In an article from Buildings magazine entitled, “Data-Driven Strategy: Why Predictive Maintenance Makes Sense For Healthy Buildings,” (Jan/Feb, 2023), Brian Cline writes about the three types of maintenance: Reactive, Preventive and Predictive.

“Historically, building personnel would correct issues as they occurred, otherwise known as reactive, corrective or run-to-failure maintenance… This strategy can be costly as reactive service calls after equipment breaks average three times as expensive as proactive calls…

“Preventative maintenance was introduced in the early 20th century with the advent of the mass production of automobiles. … This strategy also is not feasible or cost-effective in predicting every failure, so its use is limited to issues based on runtime or interval time. Though preventative maintenance does keep reactive costs down, it can also increase standard operating costs by initiating unnecessary inspections or repairs. Based on estimates for when equipment might need to be serviced, preventative maintenance neither predicts equipment degradation based on actual condition and utilization nor prevents equipment failures.

“On the other hand, predictive maintenance, also known as data-driven or condition-based maintenance, injects intelligence into building maintenance by using objective data to identify issues that may impact future equipment performance. It avoids many of the costly problems associated with reactive maintenance while allowing stakeholders to develop a strategy for monitoring and maintain equipment, comfort and cost.

“Smart building system operators use predicative or data-driven maintenance strategies that incorporate analytics to ensure efficient maintenance practices.”

That type of predictive, data-driven approach to maintenance, is the backbone of our Salamander solution: bringing real-time information to property managers and buliding owners based upon the real-time condition of their life safety fire sprinkler systems!