Have anyone come up with a solution on how to maintain a continually updated Building O&M?  We receive a set of O&Ms and drawings at the end of each project but the end users complain that these are too difficult to navigate through and would like a single set of O&M documentation for each building.
I agree that this would be ideal, however how to implement this is another matter.  In addition to our major works (new buildings) and refurbishment projects, there are also a number of minor repairs, alterations and the like which may be carried out by maintenance teams or end users and the changes not documented.  Thereby if a contractor carries out a major refurb project and updates the O&M with the work they have done, the complete Building O&M might be assumed to be a complete, reliable record, but minor alterations carried out in the interim might not be captured in this – understandably the contractor does not wish to be held accountable for the content of the complete manual.
We have attempted to produce a single set of O&Ms for a recent phased project, which had different contractors on each phase and that proved to be a significant challenge, with the later contractor reluctant to add to records produced by the earlier contractor without being able to verify their accuracy.  We got there in the end but it did result in a very clunky document, with the phases kept separate within the file despite overlapping works.

Hosting the O&Ms is another issue, reliance on a third party supplier to produce and host the documents seems to be the primary solution =  expense and risk of loss of records should the contract come to an end.

Interested to learn what others do to manage this!
Alyson Brewer
Imperial College Estates Records Officer.

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