S4 Early Equipment (00:00)
If your project decides to utilize permanently installed equipment during construction, there's some important things for you to consider. First on the list is equipment warranty.
if you do factory startup, you're triggering the start of your equipment warranty,
The next thing to consider is maintenance. Once equipment starts running, preventative maintenance or PMs are going to be required.
Good morning and welcome to the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm your host, Steve Davis, and today we're going to explore the topic of putting mechanical equipment into service during construction. Now, in last week's episode, I mentioned this and we talked about using it to help control temperature and humidity in the building, making conditions in the building more comfortable not just for the workers, but for creating the proper conditions for adhesives, woodwork, and finishes like paint and flooring.
Have you ever been on a project that's done this? I've been on quite a few. This tends to happen more on bigger projects that last through many seasons. A project I am on right now is starting to enclose the building with cladding, which eliminates that wonderful natural ventilation that we enjoy in those early stages of construction. putting that cladding on there is going to create a hot box in the summertime.
Creating both temperature and humidity concerns. That's the main reason that we would consider using permanent equipment during construction. If your project decides to do this and utilize permanently installed equipment during construction, there's some important things for you to consider. First on the list is equipment warranty.
When purchasing equipment, the warranty is typically started X number of months after delivery, might be six, might be twelve, or as soon as factory startup occurs. So if you actually do factory startup, which you would need to do to utilize this equipment temporarily, you're triggering the start of your equipment warranty, which means that by the time you actually are done and turn everything over to the owner, that equipment warranty is expired.
It's possible to purchase extended warranties on equipment, and this should be discussed thoroughly with each piece of equipment and each manufacturer. In some cases it may make a lot of sense, and in other cases, maybe not so much.
The next thing to consider is maintenance. Once equipment starts running, preventative maintenance or PMs are going to be required. This might involve belts, lubricants, filter changes, and service if something goes wrong. So who's going to be responsible for all of this? Who's going to maintain care, custody, and control, or CCC, of the equipment and the systems that serve it? From the owner's standpoint,
This all needs to be considered very carefully. There's pluses and minuses for you, the owner, to take care, custody, and control of the systems and equipment. Taking responsibility during construction means that your maintenance team will have to be fully onboarded, which is often not the case at this stage of new construction. And they're going to also have to be dedicated to working with the construction team because.
Every single shutdown and tie-in of any system serving that equipment is going to require coordination with your team as if the facility was in full operation. That includes things like lockout, tagout, drains and blowdowns, de-energization, and all of that kind of stuff. Big minus for the owner. On the plus side, for the owner, you know exactly what's going on with your systems at all times.
If you're the one that has care custody and control of the system, I've seen it done both ways. Totally depends on your situation.
If the contractor maintains the system, this is a cost that is likely not included in your budget or in your schedule. That needs to be carefully considered. Which PMs are going to be performed and when having those fully documented and the work confirmed should be considered. I'm just saying that because I have seen some of these kinds of documents be pencil whipped.
If no one's paying attention and they'll fill out the report saying, yes, we did this, we did that, and then I go back and check and I find that there's no way that can be true. So be very careful if you're turning this over to a contractor. I'm not saying that there's a lot of people out there that would do that, but you need to protect your own interests if you're doing that and have somebody back check, trust, but verify always.
In any case, these records need to be generated and maintained as if you, the owner, were maintaining the system yourself to help protect you in a warranty claim. We all know that the very first thing that is going to happen if you call the manufacturer and you say, Hey, I've got a warranty claim, they're going to want to see your service records because they do not cover an improperly serviced piece of equipment or system.
Regardless of who maintains control of the system, it's worth some thought as to how to protect the system during this time and in what condition you, the owner, want the system and equipment turned over in. So during construction, protect return air and exhaust air registers with temporary filters at their face that are changed out at least on a monthly basis. Construction's a dirty business.
No matter how much we think, things are going to be okay if we just put it on there once, it needs to be maintained. Protect air handler inlets with temporary filters changed at least on a monthly basis. Depending on where you are and what conditions your area provide, you may have to be changing these weekly. So whatever the frequency as needed basis is.
And again, somebody needs to be verifying this. What often happens is we put these measures in place. Everybody goes back to work and no one ever checks it or changes it out because it's not in their scope. It's no one in particular's responsibility. So that needs to be thought through carefully.
Any room that is pulling return and exhaust air should be at a defined level of cleanliness and past the point of dust generating activities like sanding and grinding. In the best of circumstances, the owner's representative is walking and approving each one of these rooms before we put these systems into service.
Before a turnover, we definitely want all the filters in the air systems changed. We don't want to turn a building over with filthy filters that need to be changed immediately. Let's give the owner a nice clean system from the start. Things like boilers, chillers, and cooling towers should have had a factory service performed within three months of turnover. again, we don't want to be turning over something that needs immediate attention.
From the owner. Full manufacturer checkup services should be performed, and any priority one items that are reported in that service should be completed before turnover. If the time period is long, and I've been on some jobs where it's like this, we'll put temporary systems online, and it might be a year and a half or more before we're actually turning the building over. Things like bearings might need to be looked at.
Things that you wouldn't think of that are longer-term maintenance items. You may want to consider including something like air handler cleaning and even duct cleaning, depending on the conditions of the building and the length of time that has lapsed. What we have to think about is that this is an operating system and equipment during construction. So we're essentially turning over a used system.
What's more is that system is used in the dirtiest environment it will ever see. Regardless of who maintains care custody and control, an extended warranty on equipment should be seriously considered, particularly for major equipment, like boilers, chillers, air handlers, steam generators, fan coils, pumps, you get what I'm talking about. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.
