A Total Ruckus at the Doctor's Office

What a messy situation I ran into the other day while entering a doctor's office! Just prior to arriving, electricity failed for a large section of Columbia, MD. Police were directing traffic at every intersection, but I didn't think that this event would interfere with my doctor's visit. Like most of us these days, I took for granted that the backup generator at that facility would be working behind the scenes, almost undetectably, to ensure that business was not interrupted. Isn't it funny how we always just assume that the lights will be on at any given place of business?

In fact, the building which I walked past was full lit and operating, but not my destination. In the dark chaos of the waiting room, nurses were coaxing confused and anxious-looking patients to the door, instructing them to reschedule another day, because they would not open their doors again that day - 6 hours of expected downtime! The nurses explained that, since the computers were also down, they could not even reschedule patients that day.

What an embarrassing situation for a business! Some of those patients might understand that this was beyond the control of their doctor's office, but others might have gotten frustrated enough to call another provider. Then one must also take into account the lost wages for the employees who were unproductive that day, the lost income, the lost...?

I called the landlord immediately to offer help, but the landlord was too inundated with phone calls from the many tenants to speak to me. It is was just too late to help this customer - once a crisis strikes, one must go into survival mode.

The culprit was a fuel pump which fed an emergency backup generator, which was replaced the next week. Compared to the cost of buying and owning an emergency backup generator, the fuel pump is tiny, but it was the critical weak link which wound up costing this customer a bundle!

Have you ever thought about where your weak links are? How are you supposed to know this if it's all invisible?

A good starting point is periodic testing of your emergency equipment. Do you run your generator under load for at least 15 minutes per week? I hope you know why you should run it under load instead of unloaded!

If you thought the answer was "to make sure it can handle its rated load," then you are partially right. The other part of the answer has to do with potential damage to your generator. We can discuss that later.

However, even periodic testing might not uncover everything. What if there is some electrical contract in your distribution network? Did you know that it could heat up? Repeated heating and cooling causes it to expand and contract so that it eventually pulls itself loose, and the electrical contact is lost. Now, something that should have been plugged in is turned off and nobody can locate where the problem occurred until an expensive survey is done by your electrician.

How about that motor which is unbalanced? How do you know? It's heating up on one side but you couldn't detect that. What happens when that motor fails? How much will it cost to replace? Which elevator will get stuck between floors when that happens? Which floor of your building won't have air conditioning when the chillers are not running?

These are all problems that can be prevented relatively easily, and for a fraction of the cost it takes to repair them. You use the old adage "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure" when it comes to your health, so why not apply it to your facility too?

This is something in which we specialize.

Print the brochures at the two links below and give us a call with your questions at: 443-864-3072.

http://www.marylandgreenpower.com/curtis_service.pdf

http://www.marylandgreenpower.com/curtis_infrared.pdf