Setting up PMs

PM = Preventive Maintenance = Maintaining equipment at a regularly scheduled interval that will allow you to find and fix problems before they become disasters. Actually, you can't prevent disasters. Things WILL break down when you don't expect it, but it doesn't happen as often on well-maintained equipment.
I currently have a nice little gig setting up the PM schedules for Varsity for two large commercial buildings, totalling almost 1.5 million sq. feet. It is a little bit overwhelming sometimes, but I am making good progress and everybody is happy with my work. That is good, because from what was already done, it is clear that none of them had the slightest clue how to get it rolling.
So, now I am obsessed with equipment and what has to happen to it. Some of it was converted over from the old system, but it's fragmented. For example, I already have a list of equipment in the buildings and the serial numbers. I also have a list of tasks that were done before. Part of my job is to match up the equipment with the appropriate tasks, and that gets a bit tricky sometimes. Most of it, though, is just grunt work. Just keep slogging away until you reach the end of the pile. Never mind that there are 154 Fan Powered Boxes to schedule. Just take the first one, give its schedule a name, give the PM you will generate a name (I always call it PM: whatever I called the schedule), assign it a task (usually a monthly task). Then, if there are PMs to be done on another interval, enter those and make sure they don't pile up in the future - there are monthly tasks, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, biennial, triennial and more and you can't have all 154 triennial tasks hit the staff in the same month, or even year or they will be overwhelmed. So you tell the system the triennial task happens every 36 months, but add 2 months before it is generated, and 4 months for the next one, and so on.
Confused, yet?
This stuff is rattling around in my head and it is making me a bit squirrely. I have been accused of being a little creative with how many hours I've been working. Somebody said I can't work over 100 hours for Varsity + 40 for Cabellas, + 50 on the remodel and fit it into one week. Well, I did say before that the 100+ hours were in a little more than a week, actually 9 days. It is still a lot.
So, yesterday, my good buddy and bro-in-law-squared, who has finally returned from California, and I went out in the woods and filled feeders. It was a delightful break. I even got to fire my pistol. I flushed out a monstrous big, well fed rat that had made its nest in one of our blinds and was eating our bait corn. Well, he won't be doing that anymore.
We talked about going back today for some actual hunting, but I have too much to do.

Cooling Tower #4 will have PMs monthly, starting 4/15/2011, which will take 30 minutes. It will also have a quarterly PM which I'll just let happen each third month, and that will take an hour. A semi-annual PM will be every 6th month, plus an offset of 5, and that will take 2 hours. The annual PM, every 12 months, plus an offset of 11, will take 2 hours. The biennial PM, every 24 months, plus offset of 20 months will take 4 hours. Check it all over, and BE SURE to save it.
And now I'm done whining, and need to get back to work.

SQUIRRELY!

Goodby Cabellas

I resigned from Cabellas Friday. It was a tough decision for me, as I do not like to give up on jobs, women, or overwhelming projects. But I had to do it. Here are my reasons:

1. I've worked the last two Sundays and they had me scheduled for the next two as well. Nobody asked me what I needed, they just scheduled it that way.
2. When Cabellas hired me as a Maintenance worker I envisioned what I was doing for Varsity, which is pretty high-end maintenance, HVAC, high voltage electronic systems, pumps, etc. Cabellas envisioned someone who cleans the bathrooms three times a day. They said that isn't what it will be long term, but they didn't give me any info on what it would be, so that's all I had to judge by.
3. I got a job with Varsity to enter maintenance schedules for all the equipment in two large commercial buildings into the new CBRE Work Order system. That pays a lot more per hour, and they are in a bind so they want me to work lots of hours. Last week I put in over 100 hours on that, in addition to 40 hours with Cabellas, and at least that many more trying to clean up the remodel project. That's too many hours for one person, which brings me to...
4. I needed a day off! I had to quit to get a day off?!?

On a lighter note, the bathroom looks great. Below is the tub. It is awesome! We got a Jetta brand tub that was special ordered but cancelled. Jetta has such tubs on a special part of their web site. This one cost about half what we'd have paid, and then it turned out it was a foot longer than we'd thought when we bought it, so it would have cost more than we thought if we'd ordered in the ordinary way. It is VERY nice, and the marble turned out nice, too.














This is the little chandelier Liz got to hang above her dressing table. I put in a couple of little spot lights for actual light and this adds a feminine touch to it. Gives me the willies.














I hate to post this photo with all the stuff piled on the sink, but it goes with the outlets and switch with no covers, yet. The plumbing all works, including a new hot water pump so there is instant hot water. We're making the paint guys come re-do a lot of the walls, though.














And this is the view into the master bedroom. Reminds me somewhat of tornado damage.