Routine, Preventive, Deferred Maintenance

Routine Maintenance
The majority of daily tasks performed by the Physical Facilities staff are classified as routine maintenance (service calls). Typical routine maintenance tasks include responding to the following requests:
a. HVAC—uncomfortable space temperature.
b. Plumbing—dripping faucet or clogged toilet.
c. Electrical—power malfunction or burned out light bulb.
d. Painting—walls are scratched or faded, door tiles are broken.
e. Carpentry—broken door, ceiling tile replacement.

Maintenance requests are prioritized according to the following definitions which determine the urgency of response along with availability of manpower and materials.

Priority 1: Safety Issue [Immediately] — life safety, legal compliance, and central plant operations. Work must be started immediately to prevent injury to personnel or damage to facilities or equipment. Also included are breakdowns or outages that shut down all or a significant portion of the campus.

Priority 2: High Priority [1 day] — facility is not operational. The entire or major portion of a building is down. Work order is issued, but detailed planning and scheduling is by-passed to get the work started as soon as practical.

Priority 3: Routine [5 days] — work which is non-critical and can be delayed and has no established completion date.

Priority 4: Preventive Maintenance Schedule — scheduled maintenance and upkeep of buildings and major equipment to ensure reliable and efficient operation. Included is work to correct a potential hazard to personnel or property, but can be planned and scheduled.

Priority 5: Planned — work necessitates the entire campus, building, or significant portion of either to be shut down. This work must be planned and scheduled around campus activities.

The goal of Physical Facilities personnel is to respond to low priority maintenance requests within 30 days.

Preventive Maintenance
An important part of physical facilities operations is preventing maintenance. Major breakdowns to critical equipment and system are expensive to repair and create undesired disruption in the work and teaching environments of the campus community. Preventive maintenance maximizes equipment and system efficiency, which reduces energy consumption. It also enhances the institution's appearance.

A preventive maintenance plan is defined as regularly scheduled inspection of building structures and their equipment and building systems for signs of wear and tear that will require routine and/or corrective maintenance. This inspection process is performed by Physical Facilities personnel as well as outside contractors. The following list are samples of the different types of preventive maintenance programs presently active at Del Mar College:

• Periodic inspection of HVAC equipment. A preventive maintenance work order is issued on a scheduled basis.
• Operating conditions of the centrifugal chillers located in the two central plants are logged daily by Physical Facilities employees. These chillers are inspected and serviced annually during the winter months by an outside contractor.
• Boilers are inspected as required by a certified boiler inspector.
• The fire alarm system is checked annually by a licensed contractor.
• Fire safety inspections are conducted monthly by the Safety Office.
• All campus buildings are inspected periodically by the maintenance staff.
• Custodians are assigned to clean campus buildings, report any building deficiencies.

Deferred Maintenance
Work that has been delayed, bypassed to a future operational budget, or postponed until supplemental funds are available is described as deferred maintenance. The Deferred Maintenance of the college’s physical facilities includes those projects that are typically too large and/or too costly to be completed as a routine/periodic maintenance project.  The Physical Facilities Department uses a variety of sources to gather information for these projects.  This information is then summarized and reviewed.  The projects will then be listed on a Deferred Maintenance Projects List.  Various funding options are then discussed/requested to address these projects. The following is a sample of typical short-term deferred maintenance items:

• Pump seal is leaking and must be repaired.
• Carpet replacement of a large area.

Below is a sample of long-term deferred maintenance items:

• Section of chilled water piping that is deteriorating and needs to be replaced.
• 20-year old air-handling unit needs to be replaced.
• 20-year old ice machine is malfunctioning frequently and needs to be replaced.
• 20-year old roof is showing considerable wear and requires frequent patchwork.