensive historical data is done outside the tour using a laptop or desktop PC.

An operator can also easily access work orders.

"Payroll numbers are used to log onto the system," says Anderson. "When a PDA is used for dispatch work an individual can see all of his pending work."

Experience during the pilot showed that most often the work must be done with docking stations rather than by wireless transmission. The MAXIMO and S.M.A.R.T. software and the PDAs worked fine within a wireless mode, but PNNL's local network, physical environmental constraints, and security issues caused problems.

"Some of the issues we encountered with the wireless units are unique to PNNL," says Anderson. "Wireless mode might work fine using the same equipment in another environment."

Some places on the operators' tour have very thick walls making wireless transmission problematic. PNNL's robust security system requires frequent network user validation. The validation protocols can drop the wireless connection from the network requiring re-entry for the tour operators.

Typically it takes tour operators about five minutes per shift to upload and download data from MAXIMO to the PDAs. As a practical payback, even an efficient wireless mode could not improve much over that task time. However, the Facilities and Operations Directorate believes that beneficial payback may be found in dispatch work where an operator changes work assignments on screen in real time, such as closing out a work order.

The Results of the Pilot

For PNNL, the biggest payback from the pilot program is the elimination of paper and getting data that could be used immediately.

"It much surpassed our old system in which the operators would make their rounds, fill out log sheets, and create piles of paper by signing off on multiple reviews," says Anderson.

Reduction in the number of unneeded preventive maintenance (PM) activities is another important payback. Data collected from condition points enables PM to be assigned based on system performance rather than on elapsed time since the last maintenance.

"In two years we will have enough history to do a careful analysis of the impact of assigning PM based on performance information," says Anderson. "We are definitely seeing advantages in freeing up our building engineers and getting them into the field more."

The 14 power operators, who tested the PDAs, liked them, paving the way for acceptance by the other crafts (electricians, machinists, pipefitters, sheet metal workers, millwrights, painters, welders, and carpenters).

One limitation exposed is that PDA processing time slowed as the volume of data increased. PNNL has asked the manufacturer to install a more powerful memory chip--at least one gigabyte--so that operators can store more historical data, include more procedures, and transfer all data in a PDA to another device in the event of hardware failure.

Another concern is that each PDA requires a S.M.A.R.T. license and the cost for all craft personnel in the core teams to have their own PDA could be too expensive to implement. However, some craft members are only assigned to team activities when their skills are needed, so it is not necessary for all craft members to individually be assigned a PDA.

Operational lessons learned from the pilot include keeping a consistent project manager, ensuring that the CMMS data is clean, and maintaining open communication.

"We found it important to let everybody know when, where, and what," says Anderson. "By involving the right folks in open communication you can make sure you get the right information, and then you document, document, document."

Post-Pilot

Immediately after the pilot ended, PNNL began recording data enabling the Facilities and Operations Directorate to set up a more extensive PM checklist and include a full range of equipment beyond that which involved only the power operators.

Program rollout began in June 2002 with 14 of the 25 tour operators. The Facilities and Operations Directorate expects that as the checklists grow and dispatching expands, the program will involve about 60 maintenance personnel.

A major expansion of the PM checklist involves equipment monitored by Johnson Controls, an onsite contractor. Johnson Controls feeds performance data into its METASYS software through PNNL's network, enabling the Facilities and Operations Directorate to review the condition of the monitored equipment and assign PM. However, METASYS and MAXIMO data are two different data sets.

"Adding condition codes in MAXIMO takes time and we are building the population of checkpoints as we go along," says Anderson.

Outside the Johnson Controls coverage is a potential of 10,000 checkpoints. More than 1,900 were input into MAXIMO just prior to full rollout. There are about 14,000 points separately covered by METASYS.

Integrating the two sets of data into one standard database will create a manageable subset of all PNNL data and provide a single view of facility systems' performance.

"We have made a lot of progress," says Anderson, "but our goal is to continue to reduce the number of PMs performed on the old schedule-driven system."

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