Predictable benefits

A typical York chiller.

Dan Mizesko, managing partner of US Chillers, discusses the virtues of predictive maintenance.

fmME: How advanced is the maintenance industry in the UAE and around the Gulf?
I feel the liquid chiller service industry is far behind in this region, the reason being that, before 2001, everyone had to rely on the OEM or its agents for chiller services, and had to pay whatever the cost, and wait however long for service, as this was a monopoly market. This is no longer the prevailing situation.

fmME: Are customers paying more attention to maintenance in an effort to cut overall costs?
I have found that customers always value maintenance. However, their expectations were always very low. US Chillers brings you the most advanced technology available in the industry.

If your equipment fails unexpectedly, you face downtime and potentially inconvenienced occupants. With predictive maintenance, you will know about potential problems before breakdowns occur.

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This will bring you the ability to schedule repairs before they become more costly – and at times when they will not inconvenience you or your building occupants.

Using today’s best testing tools and technologies, we can discover, or rule out, virtually any kind of hidden system problem. As a result, we can offer tangible assistance:

• Find, identify and correct minor problems inexpensively before they lead to more complex and expensive repairs;
• Avoid needless downtime and inconvenience or discomfort to occupants;
• Ensure continued production when equipment is used in process applications;
• Control energy cost;
• Prolong equipment life, thereby deferring replacement cost, and
• Prevent overtime cost for unscheduled repairs.

Predictive maintenance is key to optimal building systems management. With this you can make the most informed decisions and achieve the lowest overall operating cost.

Some of the predictive services we offer are vibration analysis, thermographic testing, eddy current testing, water/oil/refrigerant analysis performed by an independent US laboratory, motor insulation testing, ultrasonic flow analysis, chiller performance and energy analysis.

fmME: What are some of the main maintenance or service-related issues you come across regularly?
To be quite honest, the most common things we find are that chillers have not been correctly commissioned and started to factory specifications, and are maintained at these same poor standards.

This puts the end user – whether it be a district cooling utility or a building owner – behind the eight ball, so to speak, from day one, and it is downhill from there in terms of energy and reliability.

Our commissioning, decommissioning, continuous commissioning and retro-commissioning are premised on the core philosophy that we can assure the end user and owners of the facility that the chillers are operating as per design from the moment we perform our services.