Efficient Plant December 2017 - 23

feature | voice from the field
raphy-based model. The trades are HVAC,
electrical, plumbing, building controls, and
structural specialties.
"It's an intricate matrix," Flint explained.
"A lot of the planning is done by areas
of expertise and building criticality. We
have a hard time thinking that we are big
enough to organize by geography or zones
by themselves. Even though we have a lot of
buildings to maintain, the campus is fairly
compact, so we opted for the hybrid model."

RELIABILITY PHILOSOPHY
Flint initially entered the reliability and
maintenance field in the 1990s, when
he spent six years as a supervisor at that
electric power plant in western New York.
At the time, plant managers were trying
to address increasing maintenance budget
pressures and Flint led a program to implement a new PM strategy.
"I took on the role in the organization
to develop a revised maintenance strategy, which would lead to reduction in
unplanned equipment down times and
limit overall maintenance budgets," he said.
"During this time I developed a maintenance and reliability philosophy that the
most important thing is to focus on how
to better plan and execute all maintenance
activities that will have the least effect on
operations while keeping the equipment
operating efficiently and reliably for the
long term."
Flint began then to develop some maintenance and reliability best practices that
he continues to apply daily. It starts with
strategic planning and then targets PM and
long-term reliability.
"I tend to be a strong maintenance planner, team builder, and change-management
leader," he said. "It's important to focus on
common goals. Through the maintenance
team pulled together here at Brown, we are
developing the desired best-in-class maintenance which is extending equipment life

DECEMBER 2017

and reducing interruptions on all building
services."
Most of the university's maintenance happens on a fixed schedule.
For example, the air-conditioning systems get routine filter
changes, lubrication, and
control checks. The buildings
themselves are prioritized into
seven categories-research,
academic, student housing,
administration and support,
athletics, student activities,
and auxiliary housing. The most
critical buildings receive more
frequent and focused maintenance
activities.

AGGRESSIVE
PM PROGRAM
When Flint was hired almost four years
ago, the university had already worked to
develop a PM strategy that included a way
to help fund the PM activities. Brown staff
used Lean techniques to identify waste in
the maintenance work processes that could
be redirected into the needed PM activities.
More than 57,000 man-hours of waste were
found, which is now being recovered and
redirected as part of the seven-year strategy
implementation.
"Our preventive strategy is really an
umbrella that includes any planned
maintenance activity," he said. "You can
use technology for predictive things like
condition-based maintenance. The idea is
that [the university], through support of a
consultant, identified that we had a significant deferred-maintenance (DM) backlog
of $470 million that was going to continue
to grow at $48 million each year. The best
way to help address this backlog was to
strengthen the preventive-maintenance
program. Through the focus on preventive
maintenance and other actions by Facilities
Management, we have limited the increase

MICHAEL'S
CREDENTIALS
 B.S. Electrical Engineering,
State Univ. of New York at
Buffalo
 M.S. Engineering Management, Tufts Univ., Medford,
MA

MICHAEL'S BEST
ADVICE FOR R&M
PROFESSIONALS
"Always remember that
reactive maintenance
will be three times more
costly than any type of
planned maintenance-
whether it is fixed
schedule, predictive, or
condition based."

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