The Smithsonian Institution (SI) contains 12 million square feet located within 769 maintained facilities and structures of varying size, age and architectural variety in eight states, Washington, DC, and Panama.
Our facilities include:
- 19 museums,
- nine active research centers with laboratories and dormitories,
- state-of-the-art storage and restoration facilities, and
- venues for public and private gatherings.
A majority of SI equipment assets are operating past or fast approaching the end of their life cycle, with an average age of 30 years. We have a depleted work force and have not received maintenance budget increases large enough to meet our maintenance needs. To head off the catastrophic consequences of multiple equipment failures, we defined a 4 point maintenance program that first and foremost is reliability centered maintenance (RCM) based, includes preventive maintenance, periodic testing and inspection (PT&I), and programmed maintenance. RCM focuses on identifying and establishing the operational, maintenance, and capital improvement policies that will manage the risks of equipment failure most effectively.
RCM was developed by the airline industry in the 1960s to reduce the cost of their strategy of periodic overhaul of planes coupled with costly repairs and improve reliability and safety. Airlines found that performing maintenance just because the calendar says you should did not improve safety records or reliability, and in some cases introduced more failure. Instead they developed what is now called RCM, which determines the functions of the asset; studies how an asset fails, what causes those failures and the consequences of each failure. A maintenance strategy including tasks and intervals, and possible workarounds if there are no preventive tasks to be found, is developed from those studies. RCM is kept live throughout the life of the equipment, where the effectiveness of the maintenance is kept under constant review and adjusted as conditions change. Other industries adopted RCM after noting its success with the airlines.
Though we do not have a tangible product or production bottom line as other industries have, we do produce a tightly controlled environment that is critical to protecting our one-of-a-kind treasures of artistic, historical and scientific significance and adds to the enjoyment of our 25 million annual visitors. We use RCM technologies and analysis to maintain what we have as well as to commission new equipment and systems installed during repair, in new construction, and as part of major renovation. Our efforts ensure that new equipment is installed properly, including precision alignment of critical assets, and is running at optimum efficiency.
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| Smithsonian Castle, Washington, DC.. The use of infrared technology is a key component of Reliability Centered Maintenance. |
We also use RCM to re-commission environmental systems to help keep them operating as close to original design parameters as possible. Our work includes an extensive point-to-point survey and recommendations to return the system to design operation. This work directly results in significant improvements in our ability to keep environmental conditions in our facilities within prescribed tight operating bands to protect our artifacts.
(Note: The infrared image of the Smithsonian Institution’s Castle building is an example of Infrared Thermography, a key component of SI’s Reliability Centered Maintenance program).
Contact:
Daren Kennedy
Reliability Branch Manager
Office of Facilities Engineering and Operations
Smithsonian Institution
kennedyd@si.edu
