This paper will discuss a computational support for efficient maintenance of MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) systems from the perspective of effective use of maintenance information.

Operations and Maintenance (O&M) of MEP systems occurs throughout the lifecycle of a building that the systems serve. Not surprisingly, the majority of costs are incurred during the O&M phase. Although many hardware systems and operational strategies have been developed to enhance the O&M environment, the maintenance industry has not fully benefited from state-of-the-art technologies. 

A common barrier has been the difficulty in getting reliable, just-in-time information for in situ maintenance work. This causes significant delays during fieldwork. Furthermore, maintenance information is unreliable due to poor documentation caused by rapid and undocumented equipment and facility changes. In dealing with equipment changes, it is common to rely on human recall instead of updating documents and databases.    

A challenge to reduce this inefficiency in maintenance environments is, therefore, to improve accessibility and accuracy of maintenance information. To achieve this goal, our approach has been to develop a user interface that produces intuitively visualizable computer graphics of equipment/facility-specific maintenance information on portable computing devices such as laptops and PDAs.  This paper presents maintenance information types and primary functions needed in order to support various maintenance activities as well as a prototype application being developed for the validation of our approach.   
