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The purpose of this paper is to review the operation and maintenance practices within wind power applications and to clarify practical needs as gaps between researchers and practitioners.

The paper collects, categorizes, and analyzes the published literature of both researchers and practitioners systematically.

The paper defines significant issues in operation and maintenance of wind energy related to: site and seasonal asset disturbances; stakeholders’ requirements trade‐off; dependability and asset deterioration challenges; diagnostic, prognostic and information and communication technologies (ICTs) applications; and maintenance optimization models. Within each category, the gaps and further research needs have been extracted with respect to both an academic and industrial perspective.

The use of wind energy is growing rapidly and the associated practices related to maintenance and asset management are still lacking. Therefore, the literature review of operation and maintenance is a necessity to uncover the holistic issues and interrelationships of what has so far been published as detailed and fragmented topics to specific issues. Wind energy assets represent modern renewable energy assets which are affected by environmental disturbances, rapid technological development, rapid scaling‐up processes, the stochastic and dynamic nature of operations and degradation, the integrity and interoperability of system‐to‐support.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of research contributions and industrial development efforts. That will be useful to the life cycle stakeholders in both academia and industry in understanding the maintenance problem and solution space within the wind energy context.

Tourism is a pillar of the service industries in Hong Kong. Its growth entails quality hotel accommodations where cost‐effective operation and maintenance (O&M) of their facilities are essential. A benchmarking study was carried out on ten luxury hotels with the aim of identifying the significance and performance of various O&M cost elements.

A benchmarking club was set up for the practitioners participating in the study. A template was piloted and then refined for use in collecting data, which include the hotels' characteristics, their expenditures on maintenance and project works, in‐house manpower and payroll, contract maintenance costs, and utilities costs and consumptions.

Energy cost dominates the O&M expenditure of hotels. The cost for maintaining lifts and escalators constitutes a major part of contract maintenance costs. Larger hotels can enjoy a lower unit O&M cost.

Quality, age and occupancy rate of hotels are factors which warrant further work to investigate their effects on O&M costs. It is also necessary to study what cost‐sensitive parameters are appropriate for use in normalising the costs of different trades of O&M work.

It has been shown how a benchmarking curve can be constructed for identifying the performance of utilities cost. This approach can be taken to develop similar curves for benchmarking other cost elements, as well as other aspects including processes and values of O&M works.

Sensitive O&M cost data are seldom disclosed. The study has overcome the difficulties with their collection and the cost benchmarks presented are useful references for hotel practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to present a benchmarking study of operation and maintenance costs of French healthcare facilities between 2008 and 2009. The investigation presents findings using quantitative methods, including cumulative frequency and descriptive statistics. The purpose also is to highlight and capture the performance profile of long‐term hospitals, using several operational cost drivers.

A literature review revealed that there are no studies on the benchmarking of operation or maintenance costs of health facilities in France. Operational cost drivers reported in literature from other countries were used as the underlying constructs for this research, with a view to generating a benchmarking framework for the health assets in the data sample. The data were extracted from the databases of the hospitals concerned. Some of the data were collected via interviews and questionnaires. Statistical analysis was carried out to investigate and generate potential benchmarking cost curves. Potential operational cost drivers were extracted and used to develop cumulative frequency curves for benchmarking purposes.

The authors found that cost per bed ratio can be used as an efficient metric to classify health facilities into similar to data sets. The results also show that the operational costs of utilities, maintenance and operations & maintenance staff correlate positively and significantly with the square meter of floor area. This relationship indicates that 82 per cent of the operational performance can be explained by this linear relationship. However, it was found that the relationship between the total of operational costs per square meter with the floor is negatively correlated and surprisingly only explains 41 per cent of the performance of the health asset operational cost variation in the data sample.

The paper presents the first metric benchmarking method in France which allows health facility managers in France to evaluate and develop operational strategies, with a view to reducing the costs burden.

Rising energy costs and increasing environmental concerns are catalysts for introducing sustainable design features in buildings. Incorporating sustainable design features in commercial buildings cannot be overstated because it could confer benefits to the investor (owners) and occupants. This study aims to develop a model that could aid in the prediction of operation and maintenance (O&M) costs from the knowledge of building-design variables. There is little evidence that design variables influence the O&M costs of buildings. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between design variables and O&M costs in commercial buildings with the intent of developing a cost model for estimating O&M costs at the early design phase.

The study was approached quantitatively using a survey strategy. Data for the study were obtained from 30 randomly selected commercial buildings in the CBD in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Pareto's 80/20 rule, correlation and regression analysis were performed on the data to prove the statistical relationships between the buildings' O&M costs and their design variables.

The study found that 12 significant O&M costs elements contribute to about 82% of total O&M costs. Repairs and decoration had a strong correlation with building shape. Furthermore, the regression analysis found that O&M costs values were primarily dependent on the building size (the gross floor area and height of the buildings). The gross floor area and height handled over 73% of the variance in the O&M costs of commercial buildings in Sri Lanka.

These findings are a useful insight into the principles for design economies that could contribute to more sustainable commercial buildings.

There is increasing research interest in the expansion of the offshore wind energy sector. Recent research shows that operations and maintenance (O&M) account for around 20-35 per cent of the total energy costs in this sector. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of O&M issues in the offshore wind energy sector to propose initiatives that can help reduce the cost of energy used by offshore wind farms.

The paper is based on an in-depth literature review and a Delphi study of a panel of 16 experts on O&M.

Consisting primarily of conceptual papers and/or modelling papers, the extant literature identifies several challenges for O&M in the offshore wind energy sector. These challenges can be grouped into four categories: issues related with industry immatureness; distance/water depth; weather window; and policy issues. The Delphi study identified three other major issues that lead to increased O&M costs: too many predefined rules that limit development; lack of coordinated planning of the different services offered at the wind farms; and lack of a common approach on how O&M should be managed strategically.

The present study is based only on Danish respondents. Future research needs to include various respondents from different countries to identify country-specific contingencies.

The paper provides an overview of the O&M issues in the offshore wind energy sector to prioritize where future resources should be invested and, thus, reduce O&M costs.

This is the first paper on O&M issues that bridges both literature studies and industry expert opinions.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved multi-objective optimization model for the condition-based maintenance (CBM) of single-component systems which considers periodic imperfect maintenance and ecological factors.

Based on the application of non-periodic preventive CBM, two recursion models are built for the system: hazard rate and the environmental degradation factor. This paper also established an optimal multi-objective model with a normalization process. The multiple-attribute value theory is used to obtain the optimal preventive maintenance (PM) interval. The simulation and sensitivity analyses are applied to obtain further rules.

An increase in the number of the occurrences could shorten the duration of a maintenance cycle. The maintenance techniques and maintenance efficiency could be improved by increasing system availability, reducing cost rate and improving degraded condition.

In reality, a variety of environmental situations may occur subsequent to the operations of an advanced manufacturing system. This model could be applied in real cases to help the manufacturers better discover the optimal maintenance cycle with minimized cost and degraded condition of the environment, helping the corporations better fulfill their CSR as well.

Previous research on single-component condition-based predictive maintenance usually focused on the maintenance costs and availability of a system, while ignoring the possible pollution from system operations. This paper proposed a modified multi-objective optimization model considering environment influence which could more comprehensively analyze the factors affecting PM interval.

To explain the recent emergence of the trend of outsourcing for building services operation and maintenance (O&M) work for commercial buildings in Hong Kong and to predict its future development.

Based on economic theories, the authors' understanding of buildings and building services O&M in Hong Kong and information regarding property, companies and manpower statistics, the increasing use of outsourcing is explained with a prediction of its implications for industry stakeholders and future trends.

Reports the common operation and maintenance organization for small, medium and large commercial buildings and explains the relation between outsourcing and the recent economic downturn and sharp cuts in O&M expenditure. Analyses the factors influencing O&M costs and predicts that the trend of outsourcing will continue if contractors keep on upgrading their knowledge and skills to provide quality services more economically than the in‐house workforce.

The explanation and prediction rely greatly on economic theories and the authors' knowledge and observations from industry, yet the reason for outsourcing and the factors influencing O&M costs are unveiled.

The findings have exposed implications for building owners and O&M practitioners as a result of the outsourcing trend, on top of establishing a rigid framework for future practical research in the area.

This paper explains the prime motive for outsourcing building services O&M work for commercial buildings, predicts future trends and reveals the implications for stakeholders in the O&M industry in Hong Kong.

One of the most critical infrastructures is a data center (DC) because of it having many servers, computers and other equipment. DCs provide online services for various companies in the information technology (IT) industry. DC facilities should provide reliable online services while addressing the required quality and performance level considering maximum reliability and availability. The purpose of this study is to represent and classify the main findings in this area and to identify the main research gaps and shortcomings from the perspective of research.

This paper provides an organized and systematic literature review focusing on topics regarding the operation and maintenance (O&M) management of DCs.

Although there are several studies on O&M management systems for industrial systems and facilities, a limited number of studies with few methods and models have focused on DCs so far and these facilities require more attention. This paper identifies the issues and challenges for DC buildings and facilities and provides a conclusion of the findings to highlight the main research limitations for discovering new potential methods as future research opportunities.

The paper has highlighted the main practical issues of DCs in terms of maintenance management. Several research works have been discussed specifically for DC’s maintenance, which makes this paper a credible source for researchers, maintenance managers and companies involved in the area of DC. Because several of the reviewed literature were based on real case studies, decision-makers in the DC maintenance sector can take advantage of new research on maintenance scheduling to reduce the costs of maintenance.

The paper has presented a comprehensive list of frequent keywords in recent publications related to O&M management for DCs. It has provided a categorized list of publications based on by their topic, methodology and case study. Because this paper has discussed research works specifically for DC’s maintenance, it is a credible source for researchers, maintenance managers and companies involved in the area of DCs.

This paper aims to examine for the first time the impact of the intensity of hospital bed occupancy on healthcare facilities operational costs in France.

Research methodology is based on empirical data collection from 19 short‐stay care acute and long‐term care hospital facilities in Paris, France, carried out during 2008. Statistic analysis was conducted to investigate the impact of bed occupancy on operational cost of health facilities. The purpose of the analysis is to determine the best practices and provide recommendations to the decision makers for operational cost budgeting purposes.

The main findings are the relationship between bed usage and operational costs of acute hospital facilities in France. An analysis of annual O&M (operation and maintenance) cost clearly indicated that type of medical activities had a major impact on O&M cost when the influence of all other potential factors, particularly, morphology, quality of construction and age, were excluded.

Data sample is limited to hospitals in the Paris region. Hence, extrapolation from the generated results to other regions in France is limited. Other facilities operational cost drivers, such as conditional surveys of buildings, need to be considered alongside the performance measures included in this study.

The results will help in establishing best practices and benchmarking operational costs in heath care facilities in France. They will also assist in developing and planning strategic heath care operational budgets. One of the most important implications of the results is in assisting decision makers to develop facilities management improvement strategies.

The research described in this paper represents significantly advances in the understanding of the impact of medical activities on operation and maintenance costs of healthcare facilities in France.