5 undeniable benefits of outsourcing your CMMS build
Safe, efficient and effective asset management is dependent on an optimized maintenance and integrity management regime, built upon reliable, structured and quality master data.
For any new or operational plant, the CMMS build is a crucial requirement that will lay the foundation for managing the maintenance, integrity and reliability of the plant through its operational life-cycle. Getting this foundation element wrong will quickly be magnified in poor work execution, rework and extended lost production, directly impacting OPEX.
To guarantee a quality and effective CMMS build, contracting an external specialist team can be a more proficient route for many companies for a variety of reasons.
In this blog post, we share the top five benefits of working with a specialist team to deliver this type of project…
1. A dedicated team of CMMS specialists, available only when you need them
The need to build and implement a maintenance and integrity management system doesn’t occur often, therefore many companies either don’t need to have nor can afford the full-time specialist skills required to conduct this work in-house, in volume and at pace.
Maintaining the currency of such an in-house team to changing standards, technology exploitation, and ways of working can be challenging, whereas a specialist provider can maintain its currency, practices, and toolsets through working with multiple clients across differing industries.
Contracting in and gaining access to specialist skills, toolsets and experience only when you need it, can often be a more cost-effective and quality assured tactic. Many companies successfully utilize this approach when there is a need for a CMMS build, optimization, or rehabilitation of a bad build, because it isn’t cost effective to hold a specialist CMMS build team on a company’s overhead to undertake these discrete projects often years apart.
In addition to this, having access to a dedicated, impartial team of specialists to complete the CMMS build on your behalf will help assure you do the right maintenance, at the right time, with the right materials to your own or international (ISO) standards – no more, no less – advised and implemented by independent and highly experienced experts.
2. Access to specialist software and tools to unlock efficiencies in the process
An outsourced team will likely have a suite of helpful, up to date tools and software that they use as part of the build process to unlock efficiencies and optimize costs associated with the build.
At Add Energy, we have developed specialist CMMS build software that adheres to a blockchain approach to managing the end-to-end process of a CMMS build, ensuring data is structured correctly, with maintenance and materials assigned appropriately to equipment so a fully optimized maintenance management regime can be developed and implemented.
Our EffioTM software sits at the heart of our CMMS build and optimization projects. Capable of saving up to 30% on time required to complete a build, this tool ensures a cost-effective, timely and quality solution for achieving your future asset performance goals. From automated tag extraction from engineering drawings, to functional location hierarchy development, maintenance and materials assignment, through to work order scheduling and generation of client-specific CMMS upload templates, this collaborative, cloud-based tool is extremely advantageous for clients looking to save time and costs, without compromising the quality and integrity of a CMMS build solution.
Utilizing such technology also provides the added benefit of real time Management of Control (MoC) and client authorization of data changes.
3. Accuracy and precision from the outset to eliminate risk
Some clients rely on the Engineering, Procurement and Construction Companies (EPCs) to deliver a CMMS build as part of the EPC contract; or at a minimum, supply the data for an in-house CMMS build. In our experience, this can be sub-optimal and costly because of the following reasons:
- The EPC is highly incentivized to deliver the physical asset against tight cost and schedule criteria to meet client production start dates.
- Data is not usually considered a priority deliverable early enough and rarely features on any project or incentivized metrics.
- EPC’s do not generally hold the correct skills in house; and if they do, are constrained by the physical project delivery drivers, internal politics and often start too late in the project lifecycle.
- Poorly written or executed contracts can even have the engineering data delivery constrained to the physical asset delivery. Thus, denying the opportunity for CMMS quality and efficacy validation by the client, meaning the asset starts up with a lower CMMS data confidence. Resulting in a lower reliability, availability and productivity than expected.
- Engineering data to be able to undertake an in-house CMMS build is always late! Meaning the timescales to deliver a quality optimized build are highly constrained and often unachievable. This leads to the asset starting life behind the drag curve in terms of an effective maintenance regime.
In the worst case scenarios, we have seen companies having to pay for a CMMS build twice over or enter into a Preventative Maintenance Optimization (PMO) regime in the first 2-years post start-up, because the quality of the initial build has been so poor, and the consequence and risk associated with not having a proper maintenance management regime in place is too severe.
Using an external specialist company or team that delivers your CMMS build, ensures accuracy and precision from the outset because they know what good looks like, how it is achieved and if necessary, how to tailor it to the client’s own standards.
4. Maintenance optimization is included as standard
Through 3rd party reviews of CMMS builds or when we have been contracted in to rebuild or optimize a maintenance management regime, we have witnessed a common gap in relation to planning and scheduling of maintenance, where significant value and efficiencies can be gained when the build is implemented and “switched on”.
In our experience, planning and scheduling of maintenance work orders through packaging, routing, suppression and sequencing is often missed or not implemented correctly, meaning that the client asset is working with CMMS build that may be effective but isn’t efficient.
This usually manifests itself in under or over maintaining the asset, incorrectly matched work execution and mismatched material resources. At one end of the spectrum, this means a minor delay or inefficient maintenance execution at the other, unnecessary extended downtime whilst resources and materials are obtained or replanned. An over-maintained asset can potentially be just as unreliable as an undermaintained asset. Either way, this has a direct impact on an asset’s efficiency, OPEX and production capability.
By using an external team with significant experience of building and optimizing maintenance management regimes, you can guarantee you’ll not only have the data you need to manage the integrity and reliability of the plant effectively, but you will also have the plan and materials you need to do this efficiently.
5. Benefit from lessons learned gained through extensive experience
By using a specialist team to either supplement the in-house build team or undertake the CMMS build on a client’s behalf, you will benefit from lessons learned gained from projects across multiple types of companies in multiple sectors”.
From Add Energy’s perspective, we remain at the leading edge in this field by incorporating lessons learned from the delivery of hundreds of CMMS build and optimization projects across differing industries. We understand and utilize mitigation tactics to inform our tried and tested processes and tools to ensure they remain up to date and relative to a client’s requirements, so we avoid expected issues and assure a seamless solution.
Companies can also benefit from a collective deep understanding of the common pain points when using external contractors, knowing what best and poor practice looks like, they understand the impact this can have on the safety, integrity, production and efficiency of the plant if not implemented correctly. External contractors bring this knowledge and experience through working in an effective collaborative way to the benefit of their clients.
How ABL can help:
At ABL, our maintenance and integrity consultancy and engineering team has extensive experience in developing, optimizing and implementing CMMS builds for our global clients, across multiple sectors, working in a variety of maintenance management systems.
We offer full flexibility in our approach to delivering CMMS build solutions for new and existing operational plants through the following delivery models:
- Do it for you
- Do it with you
- License our software to you
- Advise you