RECAP | ROUNDTABLE - Responding to extraordinary events – a look at deferred maintenance

Participants from Europe joined the Roundtable “Responding to extraordinary events - looking at deferred maintenance” to discuss the challenges and solutions they have found and implemented during this time.
To begin the roundtable a summary of the current status of what Uptime Institute has seen regarding Maintenance plans during COVID-19 was presented
• Global Pandemic has impacted organisations preventative maintenance plans, both from conscious owner and operator decisions and also regarding the availability of Vendor support
• Industry feedback from Uptime Institute briefings and feedback sessions indicate that the majority of organisations are managing the impact to their maintenance activities
• Various processes implemented to minimise risk, increase of equipment monitoring and training of in-house resource
Nick Archer – Senior Consultant, began the Roundtable discussion by reiterating that while individual organisations reasoning for planning, or being forced to, defer maintenance are understandable, any deferring of maintenance creates increased risk to Datacenter operations and so should be avoided.
The discussions then moved to what challenges those joining on the call had faced. One UK-based operator confirmed that their method had been to realise the potential issue early on and plan accordingly. By establishing full plans for all eventualities, before official lockdown began, including the potential that all maintenance would have to be postponed, they were able to overcome any challenges. Because of this planning their maintenance plans have not been affected, and indeed some planned maintenance has been brought forward. The key to being able achieve this during these uncertain times was the ability for create an organisational structure with the facility team the supported the plan, i.e. A and B teams, one for carrying out the maintenance and one for carrying out the day to day running of the facility, and crucially never letting them mix in the work environment.
One participant noted that while pre-planning had meant maintenance could take place as planned, when it came to completing new installations there had been issues obtaining spare parts, due to supply chain and vendor availability.
Overall the outcome of the discussion highlighted 3 main areas of agreement on Maintenance plans during Extraordinary times:
• Being proactive with full planning is key and include all vendors and external agencies that are key to those plans.
• Establishing good relationships with your vendors at all times helps during difficult times, clear communication at all times allows possible issues to be identified earlier and solutions found
• Many of the hygiene practices brought in during COVID-19 for both in-house resource and 3rd party vendors will remain, SOP’s need to be amended to reflect this.