AN ASSET MANAGEMENT TOOL, LAUNCHED IN 2005, promises to bring significant benefits to the global property management market. Knowledge-Based Asset Integrity (KBAI) has been developed by Knowledge Based Management Ltd (KBM), a joint venture business between Texas-based integrity services business Lloyd’s Register Capstone Inc, a member of the Lloyd’s Register Group, and WSP Group plc, the global property, transport and infrastructure, and environmental company.
KBM’s MD, Paul Scott, saw that technology widely used in petrochemical industries around the world had considerable potential for the property and infrastructure markets. Following three years of research and development, Scott piloted KBAI with the Royal Mail Group, for which WSP was already running a property helpdesk service to manage its estate of some 2,500 buildings throughout the UK.
“One of the pilot studies was carried out on the organisation’s lifts,” says Scott. “The results showed significantly-reduced maintenance costs, improved lift availability and enhanced planning and recording of maintenance activities.”
Pilot
The pilot programme was intended to reduce the operational costs and the reactive workload of managing over 500 critical elevators and lifts. Over a six-month period, Royal Mail reduced its planned maintenance costs by over 50 per cent and reduced breakdowns in the systems by 50 per cent using the KBAI software.
KBAI provides asset managers and engineers with the knowledge to make correct and timely decisions about the assets they control. It helps reduce costs, improve availability of critical assets, implement optimal maintenance plans, and provide full compliance with all regulatory requirements. With the success of the programme, KBM is working to develop the technology for use across a range of industries in the management of other classes of assets.
The success of KBAI in the Royal Mail project has led to the implementation of the technology and principles to a number of critical asset families within Royal Mail’s property estate. “It is not often that you come across truly innovative ideas such as this in the field of asset management,” says Keith Elliott, head of facilities management, Royal Mail. “KBAI has proven itself as a cost-effective means of managing risk across large-scale asset bases.”
“It has been a rewarding experience to translate technology from the oil-and-gas business into a new business sector in a way that has created high value for facilities management,” says John Aller, president of Lloyd’s Register Capstone. “We are confident KBAI will have application across the entire industry sector served by Lloyd’s Register.”
According to Scott, “KBAI is designed for assets that require regular maintenance. It applies risk analysis methods to help people understand where their operational assets lie, and establishes a proactive inspection and maintenance plan based on the likelihood and consequence of an asset failure. This is more cost-effective than the traditional programmes which perform maintenance to a set schedule, as it removes redundant maintenance activity and focuses effort and resources where they can have the most beneficial impact.”
Reduced breakdowns
At the Royal Mail the task was to reduce the operational costs and the reactive workload of managing more than 500 lifts within its asset portfolio. Within six months this resulted in increased availability of critical lift systems due to a 50 per cent reduction in breakdowns. Planned maintenance costs were also reduced by over 50 per cent over the same period, with no lessening of service.
Aside from the direct impact on the bottom line, Royal Mail also obtained a number of non- financial advantages from the initial project:
- A demonstrated ability to introduce innovation and change to the management of its property portfolio based on customer requirements
- The change being recognised outside Royal Mail by its peers and evidenced by gaining the PFM Award for the Partners in Expert Services in 2004 for its work on KBAI with KBM, and other blue chip companies following Royal Mail’s lead and implementing KBAI technology
As Scott explained, “We are finding on these projects that it takes between six to 18 months for delivery of the projects. Most people will see a payback in 12 months.”
However, he was emphatic that the focus is on adding value to people’s businesses, not on cost. “The KBAI approach is not applicable to every asset and it’s different for each client. The technology learns and improves, and is part of a business for the long term. We are a value driven organisation — we are delivering value. We focus on the business requirement and also on what is likely to fail. More attention is paid to components likely to fail. The focus is on the use of an asset — people understand something that’s used more than another is likely to have the potential of more breakdowns.”
There are about 7.9 million lifts in operation worldwide. The traditional way of looking at lifts, for example, is to model failure modes, gather failure data over three to five years and then apply risk. “We’re coming to the end of that process,” says Scott. “We are concentrating on what takes five years to under five months. It’s about managing what is maintainable.”
The software developed for KBAI uses the SOA approach (service-oriented architecture) so it can hook into other applications. SOA is a set of architectural and design principles that can be regarded as a standard way of calling a computer program that could be located on another platform.
By using tools that create web service ‘wrappers’ for existing applications, crossplatform integration can be achieved much more painlessly than hitherto. Mounted on Hewlett- Packard servers in the US, the software is Microsoft based and makes extensive use of Internet Protocol (IP) for communications.
Other assets
As a result of the Royal Mail programme, a number of other blue chip facilities and infrastructure companies are following Royal Mail’s lead in implementing KBAI technology. Among these isa project on part of the assets belonging to the Highways Agency of the UK.
Other assets under review (globally) include heating, lighting, conveyors, air filters, chillers (which comprise compressors, pumps, heat exchangers, etc). “Our goal is to have a model for every asset in the built environment,” says Scott.
Looking at risk, Scott’s work concerns the business impact in pounds/dollars/euros per event happening. You can talk to a business properly when armed with such information. There’s been a focus on savings — on cashable and non-cashable benefits. You can save 10 times the cost of maintenance savings in terms of business benefit. “This may be business improvement not necessarily cashable benefits. It’s difficult to measure, and quite subjective — you have to understand how to get there.”
With the public sector and Gershon efficiency targets, how will organisations demonstrate efficiency? “We can help them,” says Scott. “In fact many are in discussions with us, mostly on maintenance targets. These are being justified in terms of money, definitely non-cashable benefits.”
Frank Booty is a freelance writer.
