Maintenance Technology September 2016 - 19

VOICE FROM THE FIELD Lawrence's Best Advice for R&M Professionals "Anticipate potential failures and be prepared to develop and provide solutions prior to their actual occurrences. In the final analysis, you want your customers to never know you were even there because they would never miss a beat. If you are doing your job right, you should be invisible." Gardner added. "We were able to use our assets, our subcontractors, and our vendors to pull together a team with a mission to get something done and make a major correction. If we had not been able to do that, they would have had to send patients in these 140 beds to other facilities for care. You just use your experience and common sense of problem solving to be able to come up with solutions with the right people at the right time. You become a conductor who must conduct an orchestra." Another success story When Gardner arrived at the USA Medical Center seven years ago, there was no building-automation system in place. He took the initiative to apply for the U.S. Department of Energy's (Washington) Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant. Each state was given a percentage of the blockgrant funding. However, states were the recipients and governmental agencies within each state were acceptable applicants with an exception that state universities were not included. "I asked permission from my supervisor to approach the City of Mobile and see if they would apply on our behalf," Gardner said. "When I approached them, they said no because they had projects they wanted to apply for themselves. So, I went to other cities within Mobile and Baldwin counties and asked them if they intended to apply. The majority of them had no idea what I was talking about. I found three who were willing to apply on our behalf." The grant maximum for each applicant was $250,000. Gardner filled out the applications for three cities, attended their council meetings, and made the SEPTEMBER 2016 presentation encouraging them to vote to approve the three awards totaling $750,000 for the Univ. of South Alabama Medical Center. Gardner hand delivered the applications to the Alabama Department of Economic Development. Five months later, he received letters confirming the medical center had received the largest block grant in Alabama. The grant stipulated that 50% would be spent for a building-automation system and 50% would go toward a heat-recovery chiller system to replace 50-year-old steam boilers. "It took us two years to get it all done," Gardner said. "But the building-automation system is the backbone system that covers every building on campus and the majority of the large air-handling equipment. The chiller plant is also covered, so we can go in the computer and see in real time what is going on with these big air handlers. We can pre-program their operations, all their set points, and control the environment through this computer system." The heat-recovery chillers were using energy to produce the chilled plant water. Now, heat that is produced from the hot chillers is extracted from the condensate water. "We basically get free hot water because we have already paid for the energy to make chilled water," Gardner explained. The savings are averaging $300,000 a year, which he says is easily the biggest achievement in energy efficiency in the history of the organization. Gardner and his team have since been able to address other low-hanging fruit. Another energy-efficiency project, conducted in conjunction with Alabama Power, is saving the system $600,000 annually. "Projects like this make me proud because I know that we are really making a difference," he stated. MT Michelle Segrest has been a professional journalist for 27 years. She has covered the industrial processing industries for nine years. If you know of a maintenance and/ or reliability professional who is making a difference at their facility, please drop her an email at michelle@navigatecontent.com. Vibration goes High Definition A new era in vibration monitoring gives you unprecedented pre-warning times SPM - a condition monitoring solution provider - solves maintenance problems across the world in all branches of industry. IMVAC is a MUST ATTEND event for vibration analysts, condition monitoring technicians, and maintenance/reliability managers. SPM is one of the premier sponsors. Please come visit us in booth 10. For more information www.vibrationconference.com OCT 31 - NOV 2, 2016 Orlando, Florida SPM Instrument Inc. Tel. 1-800-505-5636 spminstrument.us MAINTENANCETECHNOLOGY.COM | 19 http://www.vibrationconference.com http://www.vibrationconference.com http://www.spminstrument.us http://www.spminstrument.us http://www.MAINTENANCETECHNOLOGY.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology September 2016