If you’re just tuning in, check out the introduction of this series explaining why and what it’s about:
The Operations Manual in the past: A three-ring binder, thick with staggered documents, shoved into the back of an office and forgotten. Dusted off once a year and skimmed whenever someone is hoping to glean some small bit of information that might help them solve an issue they’re having.
What
It may be easier to talk about what it is not first. It is not a training manual. It is not intended for an operator with no knowledge, skills or experience with a particular mechanical room and the equipment within.
In short, the operations manual is what is required to “operate” a specific mechanical room. It may tell you what range your salinity should be per manufacturer, but it won’t explain exactly how to calculate salinity.
Today, a good operations manual system is threefold:
The Book Itself
The old-fashioned method is still sound in many ways, holding all the knowledge of the pump room in a timeless format. More than one copy should be available to all operators. This includes a copy in an office, but also a copy that is more readily available and might be kept in the pump room.
Take it Online
Copies of this manual should be kept online, as a resource that operators can access even if not on site. This can be a PDF file or something more. It should be viewable on any device. If you choose to not use the physical format, having just the online format makes revisions a lot easier.
Make it Interactive
The operations manual can message you. Incorporating a system that can send notifications as part of operations can change a role from reactive to proactive. Perhaps there’s a water chemistry value that has dropped below the minimum set in the manual, you could have it notify an operator.
What Goes IN the Operations Manual
We’ve seen some “operations” manuals that are literally just all the manuals for the equipment in one place. That’s a start, but it hardly includes everything needed for operations.
A manufacturer’s O&M will include information specific to their equipment. It won’t tell you how to operate it for a specific pump room. In a perfect world, perhaps all pump rooms would be identical, but the truth is that identical equipment in each pump room may require slightly different steps to operator correctly.
It’s important that an operations manual has enough relevant information but not too much. If an operator is overwhelmed with info, they will ignore it. Don’t cry wolf. This writer defines relevance as something specific to a particular mechanical room. Information found in the CPO® manual or elsewhere that is general to any aquatics facility has little to no place in the operations manual.
A good operations manual should include, at a minimum:
- All operation, maintenance/service procedures for all equipment. This could be manuals, or just the relevant procedures themselves. You don’t need the manuals as they add some fluff. Editing the manuals down to the parts that are relevant to a specific mechanical room is recommended.
- A valve guide: See next item in this series for details.
- Data values – This means what the flow meters and more should read at any given time.
- Protocol: A valve broke, a flow meter cracked, there’s an emergency. Step by step what to do for many events.
Use photos, videos, and more.
Operations manual says that pump should be X RPM if flow rate is Y GPM. Where is the operator looking? A photo of the display showing the RPM helps an operator immensely. The valve guide section describes what valves to open in what order, but why not a video showing exactly how it’s done? In this context, a simple photo really can spare a thousand words.
How
It’s a group effort. A single person usually isn’t going to be able to achieve this. You need someone with a detail-oriented mind to organize it, but you may need someone else who knows the systems in and out so they can explain what should be in it. Asking the pool operator to build an operations manual may not work out well any more than asking a project manager to do it. Communication is required.
We encompass all of this into a TMI system. We call it the Bridging® Binder and it’s part of the zLOG® controller package. It includes the binder itself, online access, and more. Bridging the gap between the operator and the pump room is what an operations manual is about.