Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) is focused on ensuring an asset continues to provide its designed function in its present operating context. Through a number of stages, RCM allows for thorough and constant monitoring of assets to maintain their level of performance, expand life cycle and improve efficiency. A conceptual holistic framework was developed embedding RCM approach and assessing the impact of maintenance strategies in four dimensions: business, functional, legal and context requirements to ensure optimum level of maintenance. A prototype spread-sheet model was developed encapsulating the concept and the model was evaluated using a case study. The preliminary evaluation has shown the potential of the model to realise benefits and improve reliability of the services of the assets to the clients/users. Further research and development is essential in order to calibrate model parameters to specific company requirements as well as to develop a database of assets with failure patterns and monitoring methods

Bralee, Steve

Marasini, Ramesh

English

Bralee, Setve

Solent University Research Portal

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Manufacturing Research (ICMR2014)INTEGRATED RELIABILITY CENTRED MAINTENANCE APPROACH IN PUBLIC SECTOR FACILITIES MANAGEMENT Ramesh MarasiniBuilt Environment Steve BraleeBuilt Environment Southampton Solent University Southampton Solent UniversitySouthampton SouthamptonHampshire, SO14  0YN, UKramesh.marasini@solent.ac.ukHampshire, SO14  0YN, UKsteve.bralee@solent.ac.ukABSTRACTReliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) is focused on ensuring an asset continues to provide its designed function  in its present operating context. Through a number of stages, RCM allows for thorough and constant monitoring of assets to maintain their level of performance, expand life cycle and improve efficiency.  A conceptual holistic framework was developed embedding RCM approach and assessing the impact of maintenance strategies in four dimensions: business, functional, legal and context requirements to ensure optimum level of maintenance. A prototype spread-sheet model was developed encapsulating the concept and the model was evaluated using a case study. The preliminary evaluation has shown the potential of the model to realise benefits and improve reliability of the services of the assets to the clients/users. Further research and development is essential in order to calibrate model parameters to specific company requirements as well as to develop a database of assets with failure patterns and monitoring methods.Keywords: RCM, Facilities Management, Public Contracts.1 INTRODUCTIONThe management of built facilities is a complex process and offers challenges to the managers in deciding on the optimal management strategies when trying to realise several objectives. The objectives include reliability in the use of facility, sustainability factors such as reduction of carbon footprint and minimum operational cost and/or whole life cycle cost. Furthermore, the facilities management decisions are perceived as resource intensive and time consuming where maintenance costs often spiral. Maintenance is a combination of all technical and administrative actions, including supervision actions, intended to retain an item in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform a required function. Over the past forty years, maintenance strategy has changed due to a huge increase in the number and type of physical assets including buildings, which must be maintained without much disruption on the services they provide. One of the new approaches to maintenance is Reliability-centred Maintenance (RCM), which is ‘a process used to determine what must be done to ensure that any physical asset continues to do what its user wants it to do in its operating context’ (Moubray, 1997). Through a number of stages, RCM allows for thorough and constant monitoring, so that an asset maintains a level of performance that expands its life cycle and improves its efficiency. RCM is the optimum mix of reactive, time- or interval-based, condition-based, and proactive maintenance practices (Pride, 2010). The Chartered Institute of Housing (1997) describes the reactive (responsive) maintenance as day-to-day repairs and defines as ‘repairs carried out on an ad hoc responsive basis as the need arises & which can’t be deferred for inclusion in planned maintenance programmes.’  These repairs can be classified as ‘urgent’ if they can not be deferred owing to health & safety, and security. These repairs are initiated when any faults are identified and reported. Planned maintenance or proactive maintenance, as defined by Chartered Institute of Housing (1997), includes the repairs organised and carried out with forethought, control and the use of records to a pre-determined plan. The time- or interval-based or condition-based are other strategies which are either done to comply with legislative requirements or the condition of asset warrants the maintenance. Thus the RCM is a process that is focused on ensuring the continuation of an assets requirement in its 47Marasini and Braleepresent operating context. In general, reliability is the ability of a system to consistently perform its intended or required function or mission, on demand and without degradation or failure. The RCM can achieve this ability by specifically identifying and selecting appropriate maintenance tasks, thus preventing critical failure.RCM gives top priority to safety, security and environmental integrity by systematic reviewing the safety and environmental consequences in each failure modes before any other issues like cost savings.El-Haram & Horner (2003) under the title of integrated logistics system investigated RCM in maintenance of existing housing stock, and concluded that, in particular Failure Mode & Effect Analysis (FMEA) and RCM, provide a robust framework for identifying the most cost-effective and appropriate maintenance strategy for existing building stock. The study suggested that more investigation is required to develop general conclusions. A number of facility management companies provide support for major public sector assets to provide an efficient maintenance program that allows for the reduction of the risk of failure in these critical assets.  The key questions include: • Would the overall cost of outsourcing of critical assets be reduced through efficient RCM regimes?• Is it possible for Facilities Management companies to extend the life of their clients’ assets by undertaking the optimum level of maintenance at the right time, therefore supporting the public sector strategy to reduce capital expenditure?In order to answer the above questions, a case study was conducted and existing RCM application data were collected and analysed. Following the study, a conceptual holistic framework was developed embedding RCM approach and discussed in this paper.2 METHODOLOGYRCM requires maintenance decisions to be supported by sound technical and economic justification (NASA, 2008). So RCM programme can be fully implemented by the following seven steps, which include- 1: system selection and data collection; 2: system boundary definition; 3: system description and functional block; 4: system function functional failures; 5: failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA); 6: logic tree analysis (LTA); 7: task selection. As the collaborating company has implemented RCM on some of its facilities, the evaluation of effectiveness of the existing methods used was considered as a first step of the research. Three different type of buildings were selected in the research. In this paper, a boiler house has been used for discussion.   Preventive and corrective maintenance data for 5 years were collected  for a boiler house, which has been maintained using RCM approach.  For detailed cost evaluation, 13 months data for overall maintenance activities was collected for one of the sites of the collaborating company were collected, which were grouped under their functions such as: Structure, Heating, Electrical, Plumbing, Mechanical, Gas related Works, Communication, Aesthetic etc. as required, then summarised and used for the average for calculations.The processes used in the implementation of RCM was studied and with 7 meetings and 3 half day workshops with managers involved in the management of facilities under public contracts from the collaborating company  were used to develop an integrated model embedding RCM. The developed model will be introduced latter sections. A prototype Excel model was developed encapsulating the conceptual model. The details of the prototype and its validation is not included in the scope of this paper. 3 EVALUATION OF EFFECTIVESS OF RCM APPROACHThe total cost saving after using the RCM in facilities management can be calculated by the following relationship:Total cost saving = Fc + Rc - Pc (1)48Marasini and BraleeWhere,   Fc - Cost associated with the reduction (increment) in interval;Rc - Reactive maintenance cost;           Pc - Cost of planned maintenance.Initial costs in implementing the RCM is high as the cost of reactive maintenance tasks cannot be reduced immediately in comparison with the increment of the cost of condition-based and other planned maintenance tasks. Furthermore the technological tools, training and equipment condition baselines need a high initial investment to apply for a new RCM programme (NASA RCM Guide, 2008). Some applications have paid for themselves in as little as two weeks, although the payback period is usually a matter of months, (Moubray, 1997). Even more, Thompson et al. (1993) presented their research paper stating that the breakeven point of investment of RCM implementation for profit can be achieved after one to two years when the cost of reactive maintenance decreases as failures are prevented and preventive maintenance tasks are replaced by condition monitoring, thus reduces the overall cost of maintenance tasks. So the fully implemented RCM programme can make a significant savings in long run. The graphical presentation of this issue is illustrated in Figure 1. In the long run due to proactive RCM strategy, reactive maintenance activities will be reduced and overall cost of maintenance decreases with increased availability and functionality of facilities.Figure 1: Changing Pattern of Reactive Maintenance to Proactive Planned Maintenance (Source: Thompson et al. 1993).It was not possible to report cost savings through RCM as the cost information for each was not readily available. However, a simple cost analysis of reactive and planned maintenance data collected for 13 months highlighted that on average the cost per maintenance activity through plannedmaintenance was 16% less as compared to that of reactive maintenance. The planned maintenance costs did not include the cost of staff running RCM such as RCM manager’s cost. However, it is fair to say that the savings percentage is higher than the cost of resources needed to implement RCM. The finding supports the published literature that RCM when implemented in its full potential would provide benefits such as reliability, total cost saving, safety and security etc.Figures  3 and 4 show the evaluation of data for a boiler house. The data presented are in line with the expected results as discussed in Figure 2. The proportion of reactive maintenance activities will be less as the RCM application is matured. Figure 3 shows initial cost of planned maintenance is higher in 2009 when RCM was fully adopted for the boiler house, then cost of maintenance has been lower in the following years.  Figure 4 shows that with increase in planned maintenance using RCM, overall maintenance activities have been reduced as expected showing the benefits.  49Marasini and BraleeFigure 2: Cost informationFigure 3: Number of orders for Reactive and Planned Maintenance.The literature highlights that some RCM initiatives failed due to the factors such as: too low levelof analysis, too much emphasis placed on failure data, the superfluous or hurried implementations,over reliance on computer driven processes, involvement of only a few individuals in the organisation or maintenance department/ manufacturers/ equipment vendors attempted to adopt RCM on their own,etc. Brainstorming sessions with managers involved in the RCM process were utilised to identify the ways to overcome the above shortcomings and achieve effective in the implementation of RCM. Thediscussions highlighted that the effective application of RCM would require considerations of business requirements, the context of the use of the facility and legal requirements in addition to the functional requirements of the facility. The following section introduces an integrated approach developed in the study to manage built facilities effectively.50Marasini and Bralee4 INTEGRATED RCM APPROACHThe concept of the all four dimensions of any system/component is accommodated in the model developed through the complete life cycle of the asset. The detail architecture of the model presented in Figure 4 included four dimensions of analysis: Business, Context, Legal and Functional requirements.  The business requirement of a component/system is decided by the impact assessment and the maintenance strategies and policies adopted for it. Similarly the contextual requirement of the component /system is decided mainly by the its use pattern by the users. The legislative value of the component / system is decided by the current acts, legislations, directives and terms and conditions of a contract. The functional requirement of any component / system can be found out by inspection, survey, and condition monitoring of the component / system. This is mainly performed using the RCM approach.Figure 4: Detailed Architecture of an integrated RCM modelTo select suitable facility or a component within the facility for planned maintenance using RCM, two stage approach is used as shown in Figure 8. In stage 1, using criticality evaluation of all four dimensions of the facility under consideration, whether full scale RCM analysis is required or not and what strategy will be suitable is established. If the item/system falls in the category of non-critical, no further analysis is sought, it is allowed to ‘Run-to Failure’ for reactive maintenance task. If the component/item/system falls in the category of critical and less critical, the second stage analysis is compulsory to identify planned and preventive maintenance tasks and its interval. The second stage analysis is carried out as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) or Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) as described. Some less critical items will be selected for ‘Run-to-Failure’ strategy and some, to the planned preventive maintenance strategy. This allows the companies to focus more on critical asset and do right maintenance at right time. Once maintenance activities are identified, it is seen essential to work out the economical and compliant maintenance interval in a systematic manner.  For the reactive maintenance activities, clear identification of response time and development of guidelines for their execution would enhance the effectiveness of the facilities management.A prototype spread-sheet model was developed encapsulating the concept and the model was evaluated through a case study, details not included here. The prototype required further testing and validation, the initial evaluation of the model has shown that the developed integrated model allows51Marasini and BraleeFM companies to test and identify possible strategies for long term management of the assets with confidence so that they would be able to offer clients improved and reliable services. Further research and development is essential in order to calibrate model parameters to specific company requirements as well as to develop a database of assets with failure patterns and monitoring methods.Figure 5: Two stage analysis to select maintenance strategies using RCM5 CONCLUSIONS Through the data analysis using a case study, it was justified that the use of RCM in public buildings could bring savings in maintenance cost up to 16% as compared to reactive maintenance. During the period of implementation and monitoring of the RCM strategy, the cost of reactive maintenance decreases as failures are prevented and the time-based preventive maintenance tasks are gradually replaced by condition-based preventive maintenance  tasks. The break-even point starts after one/two years and gradually increases by minimising the cost of reactive maintenance and time-based preventive maintenance tasks. Through a case study and brain storming sessions with managers involved in the management of public sector facilities,   an integrated RCM model was developed with clear provisions of criteria on business, function, context and legal aspects that makes decisions on maintenance strategy. It is envisaged that the integrated model presented will support FM companies to be able to assess the impact of maintenance strategies in four dimensions: business, functional, legal and context requirements to ensure optimum level of maintenance. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe authors would like to acknowledge the funding provided by Babcock International and Research and Enterprise funding from Southampton Solent University.REFERENCESChartered Institute of Housing. 1997. Planned Maintenance and Improvements. Good Practice Briefing 09. Coventry. El-Haram, M A and Horner, R M W. 2003. Application of the principles of ILS to the development of cost effective maintenance strategies for existing building stock. Construction Management and Economics, 21(3):283–296Moubray, J. 1997. Reliability Centred Maintenance, 2nd Edition, Industrial  Press, New York.NASA 2008. Reliability-Centered Maintenance Guide for Facilities and Collateral Equipment.Available via < http://www.wbdg.org/resources/rcm.php> [ accessed April 05, 2012].Pride, A. 2010. Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM):Whole Building Design Guide. Available via <http://www.wbdg.org/resources/rcm.php> [accessed January 21, 2012].Thompson, R. L., et al. 1993. Taking the Forties Field to 2010, BP Exploration, Presented at SPE International Offshore European Conference, Aberdeen Scotland. 52

Integrated reliability centred maintenance approach in public sector facilities management

Bucks New University: Bucks Knowledge Archive

Solent Electronic Archive

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Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Manufacturing Research (ICMR2014)
INTEGRATED RELIABILITY CENTRED MAINTENANCE APPROACH IN PUBLIC 
SECTOR FACILITIES MANAGEMENT 
Ramesh Marasini
Built Environment 
Steve Bralee
Built Environment 
Southampton Solent University Southampton Solent University
Southampton Southampton
Hampshire, SO14  0YN, UK
ramesh.marasini@solent.ac.uk
Hampshire, SO14  0YN, UK
steve.bralee@solent.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) is focused on ensuring an asset continues to provide its 
designed function  in its present operating context. Through a number of stages, RCM allows for 
thorough and constant monitoring of assets to maintain their level of performance, expand life cycle 
and improve efficiency.  A conceptual holistic framework was developed embedding RCM approach 
and assessing the impact of maintenance strategies in four dimensions: business, functional, legal and 
context requirements to ensure optimum level of maintenance. A prototype spread-sheet model was 
developed encapsulating the concept and the model was evaluated using a case study. The preliminary 
evaluation has shown the potential of the model to realise benefits and improve reliability of the 
services of the assets to the clients/users. Further research and development is essential in order to 
calibrate model parameters to specific company requirements as well as to develop a database of 
assets with failure patterns and monitoring methods.
Keywords: RCM, Facilities Management, Public Contracts.
1 INTRODUCTION
The management of built facilities is a complex process and offers challenges to the managers in 
deciding on the optimal management strategies when trying to realise several objectives. The 
objectives include reliability in the use of facility, sustainability factors such as reduction of carbon 
footprint and minimum operational cost and/or whole life cycle cost. Furthermore, the facilities 
management decisions are perceived as resource intensive and time consuming where maintenance 
costs often spiral. Maintenance is a combination of all technical and administrative actions, including 
supervision actions, intended to retain an item in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform a 
required function. Over the past forty years, maintenance strategy has changed due to a huge increase 
in the number and type of physical assets including buildings, which must be maintained without 
much disruption on the services they provide. One of the new approaches to maintenance is 
Reliability-centred Maintenance (RCM), which is ‘a process used to determine what must be done to 
ensure that any physical asset continues to do what its user wants it to do in its operating context’ 
(Moubray, 1997). Through a number of stages, RCM allows for thorough and constant monitoring, so 
that an asset maintains a level of performance that expands its life cycle and improves its efficiency. 
RCM is the optimum mix of reactive, time- or interval-based, condition-based, and proactive 
maintenance practices (Pride, 2010). The Chartered Institute of Housing (1997) describes the reactive 
(responsive) maintenance as day-to-day repairs and defines as ‘repairs carried out on an ad hoc 
responsive basis as the need arises & which can’t be deferred for inclusion in planned maintenance 
programmes.’  These repairs can be classified as ‘urgent’ if they can not be deferred owing to health 
& safety, and security. These repairs are initiated when any faults are identified and reported. Planned 
maintenance or proactive maintenance, as defined by Chartered Institute of Housing (1997), includes 
the repairs organised and carried out with forethought, control and the use of records to a pre-
determined plan. The time- or interval-based or condition-based are other strategies which are either 
done to comply with legislative requirements or the condition of asset warrants the maintenance. Thus 
the RCM is a process that is focused on ensuring the continuation of an assets requirement in its 
47
Marasini and Bralee
present operating context. In general, reliability is the ability of a system to consistently perform its 
intended or required function or mission, on demand and without degradation or failure. The RCM 
can achieve this ability by specifically identifying and selecting appropriate maintenance tasks, thus 
preventing critical failure.RCM gives top priority to safety, security and environmental integrity by 
systematic reviewing the safety and environmental consequences in each failure modes before any 
other issues like cost savings.
El-Haram & Horner (2003) under the title of integrated logistics system investigated RCM in 
maintenance of existing housing stock, and concluded that, in particular Failure Mode & Effect 
Analysis (FMEA) and RCM, provide a robust framework for identifying the most cost-effective and 
appropriate maintenance strategy for existing building stock. The study suggested that more 
investigation is required to develop general conclusions. 
A number of facility management companies provide support for major public sector assets to 
provide an efficient maintenance program that allows for the reduction of the risk of failure in these 
critical assets.  The key questions include: 
• Would the overall cost of outsourcing of critical assets be reduced through efficient RCM 
regimes?
• Is it possible for Facilities Management companies to extend the life of their clients’ assets by 
undertaking the optimum level of maintenance at the right time, therefore supporting the 
public sector strategy to reduce capital expenditure?
In order to answer the above questions, a case study was conducted and existing RCM application 
data were collected and analysed. Following the study, a conceptual holistic framework was 
developed embedding RCM approach and discussed in this paper.
2 METHODOLOGY
RCM requires maintenance decisions to be supported by sound technical and economic justification 
(NASA, 2008). So RCM programme can be fully implemented by the following seven steps, which 
include- 1: system selection and data collection; 2: system boundary definition; 3: system 
description and functional block; 4: system function functional failures; 5: failure mode and effect 
analysis (FMEA); 6: logic tree analysis (LTA); 7: task selection. As the collaborating company has 
implemented RCM on some of its facilities, the evaluation of effectiveness of the existing methods 
used was considered as a first step of the research. Three different type of buildings were selected in 
the research. In this paper, a boiler house has been used for discussion.   
Preventive and corrective maintenance data for 5 years were collected  for a boiler house, which 
has been maintained using RCM approach.  For detailed cost evaluation, 13 months data for overall 
maintenance activities was collected for one of the sites of the collaborating company were collected, 
which were grouped under their functions such as: Structure, Heating, Electrical, Plumbing, 
Mechanical, Gas related Works, Communication, Aesthetic etc. as required, then summarised and 
used for the average for calculations.
The processes used in the implementation of RCM was studied and with 7 meetings and 3 half 
day workshops with managers involved in the management of facilities under public contracts from 
the collaborating company  were used to develop an integrated model embedding RCM. The 
developed model will be introduced latter sections. A prototype Excel model was developed 
encapsulating the conceptual model. The details of the prototype and its validation is not included in 
the scope of this paper. 
3 EVALUATION OF EFFECTIVESS OF RCM APPROACH
The total cost saving after using the RCM in facilities management can be calculated by the 
following relationship:
Total cost saving = Fc + Rc - Pc (1)
48
Marasini and Bralee
Where,   Fc - Cost associated with the reduction (increment) in interval;
Rc - Reactive maintenance cost;           
Pc - Cost of planned maintenance.
Initial costs in implementing the RCM is high as the cost of reactive maintenance tasks cannot be 
reduced immediately in comparison with the increment of the cost of condition-based and other 
planned maintenance tasks. Furthermore the technological tools, training and equipment condition 
baselines need a high initial investment to apply for a new RCM programme (NASA RCM Guide, 
2008). Some applications have paid for themselves in as little as two weeks, although the payback 
period is usually a matter of months, (Moubray, 1997). Even more, Thompson et al. (1993) presented 
their research paper stating that the breakeven point of investment of RCM implementation for profit 
can be achieved after one to two years when the cost of reactive maintenance decreases as failures are 
prevented and preventive maintenance tasks are replaced by condition monitoring, thus reduces the 
overall cost of maintenance tasks. So the fully implemented RCM programme can make a significant 
savings in long run. The graphical presentation of this issue is illustrated in Figure 1. In the long run 
due to proactive RCM strategy, reactive maintenance activities will be reduced and overall cost of 
maintenance decreases with increased availability and functionality of facilities.
Figure 1: Changing Pattern of Reactive Maintenance to Proactive Planned Maintenance (Source: 
Thompson et al. 1993).
It was not possible to report cost savings through RCM as the cost information for each was not 
readily available. However, a simple cost analysis of reactive and planned maintenance data collected 
for 13 months highlighted that on average the cost per maintenance activity through planned
maintenance was 16% less as compared to that of reactive maintenance. The planned maintenance 
costs did not include the cost of staff running RCM such as RCM manager’s cost. However, it is fair 
to say that the savings percentage is higher than the cost of resources needed to implement RCM. The 
finding supports the published literature that RCM when implemented in its full potential would 
provide benefits such as reliability, total cost saving, safety and security etc.
Figures  3 and 4 show the evaluation of data for a boiler house. The data presented are in line with 
the expected results as discussed in Figure 2. The proportion of reactive maintenance activities will be 
less as the RCM application is matured. Figure 3 shows initial cost of planned maintenance is higher 
in 2009 when RCM was fully adopted for the boiler house, then cost of maintenance has been lower 
in the following years.  Figure 4 shows that with increase in planned maintenance using RCM, overall 
maintenance activities have been reduced as expected showing the benefits.  
49
Marasini and Bralee
Figure 2: Cost information
Figure 3: Number of orders for Reactive and Planned Maintenance.
The literature highlights that some RCM initiatives failed due to the factors such as: too low level
of analysis, too much emphasis placed on failure data, the superfluous or hurried implementations,
over reliance on computer driven processes, involvement of only a few individuals in the organisation 
or maintenance department/ manufacturers/ equipment vendors attempted to adopt RCM on their own,
etc. Brainstorming sessions with managers involved in the RCM process were utilised to identify the 
ways to overcome the above shortcomings and achieve effective in the implementation of RCM. The
discussions highlighted that the effective application of RCM would require considerations of 
business requirements, the context of the use of the facility and legal requirements in addition to the 
functional requirements of the facility. The following section introduces an integrated approach 
developed in the study to manage built facilities effectively.
50
Marasini and Bralee
4 INTEGRATED RCM APPROACH
The concept of the all four dimensions of any system/component is accommodated in the model 
developed through the complete life cycle of the asset. The detail architecture of the model presented 
in Figure 4 included four dimensions of analysis: Business, Context, Legal and Functional 
requirements.  The business requirement of a component/system is decided by the impact assessment 
and the maintenance strategies and policies adopted for it. Similarly the contextual requirement of 
the component /system is decided mainly by the its use pattern by the users. The legislative value of 
the component / system is decided by the current acts, legislations, directives and terms and 
conditions of a contract. The functional requirement of any component / system can be found out by 
inspection, survey, and condition monitoring of the component / system. This is mainly performed 
using the RCM approach.
Figure 4: Detailed Architecture of an integrated RCM model
To select suitable facility or a component within the facility for planned maintenance using RCM, two 
stage approach is used as shown in Figure 8. In stage 1, using criticality evaluation of all four 
dimensions of the facility under consideration, whether full scale RCM analysis is required or not and 
what strategy will be suitable is established. If the item/system falls in the category of non-critical, no 
further analysis is sought, it is allowed to ‘Run-to Failure’ for reactive maintenance task. If the 
component/item/system falls in the category of critical and less critical, the second stage analysis is 
compulsory to identify planned and preventive maintenance tasks and its interval. The second stage 
analysis is carried out as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) or Failure Modes, Effects and 
Criticality Analysis (FMECA) as described. Some less critical items will be selected for ‘Run-to-
Failure’ strategy and some, to the planned preventive maintenance strategy. This allows the 
companies to focus more on critical asset and do right maintenance at right time. Once maintenance 
activities are identified, it is seen essential to work out the economical and compliant maintenance 
interval in a systematic manner.  For the reactive maintenance activities, clear identification of 
response time and development of guidelines for their execution would enhance the effectiveness of 
the facilities management.
A prototype spread-sheet model was developed encapsulating the concept and the model was 
evaluated through a case study, details not included here. The prototype required further testing and 
validation, the initial evaluation of the model has shown that the developed integrated model allows
51
Marasini and Bralee
FM companies to test and identify possible strategies for long term management of the assets with 
confidence so that they would be able to offer clients improved and reliable services. Further research 
and development is essential in order to calibrate model parameters to specific company requirements 
as well as to develop a database of assets with failure patterns and monitoring methods.
Figure 5: Two stage analysis to select maintenance strategies using RCM
5 CONCLUSIONS 
Through the data analysis using a case study, it was justified that the use of RCM in public buildings 
could bring savings in maintenance cost up to 16% as compared to reactive maintenance. During the 
period of implementation and monitoring of the RCM strategy, the cost of reactive maintenance 
decreases as failures are prevented and the time-based preventive maintenance tasks are gradually 
replaced by condition-based preventive maintenance  tasks. The break-even point starts after one/two 
years and gradually increases by minimising the cost of reactive maintenance and time-based 
preventive maintenance tasks. Through a case study and brain storming sessions with managers 
involved in the management of public sector facilities,   an integrated RCM model was developed 
with clear provisions of criteria on business, function, context and legal aspects that makes decisions 
on maintenance strategy. It is envisaged that the integrated model presented will support FM 
companies to be able to assess the impact of maintenance strategies in four dimensions: business, 
functional, legal and context requirements to ensure optimum level of maintenance. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the funding provided by Babcock International and Research 
and Enterprise funding from Southampton Solent University.
REFERENCES
Chartered Institute of Housing. 1997. Planned Maintenance and Improvements. Good Practice 
Briefing 09. Coventry. 
El-Haram, M A and Horner, R M W. 2003. Application of the principles of ILS to the development of 
cost effective maintenance strategies for existing building stock. Construction Management and 
Economics, 21(3):283–296
Moubray, J. 1997. Reliability Centred Maintenance, 2nd Edition, Industrial  Press, New York.
NASA 2008. Reliability-Centered Maintenance Guide for Facilities and Collateral Equipment.
Available via < http://www.wbdg.org/resources/rcm.php> [ accessed April 05, 2012].
Pride, A. 2010. Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM):Whole Building Design Guide. Available 
via <http://www.wbdg.org/resources/rcm.php> [accessed January 21, 2012].
Thompson, R. L., et al. 1993. Taking the Forties Field to 2010, BP Exploration, Presented at SPE 
International Offshore European Conference, Aberdeen Scotland. 
52


Application of the principles of ILS to the development of cost effective maintenance strategies for existing building stock.

of Housing.

Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM):Whole Building Design Guide. Available via [accessed

Reliability-Centered Maintenance Guide for Facilities and Collateral Equipment.

Taking the Forties Field to 2010, BP Exploration,

Integrated reliability centred maintenance approach in public sector facilities management.

https://pure.solent.ac.uk/ws/files/10162944/Marasini_bralee_icmr_proceedings_2014.pdf

Integrated reliability centred maintenance approach in public sector facilities management.

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