National University of Ireland Manages Maintenance with a Datastream Solution
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University College Dublin (UCD), the national university of Ireland, dates back to 1851, having grown from modest beginnings to an institution with over 16,000 students. It is situated on a large modern campus about 4km from the center of Dublin.
Today, University College Dublin has over 18,000 registered undergraduate and postgraduate students. International students on exchange programs and full-degree programs make up approximately 1,500 of this number. The 80 employees in the maintenance department must manage around 2,500 employees covering a total building area of 246,000 square meters over 5 sites, processing over 50 work orders per day.
To assist in this process, UCD selected a Datastream asset management solution to log maintenance requests, print work orders, close off completed work orders, and generate appropriate reports/worksheets. In addition to generating preventive maintenance work requests, UCD is currently investigating the use of a plant register and barcoding supported by Datastream.
The Challenge
For UCD maintenance staff, the task was primarily to replace an older maintenance software system, which was being utilized for the maintenance help desk. This system could not export any reports, and as a result, UCD maintenance personnel were unable to develop MIS reports to identify areas for improvement to the service.
The UCD maintenance office falls under the umbrella of the buildings and services department. The main responsibilities of the maintenance office includes:
- Electrical - electrical faults including lifts, sockets, and power supplies
- Mechanical - leaks, heating, piping, blocked sinks, toilets, HVAC, and plumbing
- External/Grounds - broken fences, bins, paving stones, landscaping, signage, and painting
- Cleaning - window cleaning, pest control, sanitary and waste disposal, janitorial supplies, and graffiti removal
- General - furniture and other heavy items to be moved or disposed of, furniture repair and general building work, locks, windows, key cutting, and repairs to roofing, flooring, and windows/blinds
UCD Systems Manager, Lisa Stevens, expanded, "Our previous system was not up to scratch in terms of reporting and user friendliness. As we employ mainly contract staff, reports had to be easy to understand and able to provide us with reliable statistics and recommendations. We needed to work with a company that was technically the best at offering a functional package. We needed assurance that we partnered with a financially secure and viable blue chip company."
The Solution
Datastream's asset management solution offered an unsurpassed GUI interface, improved MIS (and general) reports, flexibility, stability, robustness, and access security. Available for both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases, the Datastream solution has an high interfacing capabilities, which enables the software to share information and functionally integrate with other software packages.
Datastream software is a critical corporate asset for many reasons, enabling users to:
- conduct root cause failure analysis,
- export work orders to Microsoft Project,
- investigate equipment downtime,
- identify maintenance hot spots in the facility,
- justify additional resources,
- produce precise site-level reports, and
- generate high-level, corporate roll-up reports.
"It was a real breath of fresh air to receive an asset management solution that matched our selection for suitability of database tools, desirableness of operating system, and quality of supplier support and documentation," adds Stevens. "We were provided with a number of comparable sites to measure up, proving Datastream's ability to project manage implementation successfully. We particularly liked the up-front costs and overall excellence of it to our functional requirements."
UCD focus their Datastream functionality on work requests, work orders, preventive maintenance tasks, reports/graphs/data analysis, and security. During a typical day, the maintenance office logs all maintenance requests. Printing of work orders (including preventative maintenance) are generally printed in the morning, although a second batch may be printed for some areas where there is a high number of requests. Then the office closes off all completed work requests towards the end of the day when work orders are returned.
All of these requests start from a call to the help desk, where it is inputted to into the software and added to a worksheet for the superintendent who assigns jobs to the on-site contractors. This offers a superior workflow for UCD's formalized service level agreements (SLAs).
The Results
"This is a great improvement from the older system," confirms Stevens. "It is considerably more flexible and easier to use. Datastream provided us with comprehensive administrator training, which included involvement with initial set-up of the system and general training for daily use. We are very well prepared for both general daily operation and system administration."
UCD demonstrated the potential to develop and store information, expanding on opportunities fully across their operations. "Datastream's software is very adaptable, offering our maintenance office scope to further improve procedures and practices such as returning work orders on daily basis as opposed to our previous ad hoc manner" continues Stevens. "This is a mammoth operation for a leading university, and we are in control of tasks rather than the requests controlling us."