ONLINE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR REACTIVE MAINTENANCE PROJECTS
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ONLINE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR REACTIVE
MAINTENANCE PROJECTS
K. N. Ali, M. Kagioglou, M. Sun, G. P. Petley, P. S. Barrett
School of Construction and Property Management, University of Salford
Salford, M7 1NU
E-mail: k.n.ali@ntlworld.com
ABSTRACT: This paper is based on a research conducted in the University of Salford funded by
the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), UK. The research was driven
by a group of major clients that concerns the myriad minor construction projects which make up
over 50% of construction activity in the UK, when smaller new works are added to improvement/
refurbishment projects, maintenance and repairs. It is one of the research objectives to
demonstrate how inexpensive IT and communication tools can lead to enhanced effectiveness and
efficiency in the delivery of minor construction projects. Thus, this paper presents the outcome of
this research project i.e. a prototype online knowledge management system called “MoPMIT”.
MoPMIT (More Productive Minor Construction Projects through Information Technology) has
been developed with the aim to improve the management of reactive maintenance works for large
clients by increasing the capacity to manage information. It is also to demonstrate the idea of
having all parties in the reactive maintenance process to communicate on a common interface and
to share project information. Testing has been conducted among potential MoPMIT users and they
positively believed this system would lead to better management of knowledge, improve
communication and better sharing between all parties.
Keywords – Building Maintenance, Knowledge Management, Online System, Reactive
Maintenance Projects
1. INTRODUCTION
Historically, maintenance activities have been regarded as necessary evil by the various
management functions in an organisation (Tsang, 1995 & Ikhwan & Burney, 1994). In
construction industry, besides always been seen as the “Cinderella” (Allen, 1993), it has
become a highly important part of the industry around the world. Repair and maintenance
works is important both because of its great contribution to total construction output and also
because it comprises the largest number of individual items of work (Headley and Griffith,
1997). Example for these individual items would include the design and construction of new
roofs or internal structural arrangement, with any associated with M&E equipment, right down
to remedying minor problems such as electrical failures, plumbing leaks and building fabric/
equipment failures.
UK's expenditure on maintenance, repair and refurbishment, covers more than 50% of all
annual construction activities (Baldry, 2002; Olubodun, 1996; DETR, 2000; Torrance, 1997;
and Sun, 2003) compare to the period between 1970-1980 where from there on, the share of
maintenance has steadily increased (Griffith, 1992 & Chanter & Swallow, 1996). Early
findings of this research revealed that two-third of these building maintenance jobs are
reactive maintenance works where immediate action is needed to rectify failures resulting
from unforeseen damage due to external causes or failures of planned maintenance (British
Standard; CIOB (1982). The sheer volume of works, and the unexpected nature of reactive
maintenance, often caused disruption to business activities.
Nowadays, organisation has begun to realise that knowledge, which in the past has been
largely neglected by company, is an asset that diffused and grew within the organisation in an
unstructured way. This is the knowledge that helps the organisation in innovative decision
making, problem solving and hence, maintains competitive advantage. Thus, knowledge
management has emerged to assist organisation to manage the knowledge that resides within
158the organisation. Among the potential benefits emerged from successful knowledge
management programme are (Ahmed et al, 2002):
1. Improved innovation (improve product and service)
2. Improved decision making
3. Quicker problem solving and fewer mistakes
4. Reduced product development time
5. Improved customer service and satisfaction
6. Reduced research and development
The emergence of knowledge management in business organisation to leverage knowledge
to enhance business success can be considered as fairly new. To the best of the researcher’s
knowledge, little literature relating knowledge management in building maintenance exist.
Nonetheless, the importance of knowledge management especially with the use of information
technology as an enabler has begun to be seen as a potential area in the facilities management
area – the “umbrella” industry of building maintenance (Nutt, 2000; McLennan, 2000; Barrett
& Baldry, 2003).
This paper describes some background of the research, the prototype system itself and the
discussion on evaluation of the system.
2. BACKGROUND RESEARCH
More Productive Minor Construction Projects Through Information Technology (MoPMIT) is
a research that focused on the application of IT on reactive maintenance work with the aim to
explore its potential to improve the efficiency of minor construction work so as to increase the
capacity to manage information and learn from past experience. The study involved some
building owners, facilities management team, contractors and suppliers.
An analysis of the maintenance process was performed, which included visits, interviews
and observations conducted on different types of industrial companies involved in the project
with the aim of discovering the problems that impede the cost, data sharing, speed and quality
of the reactive maintenance business process. These companies are four main parties involve
in a reactive maintenance project i.e. the clients (building owner of 1000-9000 properties all
over the UK); in-house or outsourced facilities management team; various scales of
contractors and suppliers.
A detail process flowchart was drawn as a result of these interviews (Ali et al, 2002). In
brief, it is a process which started with a fault at client’s unit that requires a contractor to
check, estimate the cost and repair the problem, and ended with the contractor receives their
payment of satisfied work done by the client. Existing IT systems and means of
communications were also being investigated. The analysis has identified some problems
associated with reactive maintenance that were grouped together under three categories, i.e.:
1. Knowledge Management
2. Procedures
3. Overall System
a) Knowledge Management
There are problems with the management of the information generated in reactive
maintenance projects, for example the storage and utilisation of data has major inadequacies.
Error is prone in data acquisition when the helpdesk operator has to define what type of
problem is occurring at the unit.
Very often, novice helpdesk operators have no technical background and little knowledge
about maintenance work. The operator has to decide which questions to ask the caller to
determine the problem. They are given a standard script for handling calls from the unit
159managers. Consequently, if an inadequate job description is recorded, the contractor could
send out a wrongly skilled or equipped operative. These helpdesk operators gain experience
through:
• Training given by the company in charge of the helpdesk
• Day by day experience
• Other colleagues
Once they have gained some experience, they were found to no longer need the standard
script. The helpdesk operators build up tacit knowledge over time with their experience and
knowledge gained from the job. However, because this is not explicitly captured and codified,
this knowledge is lost to the organisation when an operator leaves. For a new operator to
become similarly skilled will require either lengthy working experience or costly training. If
the knowledge can be captured and disseminated, it will help in the training of new as well as
experienced helpdesk operators.
The user also has to every time manually entered some data, such as address details. This
manual data entry also occurs when information is passed between client and contractor.
Double handling is required to get the data from one system to the other, which is due to lack
of industry data protocol.
The existing databases are not complete and are not updated with new information. Thus
some useful information is not known or stored. This is due to some information is recorded
on paper and not entered into the IT system. Non-archiving of existing records and the
massive databases of jobs that accumulated over the years caused the system to slow down.
b) Procedures
Some of the procedures in the reactive maintenance process are not well defined or followed
by the users. About 20% of incoming calls are those received by the client helpdesks from
unit staffs that have phoned the wrong help desk. Occasionally, helpdesks are missed out
from the communication chain. For instance, the calls go straight from the client helpdesk to
the contractor area branch, when all jobs should go through the contractor’s central helpdesk.
Most of the time, information is sent via conventional communication methods such as
telephones, mobile telephones, facsimile machines, post and paper forms. This requires
double handling of data, as helpdesks will have to manually enter the data into their system
and this often resulted in re-entrance of information. The use of paper forms means that recent
job details are not in the system and are not available to be checked via the computer.
A long communication chain between operative, contractor and facilities manager often
resulted in a re-visit by an operative which will cause longer time taken in job authorisation
procedure.
Completed Jobs often involves traveling that takes up a lot of time and cost. Besides,
payment procedure that involves too much paper, such as posted certificates of payment, and
too many communication steps has also impede the inefficiency of the process.
c) Overall System
The current IT systems developed by clients years ago run on early age operating system
which is not compatible with other parties’ modern systems and machines, and lack of modern
features. They are also, fixed in design and cannot be reconfigured to handle new types of
information that could be used, such as email addresses. Besides, because they are stand-
alone systems, exporting of data for transfer of information to external systems, such as to
contractor’s is difficult. Data analyses for reports are not fully available, and the information
that is stored is not easily manipulated.
1603. MoPMIT – AN ONLINE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Having seen the problems emerged from the existing business process, there was a clear need
to redesign the process. Client (building owner), Facilities Manager and Contractor are
expected to communicate with each other and share the necessary project information via an
online knowledge management system called MoPMIT. This microsoft-based Windows
system acts as a client server where project related data is stored. It also provides a common
interface that allows these parties to update the project information and exchange them. An
online system was chosen because it could work as web-based system on the Internet
platform, which is accessible nowadays.
Figure 1 shows the configuration for the MoPMIT system. The main components of the
system are the knowledge based module and the web interface. The system links to an
existing Facilities Management (FM) system with a generic design that ideally allows it to port
to other FM systems at a later stage. The system is web based and so an Internet connection
and a web browser is required to access it. The diagram shows the methods available for a
unit to enter a job, either accessing the system themselves or phoning the call centre and they
then access the system. The call centre, managing agent and client management will access
the system from their PC, which will be within the client’s network.
CLIENT NETWORK
UNIT
CALL CENTRE
or or
Wide Area
Telephone Internet
Handheld Device Network
(Any Type) Access (ISP)
(e.g. Nokia 9210 (ISDN/DSL)
Communicator)
Local Area
Network
MOPMIT SYSTEM
KNOWLEDGE WEB SERVER:
BASED Microsoft Internet
MODULE Information Server
INTERNET VPN
NETWORK
ROUTER OPERATING SYSTEM:
COMMUNICATION
Windows NT
MEDIA
DATABASE:
Data Data Data Microsoft SQL Server
ROUTER base base base Oracle 8
VPN Access Job Users
Local/Wide Local Area
CONTRACTOR Area Network Network
SYSTEM CONTRACTOR
XML
Data MANAGING CLIENT
Data
Transfer AGENT MANAGEMENT
base
protocol
Job
Fig.1. MoPMIT system architecture
The contractor is an external user, as was the case for the unit, and will have to access the
system via some Internet network communication media. For security purposes a Virtual
Private Network (VPN) is placed at each end of the connection. The VPN prevents hackers
getting into the system and makes the data transferred secure. The MoPMIT system requires a
server that will run a web server for hosting the web pages and a database for handling the
information.
161Figure 2 indicates a circle of process of how every party is interconnected by MoPMIT
system. The system allows them to share information and communicate on a common
interface with pre-allocated password access as a control mechanism that will restrict each
user to its role. Figure 3 explains in clear details the features that each user is allowed to
perform on MoPMIT. Both figures show the flow of a reactive maintenance work, which
starts when a problem occurred at a unit premises. To report the problem online, the user has
to log in into the system.
Estimate repair work Report via telephone
(complete the work if below (helpdesk operator)or
budget limit or authorised UNIT having problem
by FM) reporting online
START
Gives feedback
on Contractor's Report a
performance problem
occurs in the
Unit
CALL
View
status CENTRE
of jobs
Report problem for
the Unit
OPERATIVE
y Authorise job based
on previous data
y Analyse Unit's and
Receive job MoPMIT Contractor's
description performances
Submit
estimation of FACILITIES
above budget MANAGER
limit work for FM Submit
authorisation quoatation
for Evaluate Contractor's
authorisation invoice and authorise
payment
Assign
Operative to
the Unit Submit invoice View status of all
for payment jobs and view
claim performance of
Unit, Contractor,
Call Centre and
Facilities
Mnagaer
CONTRACTOR
Issue payment
END CLIENT
Fig. 2. Process flow for reactive maintenance project with MoPMIT
system
Once logged in, the system will show the Unit’s details such as the address; contact
number and person; available parking area, and status of work progress. The user is allowed
to change any details on the screen. The same screen also provides a link where job will be
reported. By accessing through clicking this link, the system will first help the user to check if
the problem could be solved on-site. For example, when an automatic door is not closing, the
system will suggest the user to check if anything has blocked the door laser beam that could
prevent the door from closing. The user will check the situation and see if the self-check has
actually solved the problem. A job will not be created if the problem is solved on-site.
Otherwise, the system will proceed with a questions and answers session in order to identify
the exact problem. This is important, as the system will rely on these answers to decide and
select the appropriate Contractor to do the job who would consequently visit the Unit with the
right tools and equipment. The questions and answers session basically replicates what a
Helpdesk Operator would do in the current practice.
162y View Performance of
Unit, Contractor, Call
Centre and Facilites
Manager
y View Status of All Jobs
CLIENT
MANAGEMENT
y Authorise payment
y View Performance of
y Submit Quote Unit, Contractor and
y View Thier Jobs Call Centre
y Update Status of y View Status of All
Their Job Jobs
MANAGING y Authorise Job after
CONTRACTOR SERVER AGENT Quote Received
y Add Job for Their y View Performance of
Unit Unit and Contractor
y View Status of Jobs y View Status of All
They Reported Jobs
y Amen Thier Unit y View Contact Details
Details y Add Jobs for Unit
y Give Feedbacks on UNIT MANAGER CALL CENTRE y Amend/Add New
Contractor's Details (for Unit,
Performance Staff, Contractor etc)
Can Do All of Above
SYSTEM
DEVELOPER
Fig. 3. System users and their roles
Apart from self-check, the user would also be asked if the problem is covered by insurance
or warranty. For health and safety issue, the system will suggest what actions should be taken
before the Operative arrives on site to see if the problem incurs any hazard. For instance, a
warning sign should be put up to avoid people from using the faulty elevator.
The user has to select the Response Time required for the Contractor to come and also
identify the repair location. At this point, the system will assign a Contractor that would send
an Operative to do the work.
It is possible that at any time while reporting the problem via online, technical problem
might occur. The system should be able to escalate the report to a Helpdesk Operator whom
will help the user via telephone. The Helpdesk Operator will be seeing the same interface as
the Unit Manager’s. In a way, this system would also offer an element for Helpdesk training
purposes. Figure 4 depicts an example of the MoPMIT use interface where the system will get
the input from the user through question/answer and multiple choice style interaction. The
arrows at the bottom of the table indicate the flow of questions that a user will encounter when
adding a new job in the system.
Until this point, the problem description is successfully entered into the system. MoPMIT
will alert the Contractor about the new job when the Contractor logs in into the system. An
Operative will then visit the Unit and estimates the repair work. If authorisation is needed
from the Facilities Manager, the Operative will supply the Contractor with the quotation of the
estimated work.
Instead of faxing the quotation to the Facilities Manager, the Contractor could upload the
quotation and measurement for the Facilities Manager to check. The system will alert the
Facilities Manager about the awaiting job authorisation. Decision on whether the job should
be authorised could be based on the information stored in MoPMIT server e.g. history of
repair work at the Unit; Contractor’s previous history data or cost of material. As usual,
discussion or negotiation with the Contractor could always take place when necessary. Job
will not proceed if authorisation is refused. The Facilities Manager will update the job status
in the system once he has decided to grant the authorisation. The Operative will go back to
the Unit with the necessary equipment to complete the work.
When the job is completed, the Contractor will update the job status in MoPMIT. The
Unit Manager could check the progress of work by logging in into the system and also give
feedback on the Contractor’s quality of work. This information could be used by the Facilities
Manager to assess the Contractor’s performance for future reference. To claim payment of
work done, the Contractor may do so by uploading the invoice into MoPMIT. Once received,
the Facilities Manager evaluates the invoice against work done and certifies the payment for
the Client to pay to the Contractor.
163Fig. 4. MoPMIT user interface – unit manager’s view
4. SYSTEM EVALUATION
As part of the system evaluation, many times during the development stage, the system was
demonstrated to the process owner of the project as to validate the knowledge gathered for the
system. At the final stage of the development, MoPMIT prototype was implemented and
demonstrated at different occasions as a final evaluation. The system was demonstrated to a
group of people consisting of various expertise related to the nature of the project such as IT
expert, facilities managers, surveyors, builders and project managers. MoPMIT prototype was
also taken to Call Centre and IT staff in FM, Clients and contractors’ firm. They were shown
all the user interfaces and their functionalities in the system i.e. Unit Manager, Contractor and
Managing Agent.
On another occasion, a group of staff from facilities management division have taken part
in a one-day pilot at one of the industrial partners in this project where they were all given the
opportunity to test the prototype according to the cycle of reactive maintenance process.
In general, the overall responses were very positive. Participants in the evaluation
positively agreed that web enablement reactive maintenance reporting could benefit in better
management of knowledge. A large majority thought the system was an improved method of
communication and data sharing between all the parties in the reactive maintenance process
being better with MoPMIT system. Although some of the invoicing and payment part of the
reactive maintenance process are missing from the current MoPMIT system, they believe that
the system would be able to expedite the reactive maintenance process.
The information gathered by the system would be useful for future maintenance
management such as to review contractor and unit performances, asset management, decision
making, cost monitoring, optimizing the re-use of information, reduce the number of helpdesk
operators and future planned maintenance. In the long term, when whole life cycle integration
becomes a reality, the MoPMIT system will be able to integrate with other design and
construction systems. Information, such as assets lists, from the design and construction
phases can be imported directly into the MoPMIT database. Knowledge captured by the
system can also be used for the design of future buildings.
1645. BENEFITS ANALYSIS
At present, the MoPMIT system is still a prototype. The goal is to reduce the problematic
components, and therefore increase the work efficiency in terms of time and cost during the
reactive maintenance. Its benefits can be summarised as follows:
1. Knowledge capturing The use of IT tools to capture and update a knowledge base providing
a central repository for both explicit and tacit knowledge
2. Electronic storage of information The system provides easy retrieval for users - for
example, job feedback information is entered into the system and then used to assess a
contractor’s performance.
3. Improved communication The system helps to improve communication and information
flow by making full use of the Internet and other Information Communication Technology.
This will in turn lead to a reduction in the use of paper, and associated delays
4. Easy-to-use interface The system provides an easy–to-use interface suitable for non-
technical users, such as a person at the unit who is reporting a problem through an internet-
based helpdesk
5. Controlled accessibility The client and server configuration and web interface enable all
parties involved in the reactive maintenance work to access the system from wherever they
are situated, but with their access capabilities controlled by job responsibilities.
6. Automated data entry system Because all parties have access to the same central data
repository. It eliminated certain need for information exchange using paper.
6. CONCLUSION
This project seeks to explore the use of a web-based technology to improve the reporting and
managing of reactive maintenance projects. It aims at providing support during fault reporting,
contractor allocation, job approval and performance evaluation. The process of reactive
maintenance project involves four main parties: the client, the contractor, the facilities
management agent and the suppliers. Analysis on business process of reactive maintenance
projects unearthed problems that impede the process in term of time, cost, quality of work and
the health and safety of the users. These problems can be summarised as [1] poor
communication among different parties in the process; [2] lack of knowledge sharing; and [3]
poor quality of information. MoPMIT system was developed as a prototype with the aim to
improve the operation of these reactive maintenance projects, with the main idea is to bring all
the different parties to share information and communicate on a common interface via Internet
technology.
Feedbacks received from the industry show that there is a consensus that the system will
lead to better management of knowledge, improve communication and result in better data
sharing among all parties.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank EPSRC, UK for funding this research and Industrial Partners
WS Atkins Consultants, WS Atkins FM, Lloyds TSB Group PLC, Whitbread PLC and
Willmott Dixon
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