How to prepare your equipment list for a CMMS rollout

Sooner or later, every maintenance software rollout arrives at a spreadsheet: the equipment list. It is usually a file several people have built over several years, with copies on different computers and a name like “equipment-list-final(2).xlsx”.

That file is a treasure; everything the plant knows about its equipment is in it. But as it stands, it usually cannot be loaded. This note goes through a few practical steps to prepare it, steps that help whether you choose Waiotech or any other software.

The usual errors

Before anything else, it helps to know what we are looking for. In almost every list we have seen, these problems come back:

• Duplicate codes. Two rows coded P-RAS1; one “return sludge pump 1” and the other “sludge return pump”. Usually they are one asset entered twice.
• Merged cells. The “location” column for three blowers written in one merged cell. Readable in the spreadsheet, but on import only the first row gets a location.
• Empty locations. An asset nobody can say where it is installed.
• Inconsistent units. One pump’s flow in cubic metres per hour, another’s in litres per second, a third with no unit at all.
• Positions mixed with equipment. Rows that are both an installation location and the specification of one particular machine.
• Retired equipment. A pump scrapped three years ago that is still on the list.

The best time to find a duplicate code is before loading, not six months later when you have two half-histories.

Step one: build the structure before the detail

The temptation is to go straight to the columns and fields. It is better to make the plant’s structure clear first:

1. Buildings and areas. Inlet pump station, blower building, secondary clarifier area.
2. The positions in each. Inlet pump 1, inlet pump 2, the MCC.
3. Process units. Screening, biological treatment with its lines, secondary clarification, the sludge line.
4. Which unit each position serves.

Once this skeleton is in place, every row of the old list finds a definite home, and the rows that do not fit show themselves.

Step two: decide on coding, don’t invent it

If your current coding works and people know it, keep it. There is no need to change codes that are painted on panels and that everyone knows by heart just to roll out software. Keep only two rules:

• Every code is unique within its kind.
• Once accepted, a code does not change without a reason.

If you have no coding, or it is very irregular, choose a simple pattern from which you can tell what is where, for example a plant prefix, the equipment type and a number: WW-P-RAS-01.

Step three: one file, with revisions

One reason data goes bad is several people working at the same time on different copies of the same file. It is better to have one reference workbook, with every major change as a new revision:

• Revision 3: the first list from the maintenance team.
• Revision 4: duplicate codes resolved, locations completed, anoxic mixer 2 added.

Each revision is checked before it is accepted: where are the errors? What has changed since the previous revision? When a revision is clean, it is accepted and becomes the basis for loading.

Step four: don’t load everything at once

If the list is large, not everything needs to be complete on day one. A good way is to start with critical equipment: inlet pumps, blowers, sludge pumps, disinfection equipment. These are the ones with the most maintenance work and the highest cost of failure.

The rest can be added in later revisions. What matters is that from day one, real work is recorded against the important equipment.

Step five: someone who knows the plant sits with the work

The last point is not technical, but it may be the most important. Preparing the equipment list is not a job for an IT specialist alone. Someone has to be there who knows that “blower 3” is the standby blower, that the waste sludge pump was replaced last year, and that a certain row belongs to equipment that no longer exists.

One person from operations and one from maintenance, a few hours a week, is usually enough. Those few hours save months of data correction after go-live.

Mistakes that get expensive later

Some decisions in preparing the list seem simple at the time but cost later:

• Copying columns without understanding them. A “status” column that in the old file is sometimes “active”, sometimes “standby” and sometimes “broken” mixes three different ideas. Before loading, settle what each value actually means.
• Loading scrapped equipment as active. It will later show up in the PM plan, in reports and in today’s work list, and erode trust in the system.
• Dropping units of measure. “200” without a unit is a meaningless number. If you don’t know the unit of a pump’s flow, leave it empty and complete it later.
• Building a hierarchy that is too deep. Six levels of building, floor, room and row for a simple pump station only make equipment harder to find.

A small mistake that grows

A realistic example: in the old list there are two rows for return sludge pump 1. One was created by maintenance and holds two repairs; the other was created by operations and holds running hours. If both are loaded, from day one there are two “pumps”, neither with the full picture. Work orders end up half on one and half on the other, and six months later merging them is a job nobody wants.

Spotted before loading, the same mistake is solved with a five-minute conversation between the two teams.

In short

• Know the common errors and find them before loading.
• Build the structure first: building, position, process unit.
• Keep familiar codes; just make them unique and stable.
• Keep one reference workbook with checked revisions.
• Start with critical equipment.
• Have someone who knows the plant sit with the work.