Components provide functionality. In perfect designs, components provide functionality efficiently. Conversely, in new, one-of-a-kind pilot designs, equipment may never cleanly provide the functionality sought. Equipment may be abandoned in place, based upon cost consequence or design inadequacy. Often, no one knows why the equipment functions were needed in the first place! Some of the most interesting and rewarding project discoveries involve abandoned equipment that played important cost, operational, or even safety roles that evidently were lost over time. Plant operators were sometimes unaware of these roles. Some discoveries involved monitoring and alarm equipment that was difficult to maintain, so it fell out of service. This may be caused by simple ignorance, intense demands of high-maintenance equipment, or installation issues. Installations that impede maintenance contribute. Plant environments that are hard on hardware are inevitably harder on people. People are habitability barometers; they avoid working in inhospitable places, whether scheduled or correction maintenance. Maintaining environmental HVAC, lighting, access (elevators and stairs), habitability and other services or equipment often enables work. Less than ideal plant areas still have maintenance needs.

Sometimes, the maintenance shop makes a unilateral design decision to abandon service. Occasionally decisions fail to receive proper review. In some cases higher-level policy would have changed that decision; in others higher level policy would have become aligned with these working level choices. These include decisions to perform or not perform critical maintenance. Because maintenance is out of sight and mind in large companies, anomalies can be lost. RCM projects identify and...