Photo Credit: Joey Kirkman
At the Greensboro Aquatic Center (GAC) in North Carolina, maintenance is an ongoing, full-time endeavor. With three bodies of water, a therapy pool, a competition pool, and a dive well, the GAC totals 1.5-million gallons of water housed in a 67,000-square-foot building.
Keeping the GAC running at a world-class level requires constant awareness of the condition of the equipment, the water quality, and the actual building structure. Working in such a large facility, one might become completely overwhelmed and even lost in a short time. When asked to write an article on “Best Maintenance Practices,” my first thought was, ”This will be an article the size of War and Peace.” Upon further thought, I realized the best maintenance practice is the facility’s own plan.
Pick A Plan
A plan is an orderly or step-by-step conception or proposal for accomplishing an objective. I like this definition because of the word ”orderly.” Wouldn’t life be great if everything went along in an orderly fashion? For the GAC, a plan is ”a proposed or intended course of action” because the goal is to keep the facility in a narrow, ideal range. To do this, we have adopted the food industry’s Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Plan (HACCP).