When the building changes and nobody tells maintenance

A quiet office floor becomes a server room. A store cupboard becomes a small laboratory. The equipment serving that space did not change, so nobody told maintenance, and the maintenance plan for it is now wrong in ways that will show up as a failure.

What changes when the use changes

• •Criticality: the same air conditioning unit is now business critical rather than a comfort item
• •Intervals: continuous operation instead of office hours changes running hours and wear
• •Compliance: new use can bring new statutory obligations nobody has registered
• •Access: a space that could be worked on any afternoon may now need a shutdown window
• •Redundancy: a service that was adequate is now a single point of failure

Put maintenance on the change list

Any project, fit-out or change of use should have a step that says facilities has been told. This is a procedural fix and it works when it is a condition of sign-off rather than a courtesy.

The annual walk catches the rest

Changes will slip through anyway. One walk a year per building, asking only "what is this space used for now", catches most of them. Look for the tells: a locked door that used to be open, extra cooling brought in, a room that is suddenly full of equipment.

Re-score criticality after any significant change

This is the step that turns the discovery into action. A unit whose criticality moves from low to high needs different spares, a different response time and possibly monitoring. Without the re-score, the discovery is a note.

Watch the portable heaters and coolers

Temporary equipment brought in by an occupant is the best available signal that a space is not being served properly. It also usually arrives without anybody assessing the electrical load. Every one you find is telling you something about both the building and the change nobody recorded.