Facilities Manager's Desk Reference, 3rd Edition

26Mechanical and Electrical Systems and Their Maintenance

26.1 Introduction

It is not essential that FMs (facilities managers, or facilities management) are qualified building services technicians or engineers – in fact, it would be hard for anyone to claim to be an expert in all building services as there are around 130 different disciplines involved! However, a competent FM does need a fundamental understanding of the principles of mechanical, electrical and building control systems, structured cabling and services distribution.

Building services determine the internal environmental conditions that affect the occupants and the business processes. Maintenance is essential to provide comfortable conditions for occupants to enable them to achieve their maximum performance potential and to enable business processes to function at an optimum level. The range of services can be listed in four main groups: mechanical systems, electrical systems, public health services and control systems.

Fundamentally, maintenance is about minimising the risks to occupants and maximising business continuity by ensuring that building services are kept in a usable condition with minimal interruption of availability of the services.

Building services have a significant impact on facilities costs. They may account for 30% of the capital cost and 50% of the operating cost of a building. Obviously this varies according to building type, function, age, purpose and intensity of use (in a hospital, building ...