The adoption of ISO 55000 and ISO 50001 standards can bring great benefits to building managers and the facilities they manage.
By Alejandra García Vélez
Although there are several standards that have elements that can be applied in buildings of all kinds to guarantee their optimal performance, in this article we will focus on two. The first is the recently published asset management standard 55000; the second is ISO 50001, which addresses a topic that is always on the list of priorities of any installation: energy control.
Take care of your assets
On January 11, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) officially published the ISO 55000 standard on Asset Management Systems; This standard, according to our guest Gerardo Trujillo, president and founder of the Mexican Association of Professionals in Asset Management, was born in order to define the best practices in the management of the physical assets of organizations.
It is important to note that ISO 55000 consists of three parts:
ISO 55000: Sets the definitions (the why).
ISO 55001: Defines the requirements for the establishment, implementation, maintenance and improvement of an asset management system (the what).
ISO 55002: These are the guidelines for the application of ISO 55001 (the how).
Also, one of its main objectives is to help establish a strategy that allows the organization to achieve its business objectives through a management of its assets that takes into account risk management.
"Physical asset management goes far beyond maintenance management; it involves seeing assets throughout their lifecycle. From the moment the need for the asset is generated, its selection, design, development, commissioning, operation and maintenance to an optimal economic point that indicates the time to repair, replace or finally its disincorporation, "explained Trujillo.
He added that "the key to the standard lies in the definition of asset management policies aligned with the objectives of the company/organization considering its operational context. In this way all the areas involved are aligned with the policies of corporate performance.to improve corporate performance.dos. xto operational. In this way, departments are aticas and corporate objectives and stop competing with each other for resources and isolated objectives. All companies currently have an asset management system, what will happen is that these must conform to the guidelines contained in the standard to improve corporate performance. "
Proceeds
When considering the benefits of applying the parameters established by this regulation, Trujillo emphasizes that asset management must be implemented from the early stages of the asset, in order to avoid chronic problems that cause unreliability and high costs during the cycle of operation of the same.
"By planning things better, you affect the total cost of ownership of the asset. A correct management of the process generates a higher return, a lower maintenance cost, a greater availability of assets and therefore greater productivity," he said.
However, as this is a new standard, it is important that companies wishing to start the implementation process are informed about the best practices contained in the standard and, if possible, have the advice of an expert to provide an overview of the standard and how large organizations have already implemented their asset management systems.
ISO for better environmental management
When talking about sustainable and environmentally friendly buildings, the first parameters that come to mind are those of LEED certification. However, there are other standards focused on helping organizations save money and conserve resources through practices aimed at enhancing energy savings.
One of them is the ISO 50001 standard, which is committed to the development of an Energy Management System (EMS) as a means to achieve greater energy efficiency in buildings.
To know a little more about this standard we have as a guest the Engineer Edgar Ramírez, Project Coordinator of URE Soluciones, in his words the proposal of ISO 50001 is "to provide a structure of systems and processes necessary for the improvement of energy performance, including efficiency, application of renewable energies use and consumption of energy".
Moving on to the concrete actions dictated by the standard, Ramírez explains that it is based on the PHVA (Plan, Do, Verify, Act) approach and in general terms the following actions must be carried out:
- Analyze past, present and future energy consumption
- Generation and monitoring of the energy baseline
- Define energy performance indicators
- Set objectives and goals for the EMS
- Follow-up to action plans
- Internal audit program
- Management review
As for some recommendations it is important to take into account if you want to implement the standard; the interviewee stressed that the energy planning process should be carried out in the most detailed way possible.
"I advise doing an energy audit in order to achieve significant findings in the consumption of forms of energy, the energy review is the heart of the standard and gives us the necessary information to achieve better results and track the system. The figure shows the steps of the energy planning process," Ramirez noted.
In Figure 1 you can see what would be the recommended process to follow when diagnosing the reality of an installation in terms of its energy consumption, as explained by Ramírez.
Panorama in the region
It is always interesting to analyze how much impact a given regulation has had, because it is useless to have the tools if they are not used. The most recent data regarding the 50001 standard are those released by the ISO Survey in 2012. Table 1 shows the number of companies globally, 88% of certified companies are located in Europe and it is worth highlighting a global growth of 332% in the number of total companies that have implemented the standard.
Specifically for Latin America, it can be observed that the number of companies that have adopted the standard is not very significant, which is to be expected. In this regard, Ramírez pointed out that "the standard is very little widespread in Latin America given its recent launch, it is currently in the dissemination stage and therefore there is a lack of knowledge of the benefits of implementing an EMS in organizations."
Ramírez also explained that the G7 countries (Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom) have been working on energy saving systems for more than two decades, with Germany being the clearest example as a country with an expensive energy matrix, due to which its priority is to optimize energy consumption as a tool to reduce production costs.
Finally, Ramírez pointed out that "the ISO 50001 standard will become an indispensable tool to export since it allows to reduce the carbon footprint of products and services, additionally obtaining economic savings with a relatively investment and attractive rates of return".
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