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Coming across this topic way too much of late. Facilities Engineering teams taking readings in a manual fashion. Facility Managers are “saving money” so as to not spend money on automation.

There is always the element of human error. Maintenance technicians will miss entries, transpose numbers, decimal errors, use the wrong document revision and, even worse, fabricate data for fear of facing disciplinary action due to not completing a task.

Many would agree that documentation may be simplified by using their Building Management System (BMS).  There is the benefit of no documentation errors, having real-time data for investigation/troubleshooting and the opportunity cost gained by having technicians focus on other items that better serve the operation.

I was just at a facility with a BMS where there were 3 water systems (with each about 20-30 manual entries made daily), weekly readings for dust collector differential pressures (~20 on site), weekly chiller readings (4 on site) and daily waste water system readings (5-6 entries daily).  I am sure there were more items as well.

This site takes over 25,000 manual readings per year!

Even if the collected data is error free, there is a lot of effort to analyze as well. Manual collection of data is outdated and inefficient for fully functional facilities.

Yet with all of this downside, facilities with Building Management Systems are no means strangers to a clipboard. Filling out forms and getting their supervisor/manager approval after each sheet is completed. Facility and Operations teams still tolerate all the negatives associated with manual readings.

Why? Wiring Instruments to a BMS costs money. Depending on the system, costs can range from $500 to $2,000 per point.

Let’s try to overcome the hurdle of this cost.

Here is a quick methodology of how Facility Managers can economically justify adding points to their system. Obviously, situations will vary site by site so feel free to adjust!

Scenario:

Here is a fairly conservative scenario that was derived from the aforementioned experience:

A maintenance technician performs weekly readings for differential pressure on a dust collector. The reading is necessary for their state Department of Environmental Protection. The number of manual readings equate to 52 per year.

Costs:

The costs are as follows: $12,000 to install a point. (Calibration is not considered since a calibrated instrument needed in either case.)

Benefits:

The value of an employee is more than the hourly base pay and often understated at many sites. Here is a quick rundown of benefits:

Labor is a precious commodity and time is something that can never be gained back. There is an opportunity cost in the plant where Facilities can contribute in different ways. Question: How to make this opportunity cost more concrete? Many executive managers flinch at opportunity costs due to being “soft” savings.

Well, we can make this benefit a hard savings. Use this opportunity to reduce the external maintenance budget. Examine your site Preventative Maintenance performed by outside contractors and look to bring internally. Can you eliminate $960 worth of contractor work on an annual basis? Seems plausible.

Return on Investment:

With a cost of $2,000 and a savings of $960 per yr., the payback is just over 1 year. The internal rate of return (IRR) is 84% per year and is a great return on capital!

When looking at a site maintenance programs and the hundreds points collected daily/weekly, the payback is very strong of moving forward with extensive use of a BMS. When looking at a site holistically, thousands of labor hours per year can be saved performing tedious/routine data collecting and instead focus their effort on items that better serve the business!

EH&S Managers, lab managers, facilities staff, materials managers and more often balance multiple priority projects and space planning or inventory control conflicts that can make chemical inventory management challenging to maintain. In some cases, sites might even struggle to complete a baseline inventory in full or collect respective Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) which presents a compliance and safety risk to employees and the community.  By implementing a strong chemical management program, these risks can be effectively managed, and time spent on updates can be minimized.

Why do I need an inventory and HAZCOM program?

Let’s start with the basics: why does a site need a chemical inventory under the HAZCOM standard? Because it’s required? Well sure.  OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200) outlines the need for a chemical inventory, SDSs and employee training.  This standard is more commonly referred to as “Employee Right to Know” as it was put into law in order to ensure employers inform and employees understand the hazards and exposure potentials in their work environment.

Just as you would not want or allow your child to play under a kitchen sink of unlabeled cleaning supply bottles, so too should an employer not want or allow their employees or emergency responders to work with unknowns. If you don’t know what you have on site, how do you properly train employees? How do you ensure the properly labeling is met? How do you complete regulatory reports such as Community Right to Know (CRTK)? And how do you communicate all your risks to local emergency responders?

Having a complete chemical inventory is the stepping stone for having a complete and sustainable site-specific HAZCOM program.

How do I manage my inventory?

Spelling out roles and responsibilities in your hazard communication plan is key to your success.  If your material management department is responsible for updating and maintaining the SDS binders because they receive items, then be sure to include them in your plan. Similarly, if the purchasing department is the gatekeeper for new chemical requests, make sure their roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. Following up a written HAZCOM program with training for all employees will lead to better employee understanding of your HAZCOM program, their respective roles and responsibilities and hazards/mitigations in their work environment. Understanding drives accountability which drives ownership of the program and a sustainable system.

Remember though, no matter the number or checks or having a seemingly flawless system, it is important to perform an audit of your program at least annually to capture any failures and create corrective action plans. This annual review should look at your written program, housekeeping and labeling issues and update your chemical inventory and SDS binders as needed.

How can EOI help?

Whether you need a full program overhaul or just some SDS updates, EOI can help with all your chemical inventory and HAZCOM needs.

Please refer to the list of services below and visit us at eoiconsultinggroup.com!

Chemical Inventory, SDS Management/Maintenance and Training Offerings:

Chemical inventory completion:

• Initial site survey/walk through and inventory collection
• Initial SDS file pull and entry into online database or file folder

Chemical Inventory Maintenance:

• Complete annual refresher inventory
• Update SDS data with most recent version

HAZCOM:

• HAZCOM Program Writing
• Site Specific HAZCOM Training

Labeling:

• Labeling inspection with corrective action findings
• Custom label solutions

Company mission statements. Pointed job interview questions. The lean six sigma approach to problem solving. What do these three things loosely have in common?

THE UNDERLYING IDEA OF DATA BASED DECISION MAKING.

hink about it for a second.

How does your organization’s mission statement incorporate date? It probably establishes Key Performance Indicators or Objectives and Targets to measure against. Some even include a written statement detailing the expectation for employees and leaders to look at data during problem solving.

Similarly, many job interview scenario based questions look for a prospective employee’s ability to reference and analyze data prior to making their hypothetical decision.

Those practiced in Lean and Six Sigma Principals will also note the key theme of measuring and analyzing in problem solving.

These three items are common to many businesses and many different professionals. A measure that us far less common – errr, even far less utilized dare I say – is risk.

Measuring risk — of safety failures, of quality impacts, of business continuity concerns and of product defects — are all data points which can and should drive business decisions.

Safety Risk assessments

As a safety professional, the key data point I am concerned with is the risk associated with a hazard. I need to know the potential for a hazard to lead to an event in order to put in the proper mitigation controls, prioritize capital expenses, communicate hazards to employees and generally drive my EHS Program focus areas.

I have seen this risk displayed a number of ways with the most common being visually or categorically via a risk mapping system or numerically calculated via an RPN or PFMEA tool. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but both also have the same potential issue:

Establishing a truly objective risk scoring system.

 

Risk Priority Number (RPN) and objective scoring

A RPN number or score is not a new concept. A Risk Priority Number establishes the risk score through a simple calculation:

Probability x Severity x Detectability = RPN

This is basic math – it should inherently be objective right? Wrong!

Because the inputs for probability, severity and detectabiltiy are often user defined ranges, there is room for discussion and disagreement in score. One person’s RPN score of a task might be different than the next person simply due to large ranges for categories.  Review Example 1 below to better understand how a small range of categories can create a more objective measure.

The second reason for subjective measuring is due to accounting for controls.  During the initial RPN exercise, a task or instrument or process, should be evaluated as a “raw” score without additional controls in place.  It is easy for the risk assessor to look at a task in its current controlled state and –without true measure –decrease the RPN score based on their perception of controls.

Controls should be measured – absolutely –but they should be measured and factored in as an additional multiplier. this will decrease the chance of adding control factors into the raw RPN score. EOI Consulting Group has some solid ways of factoring in controls using defined values – find out more about control factors below.

For the Non-Safety Professional

But what if you’re not looking at a safety risk? what if you’re trying to prioritize projects, reduce impacts or even establish schedules for equipment? Risk assessments are a great way to use data to establish the business decisions around those needs. Using excel programming and clearly defined scores makes making risk value based decisions easy and tracking the change in risk over time shows clear process improvements which are likely tied to your KPIs.

How can EOI help?

Whether you need a full risk assessment process and inventory for your safety program or you’re trying to manage risk priority in other ways, EOI Consulting Group can help. Visit us at eoiconsultinggroup.com today to learn more, subscribe to our newsletter and contact us for questions.