Reliability in Facility Design - Amazon S3 · RELIABILITY for a simpler system. RELIABILITY designers should have broad skills and knowledge of the processes within a facility. Most

A SunCam online continuing education course

Reliability in Facility Design

by

Daniel L. Spradling, P.E.



www.SunCam.com Copyright 2011 Daniel L. Spradling, P.E. Page 2 of 23

Course Description: The purpose of this training seminar is to familiarize the student with typical RELIABILITY design criteria and their application to the facilities and buildings system industry. This seminar provides high level orientation for the architect or engineer with ample references for deeper study. The learning objective is to provide the design professional instruction on RELIABILITY design philosophies within facilities. This seminar has a healthy dose of core multi discipline information to orient the designer toward thinking holistically about RELIABILITY. No outside resource materials or prerequisite courses are required. This is not a formulistic seminar and calculations are not necessary. The technical topic is presented in a narrative manner and hopefully, in a thought provoking style. Although some facilities and building systems knowledge is helpful, general definitions and examples are included. As with any continuing education course, this document is a living document. Any and all feedback, recommendations and correctional input is greatly appreciated. Updated photographs, examples and commentary are beneficial to all.




Course Outline: Introduction Definitions and Terms RELIABILITY Design RELIABILITY Classification

Class I Class II Class III

Facility Design Criteria Design for Maintenance and Repair Robust Design versus Over-Design Design for Access and Handling

Summary and Review Further Study and Reference Examination




Introduction: The intent of this seminar is to augment the Federal, State, Regional, and Local Design Guidelines for facilities with regard to code required minimum standards with thought provoking ideas concerning RELIABILITY for building systems and their components. A healthy discussion on definitions and terms common to reliability will be included. This portion is to aid the diverse architectural and engineering disciplines associated with facilities and building systems with the terminology of the RELIABILITY design criteria. One term of high importance is RELIABILITY. RELIABILITY will be defined and its classifications will be discussed. Examples of each classification will be included. The RELIABILITY design criteria will then be transposed upon the facility’s design. Items such as location, expansion, systems, and maintenance will be presented. The next step is application of the RELIABILITY principles on to the facility design. Specific topics such as listed below will be presented using a RELIABILITY CENTERED DESIGN basis.

Design for Maintenance and Repair Robust Design versus Over-Design Design for Access and Handling

Finally, an examination on the course content will be included.




Definitions: RELIABILITY – A measurement of the ability of a component to perform its designated function without failure. RELIBILITY pertains to system components and the maintainability of those components. REDUNDANCY - simply having a backup. The backup can be a component or can also be a plan. Basically, redundancy gives the facility the ability to operate when any single component fails without harming the operational function of the facility. A prime example is a power generator. Typically, the generator is a redundant power source to the local utility. MARGIN - the difference between the capacity of a building system and the actual usage. An elevator may have the capacity of 2500 pounds, but may only be used for typically lifting 1000 pounds. The margin is the difference. HVAC – acronym. HVAC is the acronym for Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning.




RELIABILITY Design: RELIABILITY design is a field that designs with the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions. RELIABILITY is often measured with terms such as probability of failure, mean time between failures, measure of availability, and maintainability. RELIABILITY design for complex systems requires a more elaborate systems approach than RELIABILITY for a simpler system. RELIABILITY designers should have broad skills and knowledge of the processes within a facility. Most industries do not have specialized RELIABILITY designers, and the RELIABILITY task becomes a part of the design architect/engineer’s responsibility. Basically, RELIABILITY design is mainly concerned with costs. It relates events that transform into a particular level of revenue loss for the client. These costs can be due to loss of production, loss of use, man-hours, etc. Any event that keeps a facility from properly operating is costing the client and needs to be remediated. It is the function of the RELIABILITY designer to minimize these events, and thus minimize the costs. RELIABILITY design is an emerging discipline that refers to the process of including RELIABILITY into products and systems. One of the most important design techniques is redundancy or backup. This means that if one part of the system fails, there is an alternate path, such as a backup system. The reason why this is the preferred choice is related to the fact that to provide absolute RELIABILITY is often very costly. By creating redundancy, along with a high level of control and the avoidance of common mode failures, any system can be made reasonably reliable to the task. Typically, RELIABILITY is classified into three main categories.

Class I – High RELIABILITY Class II – Medium RELIABILITY Class III – Low RELIABILITY




RELIABILITY Classification: Generally, facilities have RELIABILITY classifications within the three following categories. Class I – (High RELIABILITY) Facilities that are necessary for the public health are in this

category. Facilities such as fire stations, police stations, and evacuation shelters are in this category. The photos below show typical fire stations. Since first responders have a need for high RELIABILITY in their facilities, designers of such buildings should take extra care to accommodate the operational needs.




RELIABILITY Classification (continued): Class II – (Medium RELIABILITY) Facilities that have defined operating strategies such as

banks, office buildings and schools are in this category. These buildings typically have laws and rules that require them to operate on certain days or hours. Banks are controlled by Federal and State laws and rules. Schools have local school boards as well as State regulators requiring certain operating conditions. These facilities are no less important than the Class I buildings, but have semi-flexible operations. The photos below show typical banks and school buildings.




RELIABILITY Classification (continued): Class III – (Low RELIABILITY) Facilities not otherwise classified as Reliability Class I or II

are in this category. Typically, facilities with very flexible operating schedules are in this category. Examples are seasonal leisure resorts, hotels, and retail facilities. These facilities have very flexible operations and are typically not governed by laws as much as the owner’s directions. These facilities are very important just like Class I and II facilities and are the livelihood for millions of employees across many continents.

The photo below shows a typical retail facility for a small business.




Facility Design Criteria: The facility location is of prime concern when considering the RELIABILITY of the building systems. The potential for damage or interruption of operation due to flooding should be considered. Flood levels for ten (10) years, twenty-five (25) years and one hundred (100) years should be considered. Typically, the facility should remain operational DURING a 10 year or a 25 year flood event. Additionally, good design practice warrants that the facility be operational AFTER a 100 year flood event. The location selection is a primary factor in RELIABILITY. The photo below demonstrates a facility that has been flooded. It is obvious that this facility is not operational and probably will require heavy maintenance before being operational. Note that if the facility had been located across the road, there may have been higher RELIABILITY.




Design for Maintenance and Repair: Every vital component (a component may include elevators, air handlers, pumps, controllers, etc.) in the facility should be designed to enable repair or replacement without interruptions in facility operations. Minimizing the interruptions is a very good practice and the intent is to provide a means for maintaining the components without interruptions. To comply with these criteria, it is typical for facilities to operate under a RELIABILITY CENTERED MAINTENANCE program developed through a RELIABILITY CENTERED DESIGN program. Maintenance was created when mankind first wore animal hide for protection from the weather and injury and used tools to do work. Since civilization started, the problems of poor RELIABILITY have been with us. The hides we wore aged and perished and the tools we used blunted and broke. Along with the benefits of civilization, we also took on the obligation of its upkeep. Our ancestors determined which hides and tools were the most useful and centered their hunting and gathering around these commodities. This was the start of RELIABILITY CENTERED DESIGN. Maintenance and RELIABILITY protect us. Safety, defense, risk reduction, and quality are benefits we need from maintenance and RELIABILITY. Our ancestors wanted those benefits too and labored to get them. They learned what was needed to reduce maintenance and RELIABILITY problems and passed the fundamental understandings from generation to generation in wise words. Across years of experience and experimentation, sound and valuable advice on the best maintenance and RELIABILITY practices was passed to us from our forbearers and ancestors. Their advice is priceless and ageless. It is wisdom spoken with the lovingly hope that listeners will use the learning to improve their life and position. Below are explanations of five of the most important sayings our forbearers told us about having RELIABILITY and maintenance success. Designing with these criteria are key to facility RELIABILITY.




Design for Maintenance and Repair (cont’d): “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This RELIABILITY insight is one of the greatest health and wellness advices of all time. The wisdom it contains is not about the fitness benefits of eating apples. The understanding shrewdly conveyed in the saying is of the great worth of prevention rather than cure. Our forefathers tell us that the wise person adopts those actions and behaviors that extend their health and well-being and so prevents future illness and loss. This is very important in RELIABILITY centered design. When this phrase was coined, a visit to the doctor could mean your death. By the time you had deteriorated to the point a doctor was needed your chances of living had diminished greatly. It is a warning that maintaining good health is a life and death matter. It is smart maintenance. In our world and time we know this saying as proactive maintenance and design. Many people think that it is a new way. It has always been the right way. Somehow we forgot what had been known for centuries. Do not begrudge the effort and requirements needed to design and keep your facility in the condition to live a long and healthy life. With healthy design practices you can find great business success; without reliable design practices certain business failure eventually awaits. One of the key items that have been found to aid in the ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ design strategies is to specify warranty periods and maintenance periods in the original building construction documents. In fact, recent trends have most equipment vendors offering up to five year warranties at no extra cost. Fluorescent lighting is a prime example. Currently if you mate most manufacturer’s ballast and lamps, a five year warranty is automatic. Variable frequency drives and air handlers are another mated example with extended warranty periods.




Design for Maintenance and Repair (cont’d): “A stitch in time saves nine.” This is maintenance advice passed down from countless tailors to their apprentices. The message in the words has nothing to do with stitching and repairing clothes. It is a warning that a budding problem left unresolved grows into a disaster that sacrifices time and money. Immediate action taken to correct a problem when it starts prevents great waste and loss. In our world and time we call this predictive design and maintenance, and condition monitoring. We look for the earliest evidence of a failure starting and act to prevent it becoming a breakdown. The saying’s remarkable value was rediscovered by the aerospace/aviation industry in the 1980’s and termed RELIABILITY centered maintenance. This is directly related to the design of Building Automation Systems and Building Information Modeling. The design of extensive condition monitoring is a critical portion of the predictive design and maintenance of today’s smart facilities. Using real world feedback on systems such as HVAC into Building Information Modeling simulations can greatly aid in determining duty cycles of equipment and life cycle cost analysis. Most major equipment manufacturers have application modules for Building Information Modeling software packages such as Autodesk’s REVIT and Bentley’s BIM. These sizing and simulation routines can be very helpful in determining many of the major building systems within your facility. In addition, simulation routines can also integrate with preventative maintenance software packages such as IBM’s MAXIMO asset management software. This information can then identify and prompt for routine maintenance…thus “a stitch in time saves nine”. At a recent site visit to a municipal building that was suffering from too negative of a building HVAC pressure (the exterior doors were extremely hard to open), it was discovered that this axiom was evidently avoided. Somehow, in an effort to fix a leaky flat roof, a designer opted for a standing seam metal roof. This roof was installed over the existing roof-top HVAC units. Not only did this cut off the outside air supply (thus causing the negative pressure issue), but the roof used the frames of the HVAC units as structural support. The redesign effort to clean up the code violations and the unfortunate situation was extremely costly.




Design for Maintenance and Repair (cont’d): “When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.” There is a powerful warning in this saying about the dangers of ignorance and stymied education. If we know too little, we risk misunderstanding the truth. If we know too little, we limit our range of decisions and solutions. If we know only a few things we cannot be successful in those situations where those few things no longer apply. Our loving ancestors must have made many mistakes and learned this truth at great cost to them to have arrived at advice so profound and wise to give us. They clearly put high value on learning and understanding. They knew that ignorance and mistaken beliefs could lead to trouble. Today the message is still relevant to us in industry. Perhaps it is more important than ever before. Our future is one of greater complexity. We drive technology to create ever more complex machines and systems. In an effort to build a sustainable civilization we add machines with intricate functions to our world. These technologies and machines need people with a deep knowledge and understanding of what to do and the skills to do it successfully. Smart buildings are perfect examples. In your operation, you need people that can use more than “a hammer” to look after the design of the facility. What unimaginable trouble we would have if architects, engineers, maintainers, and operators only know how to use “a hammer” and they were limited to only “hammers” in their toolkits. To be successful you need people with an array of different tools in their toolboxes and who can use each masterfully. Those toolboxes need to be full of clean, in-perfect-condition, well-practiced and properly-handled tools. Such skilled people with toolkits will solve problems and not create them. A prime example was a recent project where during a design review meeting, the owner requested the removal of all variable speed drives from the design documents. This startled me and brought a surprised “Why?” The owner’s response was that her facility maintenance staff was not capable of the intense programming and maintenance of high technology equipment. Therefore, she wanted to dumb-down the building technology to match the staff’s education level. Improving education, knowledge and skills is more than a design success strategy; it is a life success strategy. Ignorance and the bravado it breeds are terribly expensive, wasteful, and a RELIABILITY killer.




Design for Maintenance and Repair (cont’d): “Measure twice; cut once.” – The Carpenter’s Creed The carpenters of the past knew a thing or two about doing great work. I can only guess once a profession has been around for ten thousand years all the good secrets get discovered. The Carpenter’s Creed – measure twice; cut once – is not about cutting wood. It is about delivering quality workmanship through the use of failure preventing quality control. The master carpenters of the past have honored us with this priceless advice to guide us in the right ways. They say to proof-check our actions before doing them. They advise us that if you want to be sure that what you do will go right then thoroughly check it before you do it. An example will help you understand their success secret. Taken literally the saying means that first you measure a required distance from a datum and put a mark. Then you check the mark is in the right place by repeating the measurement. The human error rate in misreading a ruler or tape measure is about 1 in 200 opportunities. If you measured once and marked the wood it would be in the wrong spot on average 1 in 200 times. If you were the carpenter and cut the wood before you checked the position of the mark, you have a 1 in 200 chance that the cut is in the wrong place. A carpenter that did 40 to 50 cuts a day and only measured once before cutting the wood would scrap a job every week. Along with the wood they waste they also throw-out all the prior time, money and efforts put into it by others. Such a wasteful and uncaring carpenter would be of little use to an employer and would be given few career opportunities. With the added proof-check – the second measurement – the error rate falls to 1 in 5,000. Now work is scrapped only once in every 20 weeks. Those carpenters of the past knew a thing or two about doing quality work. Instilling the use of a tiered design review process is critical to design RELIABILITY. To simply have a second set of eyes review the designs will decrease the error rate. It is a simple proven fact.




Design for Maintenance and Repair (cont’d): “As above, so below; as within, so without.” This is the oldest of the maintenance and RELIABILITY sayings, coming from ancient Egypt of 5,000 years ago. It is about the effects of our habits, inner values, attitudes and deep beliefs on our behaviors and demeanor. As we are, so we do. Our mindset and spirit shows in our actions and in our lack of actions. This is true of organizations as much as it is of people. We are counseled by the ancient Egyptians that our perceptions, inner values and state of mind conjure the outcomes that we experience. Your organizational knowledge, norms and culture make the people in your company behave as they do. These behaviors become its performance and then its results. From mind and heart to a result is a chain that binds our individual and company destinies. In the world of RELIABILITY design, the wrong understandings, values and attitudes show-up as lost production, re-work, unsatisfied facility owners, and failed opportunities. Wrong mind and wrong heart ingrain wrong actions into business systems, and thus repetitively producing failures. In such organizations formal and informal leaders build business processes and set work quality that can never deliver the performance wanted. If you want to understand why an facility performs badly and its maintenance is costly listen to what the leaders say. What they think becomes words. The words become decisions. The decisions become actions. And the people and company must receive the fateful consequences. RELIABILITY success starts in the minds and souls of the formal and informal leaders in an organization. The right knowledge, thoughts and attitudes flow into the leaders’ decisions and from there into their words. Good words become correct actions and behaviors that reap good rewards. Wrong thoughts and incorrect behaviors can only reap wrong outcomes. Our ancient Egyptian cousins warn us that the reflected outcome can only be what is already within. The reason that a company does not have world-class maintenance and reliability performance is because the internal values and beliefs of its people are not yet world-class. World-class is first a mental journey to understanding. Our actions then follow our thoughts to world-class performance. Only then are world-class results certain to appear.




Design for Maintenance and Repair (cont’d): You can work the saying backward and first change the required outside behavior so the inside values change in response. It takes dedicated persistence and commitment to continue the change process until there is nothing left of the old culture and norms. The ancient Egyptians tell us that you can only change an organization when its leaders have the vision and heart to rebuild it in the image that produces the required results. Basically, RELIABILITY has to start with everyone (architect, engineer, owner, maintenance person, etc.) all working together to establish the common goal. Outcomes reflect the mind and spirit behind them. If you want a better future, first instill the values and beliefs that create that future. In today’s world of RELIABILITY, as it has been since ancient times, seek and use the right knowledge and the right performance standards that will bring sure success. Nothing is new in RELIABILITY, we have only to understand and use the powerful wisdom of our ancestors.




Robust Design versus Over-Design: Robust Design means factoring RELIABILITY into the development of the design itself; designing for a target RELIABILITY and thereby avoiding either costly over-design or dangerous under-design in the first place. Such an approach eliminates a deterministic stack-up of tolerances, worst-case scenarios, safety factors, and margins that have been traditional approaches for treating uncertainties. Overdesign is common and expensive. In large scale projects, each discipline (mechanical, structural, electrical, etc.) communicates worst-case requirements to other disciplines rather than attempting to couple the design analyses. This leads to designs that are heavier and more costly than they need to be, and in some cases does not even result in a safer or more reliable design. For example, it is common for power specialists to require that the nickel-hydrogen batteries for an uninterruptible power system never exceed 15°C. This creates a serious thermal control challenge, requiring additional structural mass, and technology risk. In fact, nickel-hydrogen batteries do not fail at 15°C, they simply become less reliable and more likely to fail the longer they operate at elevated temperatures. Occasional exposure temperatures up to as high as 30°C are tolerable but undesirable yet total avoidance of any temperature greater than 15°C becomes the task of the RELIABILITY designer. The designer might even resort to fancier and therefore more risky thermal control options to achieve this requirement, resulting in a less reliable overall design than if temperature excursions had been better tolerated in the battery design requirements. Perhaps nickel-cadmium batteries that have a higher temperature rating, but lesser power qualities, would have been a better choice for the project team. Even within one discipline, overdesign exists due to stack-up of margins and worst-case scenarios until the design case is unrealistic and will likely never occur. A worst-case (unlikely) attitude is combined with end-of-life expected degradations, estimations of worst-case dissipations, and predictions of worst-case performance, etc. Additional margin is then added to cover uncertainties in modeling, environment, and component sizing. Only when meeting an extreme stack-up of margins and uncertainties becomes impossible, does a renegotiation of adequate margin begin, and such renegotiations are seldom based on any mathematical rigor or true knowledge of the underlying risk. A recent conversation with a local utility company is recalled where the utility company representative explained “we generally provide the service at 50% of the connected load on industrial buildings such as this” when coordinating the electrical service to the building.




Robust Design versus Over-Design (cont’d): In the aerospace facility industry, which is heavily influenced by understandably cautious military and governmental standards, such overdesign compensates for unknowns and unforeseen problems. Success in such a design environment is a necessity, and cost is a secondary consideration. In commercial facilities, on the other hand, cost is a primary consideration. An overall facility reliability of 99% may be desired, but if significant savings result from a reduced reliability of 98%, the latter option will be seriously considered.




Designing Access and Handling: Adequate access, handling and removal space should be provided around all components to facilitate maintenance, removal and replacement. This criterion is applied to components either inside a building or in an exterior environment. For components in interior spaces, adequate access for lifting and removing a valve or pump should be planned in the building design. Either portable or fixed lifting devices need to be planned such that heavy components may be handled. The structure needs to be designed so that hoists, trolleys and cranes can be used to facilitate maintenance. For exterior components, typically cooling towers and similar equipment, ample access for maintenance vehicles and lay-down areas are required for normal disassembly and removal. Typically, large equipment (such as trucks mounted with jib cranes) may be required. Proper access planning is strongly recommended. The objective is to provide the facility operators with a well designed building system which can be easily be maintained in an orderly and expedient manner. The goal is to get the repair done as quickly as possible and reduce the outage time. This is a characteristic of good RELIABILITY. The photo below is an example of the typical equipment used in maintenance. Note the access space for the maintenance crew.




Summary and Review: RELIABILITY – A measurement of the ability of a component to perform its designated function without failure. RELIABILITY pertains to system components and the maintainability of those components. RELIABILITY engineering is mainly concerned with minimizing downtime costs. One of the most important RELIABILITY design techniques is redundancy. There are three classifications of RELIABILITY. Class I – (High RELIABILITY) Facilities that are necessary for the public health are in this

category. Facilities such as fire stations, police stations, and evacuation shelters are in this category.

Class II – (Medium RELIABILITY) Facilities that have defined operating strategies such as

banks, office buildings and schools are in this category.

Class III – (Low RELIABILITY) Facilities not otherwise classified as Reliability Class I or II. Typically, facilities with flexible operating schedules are in this category. Examples are seasonal leisure resorts, hotels, and retail facilities.

Location selection is a primary factor in RELIABILITY. Every vital component in the facility should be designed to enable repair or replacement without interruptions in facility operations. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” conveys the great worth of prevention rather than reactive curing any illness. “A stitch in time saves nine” is a warning that a budding problem left unresolved can grow into a disaster that sacrifices time and money.




Summary and Review (cont’d): “When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail” is a powerful warning about the dangers of ignorance and stymied education. The Carpenter’s Creed “measure twice; cut once” is not about cutting wood. It is about delivering quality workmanship and the use of failure preventing quality control. “As above, so below; as within, so without” is about the effects of our habits, inner values, attitudes and deep beliefs on our behaviors and demeanor. Nothing is new in RELIABILITY, we have only to understand and use the powerful wisdom of our ancestors. Robust Design means factoring RELIABILITY into the development of the design itself; designing for a target RELIABILITY and thereby avoiding either costly over-design or dangerous under-design in the first place. Adequate access, handling and removal space should be provided around all components to facilitate maintenance, removal and replacement. For components in interior spaces, adequate access for lifting and removing a valve or pump should be planned in the building design.




Further Study and Reference: The seminar relies on multiple resources for information. The main white papers used are listed below.

Ageless Maintenance and Reliability Success Secrets, Mike Sondalini, Lifetime Reliability, June 2009

Standards Program Procedures, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, October 2005

Reliability Engineering and Robust Design: New Methods for Thermal/Fluid Engineering, Brent Cullimore, C&R Technologies, Inc., May 2000

Some North American Universities that offer courses in Reliability Engineering are listed. All of these engineering programs offer reliability courses and some even offer advanced degrees.

University of Tennessee University of Maryland Concordia University

In addition, there are many conferences and industry training programs (such as this one) available for RELIABILITY engineering. Several professional organizations exist for reliability engineering including IEEE Reliability Society, the American Society for Quality and the amply named Society for Reliability Engineers.

Documents

Reliability in Facility Design - Amazon S3 · RELIABILITY for a simpler system. RELIABILITY designers should have broad skills and knowledge of the processes within a facility. Most