01
The Opportunity
A global data-centre estate managed approximately $80 million of annual capital and project expenditure alongside approximately $30 million of annual third-party maintenance expenditure. Capital projects and preventive maintenance were necessary disciplines, but they were planned through separate processes. That separation made it difficult to see when planned project work could change the economic case for recurring maintenance on the same asset.
The opportunity was to review the programmes together before scope and timing were committed. The decision was never simply to cancel maintenance because a replacement appeared in the capital plan. It was to establish, at technical-scope level, whether the project would satisfy all or part of a maintenance requirement, whether a gap remained, and what action was safe and commercially sensible.
The decision was never simply to cancel maintenance. It was to establish, at technical-scope level, what action was safe and commercially sensible.
02
The Approach
The team compared the approved capital programme with affected assets, preventive-maintenance requirements, project and maintenance scopes, timing, criticality, lead times, operational risk and cost. The review was repeated annually as the next capital programme was finalised, and the resulting decisions were implemented rather than left as a reporting exercise.
programme
requirement
One recurring example involved UPS battery replacement. A project could include isolation, relevant parameter adjustments, testing and recommissioning. Depending on the maintenance specification, those activities could overlap with elements of annual or semi-annual UPS maintenance. The overlap had to be established against the actual scope; replacing the batteries did not automatically make every UPS maintenance requirement unnecessary. Similar questions could arise in cooling and fire-system work.
Three outcomes were legitimate, and the review distinguished between them.
01
Avoid
Project activity covered the requirement, so independent maintenance could be avoided.
02
Add to scope
A gap remained, so the activity was added to the project where technically and commercially sensible.
03
Coordinate
Dates did not align, so schedules were coordinated against lead times, criticality and risk.
The result was a practical planning intervention that connected capital, maintenance and asset decisions at the point where they affected one another.
03
The Result
The intervention avoided approximately
million of maintenance expenditure over three years.
The amount varied by year with the approved capital programme and was recorded as an avoided cost rather than a reduction applied to the maintenance budget. The reported figure is cumulative over three years; it is not an annual $3.5 million saving.
04
How It Shaped Clarisync
The methodology emerged from operational improvement work led by professionals involved in developing Clarisync. The experience subsequently informed capabilities built into the platform.
Clarisync’s Operational Ontology associates work across different domains with the same underlying operational asset. That relationship connects capital projects, asset maintenance, operational planning and financial consequences. Existing Capital Planning capability is intended to identify potential maintenance expenditure that could be avoided or consolidated with planned projects, using relevant maintenance information available through Asset Management (CMMS). The platform supports identification and assessment; accountable operational teams still make the technical decisions.
Governance
The platform supports identification and assessment; accountable operational teams still make the technical decisions.