Development of operation and maintenance strategy for hospitality engineering systems

Abstract

Hotel is a complex place with very dynamic operation, where the availability of the building services systems is an essential element in support of the business activities and effective maintenance is critical to enable the systems to perform efficiently. This study is to explore the maintenance practices associated with energy and environmental performance in hotels. It also examines the maintenance problems and develops a strategic scheme of maintenance decision making for effective use of resources. By working with a hotel maintenance team for two years under a Teaching Company Scheme, in-depth investigations into the operating modes and maintenance approach of all main plants were carried out. Operational control procedures for the significant environmental aspects were established and applied to the hotel. The model named COMEE is established to explain the relationship among the cost, operation, maintenance, energy and environment, and a concept of five strategic bases of maintenance is built for development of maintenance programme. By a comprehensive questionnaire survey, a study of current maintenance practices was conducted to find out the arrangement of maintenance workforce, operation and maintenance expenditures, use of multi-skilling and computerised maintenance management systems in hotels. Consensus on the key factors leading to well-developed maintenance strategy and decision on utilisation of in-house maintenance team or outsourcing maintenance tasks was identified. Maintenance management audits were undertaken to provide an insight into the effectiveness of maintenance performance in hotels. Along with detailed field investigations taken in a representative hotel, daily load profiles of electricity and fuel use, energy performance lines showing the dependence of energy consumption on weather conditions, hotel occupancy rates and number of food covers are generated and discussed. Allocation of maintenance resources and common failure modes are identified. Impacts of maintenance process and energy use on the environmental performance are reported and the means of solution are recommended. A scheme of maintenance decision making is developed and perceived as a strategic tool to enable effective use of maintenance resources and improve system performance. The application of the scheme associated with a process of subsystem prioritisation and determination of appropriate maintenance strategy is demonstrated through a case study. General problems in development of maintenance schedules are introduced. Several mathematical models leading to cost optimisation for inspection, repair, overhaul and replacement are reviewed and analysed. Models of optimal preventive replacement intervals for both repairable and non-repairable items with Weibull life distribution are established. Two inspection models based on improvement factor and inter-inspection hazard are examined. Characteristics of the model solutions and application for hospitality engineering systems are illustrated by numerical examples. Lastly, performance indicators for measuring the maintenance effectiveness are addressed and applied in the representative hotel studied to demonstrate assessment of the maintenance performance for further improvement.