THE BPD Blog

In this blog, we will explain the advantages of integrating SFG20 with your EAM or CAFM system using BPD Zenith’s SFG20 EAM Integration Adaptor. In our example, we look at a business requirement from the FM Service Provider industry and how the adaptor works with IBM Maximo.

SFG20

SFG20 is the standard maintenance specification for building engineering services. It is recognised as the industry standard and is an essential tool for planned maintenance. It is the benchmark for working standards; SFG is the Service and Facilities Group, a specialist group within the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) who own and are responsible for the upkeep of the standard, providing building owners, managers, contractors, consultants and end-users with the tools to keep buildings properly maintained and compliant.

SFG20 and HTMs are made available through a web portal and gives each user a dynamic set of standards available for download in a PDF format based on their subscription. It is updated in line with the standard itself, allowing its users to carry out maintenance tasks and maintain assets compliantly. SFG20’s technical consultants continually monitor and review all legislation and best practice to ensure their library of maintenance tasks are current. Subscribers can even receive automatic change notifications via email.

IBM Maximo

IBM Maximo is a leading Enterprise Asset Management Solution used by asset-intensive industries worldwide. It allows organisations to store and manage information on their physical assets from equipment and devices to installations and buildings. Maximo contains modules including Inventory, Purchasing, Location Management, Service Requests and Work Management, as well as functionality for Reporting, Key Performance Indicators, Service Level Agreements and Contracts.

The Work Management module includes areas of functionality that link in seamlessly with SFG20:

• Preventive Maintenance allows users to set up Work Order generation on time or meter-based frequency schedules
• Job Plans can be assigned to Preventive Maintenance records and carried down to Work Orders containing the predefined work instructions required to carry out the job
• Work Order Tracking shows an overview of the entire progress of the work order from work instructions, planned materials, assigned labour and associated purchases to failure reporting and log entries
• Planning and Scheduling can be carried out in Maximo using the Graphical Scheduling application provided as part of the Scheduler and Scheduler Plus add-ons. This allows a Gantt Chart view of the planned work and allows your business to run smoothly by combining this information with the required labour types needed to carry out the job.
• Mobile Working is possible using the Maximo Mobile or Anywhere product for Android, iOS and Windows devices, allowing technicians to view their assignments on the go and even work offline in low connectivity areas before syncing back to Maximo when they come back online

Case Study: Integrating SFG20 and Maximo EAM

IBM Maximo is designed with the flexibility to integrate with other data and platforms. SFG20 data can be easily integrated and used within the system with BPD’s adaptor. This allows the user to upload industry compliant pre-defined work schedules, maintenance plans and other information directly into Maximo. However, to manually update these work schedules takes a lot of effort and resource – this is required on a regular basis due to compliancy.

Recently, it took a large UK Facilities Management client over 150 working hours to manually update 425 Job Plans in Maximo. As one of the most significant FM service providers in the UK, they are passionate about using technology to improve performance, accuracy and use of resource.

“Moving forward, we don’t want to waste time and resource on manual activity that can be automated. We have got to start using technology better; working with APIs and organisations like SFG20 and BPD Zenith to fully automate manual processes…”

From a contractual compliance perspective, it is important that this FM Service Provider can demonstrate to their clients that they are adhering to SFG20 regulation. To achieve this, all required SFG20 tasks are mirrored in the Job tasks section of Maximo. They are carried out and completed by the engineer and accessed through their mobile devices using Maximo Anywhere. Anywhere provides the required data and reporting to demonstrate compliance to specification.

Inefficiency with Manual Data Entry

In our SFG20 schedule example of Heat Exchangers, we see 19 tasks made up of 1-, 3-, 6- and 12-month tasks that all must be completed in the specific time to remain complaint.

Each task has detailed information below corresponding to each task including Criticality, Frequency, Skillset, Action and Notes. This information has to be copy/pasted into the relevant sections in Maximo’s Job Tasks.

Entering all required Job Tasks manually is extremely resource and time intensive. It is a case of copying and pasting each individual task and all the corresponding information. This took two members of the maintenance team two weeks to upload 425 Job Plans and was an expensive, tedious and frustrating task – prone to human error. As these maintenance plans and schedules must be checked and updated constantly to remain compliant, this was not a one-off exercise.

• SFG20 dynamically updates its library with every change in legislation
• Job Plans in Maximo must therefore be checked regularly and updated with any new SFG20 schedule information – usually a manual operation
• Failure to update maintenance schedules in Maximo could result in non-compliance, as well as inaccuracies in data and reporting, leading to further issues and fines

Ensuring Contractual Compliance

Once all of the information has been entered into the Job Tasks section of Maximo, work orders can then be created and carried out by engineers in line with contractual compliance.

To ensure compliance, tasks can be automated as work orders and sent directly to the engineer’s mobile device. This captures all aspects of the work carried out from beginning to end. ‘Complete Work’ is pressed when the task is complete – with all data captured correctly and securely. Data is also available for compliance reporting and analytic purposes, as and when required.

The Solution: BPD Zenith’s SFG20 EAM Integration Adaptor

BPD Zenith’s SFG20 EAM Integration Adaptor not only takes care of the synchronisation of your subscribed SFG20 schedules and plans with your EAM system but it regularly checks to ensure you’re fully up-to-date and compliant with the latest legislation. It updates or creates new Job Tasks where required, allowing automation of Work Orders, Reports and many other processes as well as peace of mind.

• Schedule a regular ‘update check’ through the SFG20 interface and identify any changes to SFG20 schedules and plans due to changes in current legislation
  • Maximo Authenticates against the SFG20 API using your subscription details, then makes a request to retrieve the latest information available to your SFG20 account

• Create new Job Plans in Maximo if they don’t already exist, ready to be used against Maintenance Schedules
  • Response data is processed by Automation Scripts in Maximo and applied to the corresponding Job Plan, or a new job plan is created where they don’t already exist

• Update existing Job Plans in Maximo using the built-in revision functionality, and notify a predefined group of users about the changes, ready for their approval
  • Job Plans are set to ‘Pending Revision’ or ‘Draft’ (if new) and sent for review to a predefined set of named users with email notifications

• Flexibility to manage updates and mappings, all controlled from within your enterprise asset management system
• No requirement for opening firewall ports or allowing incoming connections

Benefits

• Automation of manual entry – completely remove the resource requirement to enter your subscribed SFG20 schedules and plans
• Remove the resource requirement for any future manual checks and updates
• Avoid any risk of human error due to manual input
• Standardisation/Certification/Compliance ‘built-in’ – data is available and accessible from Maximo as and when required, or through automated scheduled compliance reporting and other analytic tools
• Flexible and configurable to your business needs and processes

Most importantly, solutions from BPD continue to ensure you get the most out of your Maximo system (and SFG20 subscription)

We recently hosted an online event in conjunction with BESA/SFG20 exploring the advantages and benefits of integrating SFG20 with an EAM/CAFM system – this has been our most popular webinar this year so far and is now available to watch back on demand HERE!

(You can also view further On-Demand content HERE)

Alternatively, to find out more about the SFG20 & IBM Maximo Integration Project, you can CLICK HERE for more!

If you’d like to chat about SFG20 or other solutions, please get in touch using any of the links – we’d love to hear from you!