Mark Schwartz, director of medical center facilitiesUniversity of Rochester.

Ecostruxure asset advisor provides “intelligence” to electrical infrastructure

Insights

schneider-electric.us/universityofrochester

2University of Rochester

When the power goes out in healthcare facilities, critical research and patient lives are at risk. By connecting aging electrical assets to the cloud and working with technical experts to analyze the data, condition-based monitoring can mitigate unscheduled downtime.

Background

Located in upstate New York, the University of Rochester Medical Center has emerged as one of the USA’s premiere academic healthcare organizations. A leader in health research, education, patient care, and community outreach, the Medical Center each year hosts over 140,000 admitted patients and over 1,000,000 outpatients. Areas of research focus on complex medical challenges such as vision impairment, cancer, hypertension, meningitis in children, and heart disease.

The facilities management team, led by Director of Facility Operations Mark Schwartz, is responsible for managing 5 million square feet (approximately 464,500 square meters) of footprint across the Medical Center’s campus. “We support all kinds of buildings. Some buildings are new construction and others date from 1924. Such a wide footprint necessitates that our staff be able to handle any kind of potential emergency in order to keep our campus buildings up and running,” said Schwartz.

Limited resources for ensuring power infrastructure reliability

In such an environment, reliability of power systems is a critical success factor. Even though emergency power generators are in place, the core electrical systems have to be reliable. “When power goes out at this institution, even though we have emergency backup, it still makes people very nervous. It does impact surgeries and other cases that we may have going on,” says Schwartz.

In addition to patients, thousands of scientists perform research at the institution. The researchers rely on equipment such as freezers that preserve research specimens. These devices need to remain operational at all times. If an electrical system failure occurs, these specimens and other data that researchers have spent years studying are at risk of being lost.

Schwartz and his team face a number of important challenges. Over the years, the facility has migrated from pencil and paper to electronic methods of gathering, storing and distributing data. The volume of data that comes into the institution has skyrocketed. The Medical Center has invested significant amounts of money in developing world-class electronic medical record systems. These digitized systems also rely on power systems that are always available.

“Our entire Medical Center is about medicine at the highest order, from education to research to clinical and healthcare delivery,” says Schwartz. “To provide the required levels of service, we need buildings that perform to the highest order. The buildings and associated electrical systems need to be intelligent in order to help us identify potential issues prior to a failure.”

Goal Long term, the University of Rochester Medical Center seeks to develop a completely digital and intelligent campus. The first step to achieving that goal is to enable an intelligent power infrastructure that can be monitored and analyzed on an ongoing basis.

Solution EcoStruxure™ Asset Advisor connects to and monitors electrical distribution assets via the cloud. Event notifications keep facility staff up to date regarding electrical distribution system performance. When abnormalities occur, recommendations are made surrounding the proper steps to take in order to avoid failures.

Story A facilities department struggles to maintain a power infrastructure that spans 5 million square feet (464,500 square meters) of healthcare hospital and research space. An innovative digital approach monitors the heartbeat of the institution, cuts maintenance costs, improves power system reliability, and relieves overburdened staff.

Results • A 20 to 1 return on investment (ROI)

• Downtime cost avoidance of nearly $1,000,000

• Peace of mind for a strapped building facilities staff

3University of Rochester

Although responsible for over 26,000 pieces of equipment at the Medical Center, the number of facilities department employees is quite small. As a result, it is next to impossible to perform all of the preventive maintenance that is required to assure uptime.

“The best way to perform maintenance in a hospital environment is to understand what the physical run conditions are of each piece of equipment that you have. As the institution continues to grow, sending onsite staff to go out and physically measure and survey the equipment becomes too costly and time intensive,” said Schwartz.

EcoStruxure Asset Advisor offers affordable, reliable support

In order to gain advanced knowledge of potential problems, Schwartz and his team partnered with Schneider Electric to deploy EcoStruxure Asset Advisor, an innovative campus-wide monitoring solution. Monitoring began in April of 2015 with a focus on the most critical and the most concerning assets that had been identified by the facility staff.

“The value of EcoStruxure Asset Advisor does not only center around cost savings,” said Schwartz. “Yes, an unexpected failure can cost you millions of dollars, it can also cause building damage and loss of business continuity, but the potential damage to the institution’s reputation is the biggest concern,” he said.

EcoStruxure Asset Advisor provides the facilities team with the ability to manage the performance of assets and offers insights to the status of their electrical distribution equipment. This enables them to make better business decisions.

“In essence, EcoStruxure Asset Advisor provides ‘intelligence’ to our electrical infrastructure. We have the flexibility of modernizing older equipment by incorporating new sensors and predictive

technologies, along with communications capabilities. In addition, we are beginning to update our standards on new equipment by adding communications capabilities built in from the factory, which makes it more economical to expand our monitoring throughout our facility. This allows us to conduct predictive analysis, thereby fundamentally changing the way we manage our electrical assets. EcoStruxure Asset Advisor is our doorway to the next generation of monitoring and analysis services,” he explained.

Enabling devices to communicate their status is an important first step. However, equally as important is the type of data that the device is capable of communicating. The intelligence embedded in the equipment enables communications not only back to the staff, but also provides important performance data to Schneider Electric Service Bureau experts who, in return, provide actionable insights to Schwartz and his team. The quality of data being gathered from the sensors is such that the Service Bureau can now be much more precise in its analysis.

“ To provide medicine to the highest order, we need buildings that perform to the highest order.”

— Mark Schwartz,

Director of Facility

Operations, University of

Rochester

Medical Center

4

EcoStruxure Asset Advisor is built upon three layers of analysis. The first layer uses asset-specific algorithms, rules, and thresholds to gauge the performance of the assets. The second layer consists of the Schneider Electric Service Bureau, which is manned by a team to determine if the event the system has detected is a normal condition, or whether it requires additional investigation. If so, a Schneider Electric expert is engaged to provide the third layer of analysis. They are responsible for analyzing the data, determining the root cause, and developing a detailed event report. The event report provides all the data received, the interpretation of the data, recommended next steps, and a timeline to accomplish the tasks. Each event report is submitted to facility personnel for review and discussion. This is where our customer leverages the human intellectual knowledge from Schneider Electric to help them make business decisions.

The implementation of EcoStruxure Asset Advisor also allows for predictive “condition-based” maintenance as opposed to the riskier reactive-based maintenance approach.

“Condition-based maintenance is about the utilization, loading, age and environmental conditions of the assets. Some assets are cycled frequently while other equipment may not be cycled as often. We are trying to understand the condition of each device so that we can service it at the right time, based on condition, not just on a fixed calendar schedule or the equipment’s physical appearance,” he said.

A 20X return on investment

The information gathered from the field equipment is aggregated and a dashboard is made accessible to staff members. From a management perspective, Schwartz can determine how best to deploy his limited people resources.

“EcoStruxure Asset Advisor allows us to perform retrofits and upgrades where, under other circumstances, we would have to replace the equipment. The value is both time and reduced cost,” said Schwartz.

“ We need buildings and associated electrical systems that are intelligent and that can help us identify potential issues prior to a failure.”

— Mark Schwartz,

Director of Facility

Operations, University of

Rochester

Medical Center

$1 millionsaved through early

discovery of problems

20 to 1return on investment

University of Rochester

5University of Rochester

“We have had a couple of instances where the Schneider Electric Service Bureau has caught some potential electrical distribution system failures and abnormalities. Problems like high temperature. By monitoring the condition, the experts at the Service Bureau tell us if the anomaly has reverted back to normal state or whether it appears like the situation will escalate and require a response. The status reports we receive also suggest next steps to take and the timelines that will be required to execute those next steps. This is information we never had before.”

“EcoStruxure Asset Advisor has produced a 20 to 1 return on investment (ROI) for us. In two incidences alone, we have saved nearly $1,000,000 through early discovery of these problems. EcoStruxure Asset Advisor helps to reduce the pressure on us by providing another set of eyes to assure that everything is running as planned. Our staff members sleep better at night knowing this,” said Schwartz.

According to Schwartz, EcoStruxure Asset Advisor is only the first step toward implementing the long-term vision of developing a completely digital and intelligent campus. “What was once ‘dumb’ equipment can now tell us its condition and whether or not it is approaching failure and needs service. This is incredibly valuable to us,” he said.

With the success of the initial pilot, plans are now underway to establish a facility-wide energy management and power quality system. Using EcoStruxure Asset Advisor as the foundation, further expansion of the connected facility will include the monitoring of the Golisano Children’s Hospital. “We count on Schneider Electric support and their EcoStruxure-enabled solutions to help us achieve our campus-wide digitization goals,” said Schwartz.

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December 2018

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