The five stages of an asset, and where money leaks

An asset goes through five stages: specify and buy, install and commission, operate, maintain, and dispose. The expensive mistakes are made in the first two, paid for in the middle three, and almost never traced back.

Handover is where it leaks

A new chiller arrives with a manual, a warranty, a commissioning certificate, a spares list and a recommended maintenance schedule. In most projects those documents go to the project team, live in a folder, and are gone within two years. The maintenance team inherits a machine and no information about it.

The fix is a condition of handover rather than a maintenance task: nothing is accepted until it exists in the register, with a code on it, its documents attached and its schedule loaded. Put that in the contract and it happens. Leave it to goodwill and it does not.

What to insist on at handover

• •The asset in the register, with make, model, serial and location
• •The manual and the wiring or pipework drawing, attached to the asset
• •The commissioning readings, which become your baseline for every later comparison
• •The warranty terms and end date, diaried
• •The recommended schedule, loaded and marked as a starting point
• •The critical spares list, and what is on site

The baseline readings are the underrated one

Commissioning readings tell you what this machine looked like when it was right. Three years later, when it seems fine but the energy bill has drifted, they are the only reference you have. Almost nobody keeps them and they cost nothing to keep.

Specify with maintenance in the room

Equipment gets bought on capital cost and delivered into a plant room where it cannot be serviced without removing something else. Twenty minutes with a technician at the design stage prevents twenty years of a two-hour job taking five.

Disposal is a record, not an event

When equipment is removed, mark it removed with the date and the reason. Two things depend on it: the schedule stops generating work for machines that do not exist, and the failure history for that equipment type stays honest, which is what tells you whether the replacement was worth it.