How D&E Air Conditioning Is Connecting Data to Drive Predictive Maintenance

D&E Air Conditioning (D&E) is one of Australia’s largest mechanical contracting companies with capabilities that span design, production, and service maintenance on mechanical and air conditioning equipment across the pharmaceutical, commercial, healthcare, and industrial industries. Intending to move towards predictive maintenance, D&E wanted to standardise processes to gather consistent data across jobsites for the long-term management of an asset.

20

Total projects using BIM 360

50%

Gain in productivity

The Value of Connected Data in Facilities Maintenance

Long-time users of Autodesk, D&E continually looks for ways to integrate technology into its tech stack to provide an end-to-end experience for its customers. D&E wanted to digitise its service maintenance program to move towards predictive maintenance to improve its service capabilities.

Predictive insight will allow D&E to alleviate unexpected downtime and provide value-added service to their customers by allocating resources for equipment that needs to be maintained rather than focusing on unnecessary service areas.

“The goal of predictive maintenance is to use data to predict when assets need maintenance support, eliminating unnecessary equipment checks, saving time and resources. With predictive maintenance, we can improve internal resource management by knowing when technicians need to be on-site and move from reactive to proactive.”

– Nicholas Eynon, Energy Performance Manager

The Case for Visualising Data with BIM 360 Ops

The first step to meeting their predictive maintenance goal was adopting a mobile computerised maintenance solution. D&E was in the market for an easy-to-use and customisable solution that balanced simplicity for the end-user with powerful and sophisticated reporting. And that’s what they found in BIM 360 Ops within Autodesk Construction Cloud™.

The digitised process eliminated the inefficiencies experienced through D&E’s previous process for equipment maintenance. With BIM 360 Ops, D&E can easily organise documentation and communicate with clients on maintenance status. The automatic reporting capabilities allow maintenance logs to sync in real-time so that information can be accessed and distributed to clients instantly.

Reaping Initial Benefits from BIM 360 Ops

D&E initially planned to pilot BIM 360 Ops on three test sites. However, after an overwhelming response from their technicians on the ease of use and ability to onboard buildings quickly, the team deployed the solution across 20 sites in seven months.

With digitised maintenance information, D&E can quickly search for and find documentation to meet compliance checks. What used to take hours with paper-based documentation now takes 10 minutes.

“BIM 360 Ops is that one-stop shop where you can go for all your information. It minimises back and forth communication and eliminates uncertainties for our internal management by keeping everyone up-to-date on maintenance and technician productivity.”