Contracting Considerations, Part 2

A common practice in hiring maintenance contractors is to identify where you need additional resources to complete certain known tasks already in your system.

This practice fails to leverage expertise that various contractors probably have. Consider these two examples:

1. The plant air system was the responsibility of the plant electrical engineer, because the motors for that system are so critical. It took a contractor to identify the need to perform ultrasonic leak detection. The reduced load meant less energy waste and fewer repairs, saving more than $25,000 per year.
2. A plant engineer hired a thermographer, simply because thermography had never been performed at that plant. This led to a discussion about breaker testing, and the resultant project identified half a dozen breakers that needed replacement.

An industrial maintenance services firm has breadth of experience to draw from, and it’s not just their own experience. Their people work in other plants where best practices you may not even know about have already been implemented.

Rather than just hand over some work to a maintenance contractor, get their input on what work should be done, how it should be done, and what test equipment you may be lacking.