recommended practices for
building maintenance professionals

The following list of recommended practices is developed as a guide for building maintenance professionals to maintain the operations of their buildings at efficient levels. It is not meant to replace regular preventive maintenance.

1. Regular checks on the building envelope are important. Broken windows, cracked walls, or even windows that are accidentally left opened will lead to additional energy used by the air-conditioning system.
   
   
2. The recommended design temperature for buildings is between 22.5 deg C and 25.5 deg C as stated in the Code of Practice CP 13:1999. Maintenance professionals should ensure that the correct temperature setting is maintained within the building, as excessively low operating temperatures not only result in unnecessary energy wastage, but also poorer occupancy comfort.
   
   
3. Regular monitoring of the energy consumption by high energy consuming equipment is recommended, as it could be used to:
   · Identify equipment that requires special attention
   · Ensure that equipment is operating at optimum levels. (Maintenance professional should understand the design conditions well to ensure that equipment are operating at optimum levels)
   
   
4. The power factor of the electrical installation should be maintained at above 0.85. If necessary, a power factor correction system could be installed to improve the power factor and reduce the utility cost for reactive power used.
   
   
5. It is recommended that a review of the energy consuming equipments be conducted once every 10 years. A walkthrough energy audit (which could be conducted at no cost by some energy service companies) would provide an estimation of potential for energy savings.