6 Steps Of Electrical Maintenance Plan

Much like an aircraft requires regular servicing and inspection to ensure its safety, so does electrical infrastructure found in buildings, homes and factories. Without regular maintenance, electrical infrastructure can deteriorate and become dangerous to operate. 

Out of all types of electrical maintenance, reactive is probably the most common. The reason for this is that factory managers or homeowners tend to notice problems when they become apparent. 

Rather than checking on the electrical systems (whether it’s electrical equipment or wiring), factor managers or homeowners revert to the maintenance only when there is a problem to solve. In this blog, we will talk about why scheduling regular electrical maintenance is important (whether on a plant or at a residential home) and provide you with a detailed plan for your next electrical maintenance check. Read on!

What is electrical maintenance?

Before we dive into the specifics, let’s get the definition of electrical maintenance clear. Electrical maintenance involves inspection, servicing and testing of electrical infrastructure and equipment to ensure its optimal performance and safety. Electrical maintenance services encompass things like servicing of electrical machinery and HVAC systems, circuit breaker inspections and testing, wiring and outlets inspection, electrical damage repair and more. 

As Canada and Ontario in particular have strict electrical codes and safety regulations, electrical maintenance is a mandatory activity that has to be performed only by licensed master electricians. 

Why is scheduling regular electrical maintenance important?

Regular electrical maintenance is beneficial for both industrial and residential properties for many reasons. 

The first and foremost is it ensures the property is safe to live and work in. As nothing is more important than safety, regular servicing and maintenance of electrical infrastructure and equipment will prevent any potential electrical accidents from happening. 

Reason number two is that commercial electrical maintenance preserves the life of the equipment and machinery which are the heart and soul of every manufacturing plant or a business. Businesses rely heavily on the optimal performance of the equipment, expecting the maximum output and efficiency from them. So when that equipment fails, it stalls the production process and affects the bottom line. 

Reason number three is that timely maintenance of electrical infrastructure and equipment helps save maintenance costs in the long run. It is a well-known fact that regularly checking on the equipment comes out to be cheaper than fixing it after it has broken down, not to mention the costs of the production downtime. 

Electrical service plan in 6 steps

While an electrical service plan is important in any type of setting, be it a residential or industrial, in this blog we will be touching upon the industrial electrical maintenance plan in particular as industrial electrical maintenance by nature is more complex and resource-intensive. 

Asset evaluation

Every factory or plant has a certain amount of assets that are vital to their operation. These assets can include heavy duty manufacturing equipment such as lathes, CNC machines, milling machines, welding and grinding machines, boring equipment etc. All this machinery is quite expensive and requires proper maintenance in order to function properly and for a long time. 

Evaluating the condition of the assets includes annual review and inspection of assets that are critical for the smooth and stable operation of the business, review and analysis of the building’s electric blueprints, and a biannual review and electrical inspection of the assets that are less critical for the business’s operations. 

Failure criticality analysis

Even though preventative maintenance is there to help businesses prevent any major equipment failures, there are equipment breakdowns that follow a certain pattern and keep on happening. Such equipment failures require a more thorough analysis to determine the root cause. Finding the cause of the repeated equipment breakdowns may require more time and effort, but it is a necessary step to take that may help save significant costs in the long run. 

Reporting

Reporting is a crucial step in the industrial electrical maintenance process. It comes after all the data on the asset condition, failure analysis and maintenance history has been collected and put together. At this step, the maintenance manager must prepare a detailed action plan to target the electrical problem for the maintenance team. 

Capability assessment

Successful maintenance is largely about allocating the right amount of resources to the right maintenance activities. Maintenance managers have to determine how much and what type of resources are required to complete each maintenance task. Is the in-house team capable of handling the maintenance task? Is hiring additional staff or outsourcing of some tasks required to meet the project deadlines? All this is important in industrial maintenance planning.

Have the bill of materials ready

In addition to the skilled and licensed staff, electrical maintenance requires a solid inventory of supplies to support the maintenance process. It is the job of a maintenance manager to prepare a list of materials required to complete each maintenance task before the start of the maintenance. 

Staff training

While it is a general rule that only well-trained and experienced staff should handle electrical industrial maintenance, there are tasks that can be puzzling even to the most experienced master electricians. A maintenance manager has to ensure that all industrial electricians are properly trained to perform certain maintenance tasks and answer all questions staff may have in relation to the task.

Periodic general training and process review should also be held to ensure the staff is up-to-date with the latest trends in industrial electric maintenance.

The takeaways

Electrical maintenance is not a cakewalk and requires a certain degree of skills, knowledge and resource availability. It is also a task that requires careful planning and execution from the maintenance team. We hope this detailed electrical maintenance plan will help you better manage your next electrical maintenance tasks with ease.