Leveraging maintenance to minimise operational risk and costs

System redundancy is a common design element in the water utilities industry. While this protects plant performance, it can also mask the risk and cost impact of poor maintenance.

Without ‘obvious’ breakdowns to drive improvements in maintenance, the maintenance philosophy can become neglected. The life being obtained from the equipment, however, plays a significant part in the return on investment of the assets. When equipment wears out prematurely, not only is maintenance cost affected, but spares levels need to be higher and labour - which can be used for improvement - needs to be utilised for repair.

ABB studies on water industries have found an average of 40% of work orders are preventable, and 22% of those were due to inadequate maintenance. Not only will an effective maintenance program reduce the need to replace or repair equipment, but it will increase the confidence that spare equipment will be in an operating condition when called upon and free up resource to progress improvement plans.

Effective maintenance, therefore, provides an opportunity to better manage and reduce maintenance costs, saves on capital cost through a reduced need for redundancy, and increased confidence that the backup unit will start when called upon.