Operations & Maintenance Planning

To successfully operate and maintain assets as efficiently as possible, the system should develop plans for a full year of operations and a full year of maintenance. Each year, these plans should be reviewed and updated. Without written plans, it is unlikely the system will be able to optimize operations and maintenance or ensure the assets are fully functional and performing optimally. The plans allow the system to know when, where, and what the cost will be to complete operation and maintenance activities. Some unplanned events will still occur, but should be minimized. As the system collects data on operations and maintenance that data can be used to improve the plans over time.

Operations plans should include the standard operating procedures and the alternative operating procedures for the system. It can also include the emergency operating procedures. These should be in a section of their own, so emergency procedures can be easily accessed during an emergency. The emergency procedures might also be kept separately and placed in several, easy to find locations, both in paper and in electronic format.

The system should have a plan in place that lays out the who, what, when, and how of the daily operations. It should define how resources (personnel, financial, and physical assets) will be allocated to achieve the level of service goals. The operations plan is a manual for operating the system.

Maintenance plans should include the schedule for routine, planned, predictive, preventive, and warranty maintenance for all the system’s assets. The maintenance plan should also include known information about how to complete corrective maintenance.

The O&MOperations and Maintenance plans should help determine the activities needed, the preferred schedule, proper procedures, equipment needed to complete the tasks, and associated costs. The plans should also guide the O&M budget process