Facilities Operations and Maintenance (FOAM)

Team Leaders of the FOAM BCP

Marcel Blanchard
Director Facilities Utilities
409-747-2942

David Ketchens
Director Facilities Operations
409-772-1589

Primary Contact for FOAM BCP:

Patrick Michaelski
Administrative Operations Officer
409-772-3514

The BCP for FOAM has been prepared for both planned and unplanned interruption of services.  It has been determined that whether scheduled, unscheduled – short duration or unscheduled – long duration the following elements are the mission critical activities required during any unusual circumstances:

Chill Water Production – Operate and maintain chilled water production equipment and maintain supply piping and pumps to provide pathway for chilled water to be distributed to areas on campus.  Chilled water is currently produced at two locations, the Central Chilled Water Plant and the West Chilled Water Plant. In the event that one of these sites and/or equipment located in these sites were to become disabled the following steps would be taken:

• Isolate affected area
• Implement backup equipment (i.e. redundant equipment and/or portable chillers)
• Reduce consumption of chilled water to non-critical buildings
• Make appropriate repairs to equipment

Control Room Monitoring/Communication – The facilities control room is the central hub for monitoring utilities and distribute communication. It also houses the facilities dispatch area.  The control room operates continuously 24 hours-a-day, 365 days-a-year.  Alternate methods have been identified to continue the process of communication and utility monitoring in the event that these services are interrupted.  They are as follows:

• If telecommunication is lost, transfer main lines to Central Maintenance and move dispatch to this area.
• Utilize hand held radios, cell phones, and info runners to continue communication
• Monitor/operate equipment manually
• Increase shift rounds as needed
• Obtain and utilize back-up equipment for information capturing (i.e. UPS, alternate service, laptops)

Deonized Water/Treated Water (DI) support –  DI/Treated water is intended for Lab use only and is non-potable.  This service is provided by an outside vendor.  This service has three dependencies; domestic water, equipment and the service provider.  The following strategies have been developed to respond to interruptions of services:

• If service is interrupted due to an outage of the domestic water services, the DI service provider will stand by until water is restored and a complete check of all equipment is conducted.
• The service provider will be responsible for all equipment malfunctions (except water softeners) and the repair/replacement of this equipment.  A >24-hour recovery time objective has been identified and all services will resume within this time frame.
• If the interruption is due to a problem with water softeners FOAM maintenance will repair.
• Alternate services providers have also been identified.

Domestic Water Support – The city of Galveston has two water mains coming into Galveston.  There is a one million gallon storage capacity for the east end of Galveston which includes UTMB.  At the present time, if the City of Galveston loses water supply to the Island, the university would also be without water since there is no emergency water system; however, there is a 2-3 day supply in the city system.   In the event that water supply equipment or piping were to be damaged and/or the water supply chain was interrupted the following steps would be taken:

• Cause of disruption will be determined and communication to campus would be conducted if appropriate
• If the disruption is caused by a break in a pipe on campus, water service will be turned off to that area to minimize water damage. (All other services should remain operational.)
• If necessary, notify customers who utilize large volumes of water to stop treatments (i.e. Dialysis, Burn Units, DI water users, etc.)

• Temporary repairs to pipes and/or equipment would be done and a permanent repair will be scheduled
• Food Services and Materials Management will start the delivery of drinking water to patient care areas
• FOAM will start the delivery of drums and pails for sanitation issues
• If necessary, FOAM could order trucks filled with water to supply critical areas

Electrical Support – Emergency generators are located in all patient care and most research areas along with several other critical buildings (i.e. Administration Bldg., Services Bldg., and Utilities Plants). Emergency generators are inspected weekly and load-tested monthly.  Generators are designed to automatically activate in the event of a power interruption.  If this automatic process were to fail, manual procedures could be conducted to start emergency generators.  Should the power be interrupted for a facility that is serviced by an emergency generator the following steps would be taken:

• Once emergency generators are activated, the Control Room will page the work areas and/or shift/team along with the contacts on the outage contact report and the area on-call coordinator.

• If it is a Service Provider Problem:

• Control Room Operator will call CenterPoint Energy for information on outage along with the estimated time for recovery
• Facilities Operations Techs will communicate with building occupants and stand by while CenterPoint makes repairs

• If it is not a service provider problem:

• Facilities Operations Techs will investigate interruptions and determine cause
• They will develop corrective measures and resolve problems; this could include repair and/or replacement of equipment

• For areas not serviced by emergency generators:

• Control Room is contacted from outside sources about power outage and pages are sent to the work areas and/or shift team
• Facilities Operations Technicians will assist with evacuation of building and/or get temporary lighting for occupants of building.  Once this activity is completed they will begin developing corrective measures and resolving problems.  This could include repair, replacements of equipment and/or temporary emergency generators. 

Communications would continue to be a vital part of this outage.  FOAM will request direction from Executive Leadership as well as assistance from Hospital Administration to lessen the impact of this event.  This may include a recommendation to send areas without power home or moved to alternate locations.
 

Elevators – Elevators are a critical tool for the effective and timely movement of patient, staff and visitors.  Most areas are serviced by a redundancy of elevators.  In the event that one or more elevators were to become inoperable, the following steps would be taken to expedite recovery:

• Elevator service provider will be called out and repairs will be coordinated by them
• If the outage becomes a Life Safety event, the control room would page the service technician to respond immediately.  Repairs would then be made or the elevator would be taken out of service.
• All elevators taken out of service are marked "Out of Service"
• In the event that the elevator that is taken out of service is the only elevator in the vicinity, direction to alternate working elevators will be posted. 

General Fire Prevention Support – This includes the maintenance, repair and response to: fire alarms, fire sprinklers, fire dampers, fire containment and fire suppression.  The same steps will be completed in the event that any life safety equipment has been interrupted for period of time.  Once the system has been identified as interrupted the following actions will be taken:

• Notify FOAM Health and Safety Services - Duty Fire Marshall of problem and/or impending shut down
• Duty Fire Marshall will determine what Interim Life Safety Measures (ILSM) should be taken to lessen the risk to campus. (i.e. Surveys of the area by construction supervisors to meet all ILSM, education of affected persons on temporary provisions exit including temporary detection systems, ect., temporary construction/dust partitions shall be smoke tight and made of non-combustible or limited combustible materials, etc., fire watch)
• FOAM will take direction from the Fire Marshall
• Fire Marshall will contact Galveston Fire Department as needed
• Repairs and/or replacement will be made to system as necessary
• Communication with the Fire Marshall will continue until the services have been restored

Medical Gases Support – All medical gases and medical air have been combined into this recovery strategy.  They are Medical Air, Medical Air-Newborn Nursery PICU, Medical Vacuum, Nitrogen, Nitrous Oxide, and Oxygen.  There are three possible situations that could cause the Medical Gas Systems to become inoperable:

• Storage system problems - supply pressure fluctuation as reserved system takes over
• Distribution system problem - loss of central system problem - loss of central medical gas supply to all or part of clinical buildings - health/life risk to patients in certain areas
• Minor failure of or damage to equipment, valves, regulators or piping

• Control room will page Facilities Operational Technicians of the medical gas problem
• Technicians will ensure that backup system have started and are functioning correctly
• If failure is on contracted equipment, vendor will be called for services
• Notify Pulmonary Services if backup oxygen tanks are required
• Technicians will than investigate and take corrective measures; this could include repair and/or replacement of equipment, bringing in temporary equipment/supplies an/or shut off zone valve and back feed a zone from one room with temporary manifold
• System will be monitored closely until normal operations resume

Medical Waste Disposal – If normal processes were to become interrupted the following steps would be taken:

• Store waste in open facility floor space or walk-in freezer space as necessary
• Contract with identified vendors to process waste

Municipal Solid Waste Disposal – If normal pickup of solid waste became disrupted the following strategies have been established:

• Utilize service contracts and emergency vendor list
• Communicate outage and ask for help in reducing waste during this period
• Communicate extra/added dump site location to personnel
• Increase number of location to dump and, it needed, secure rights to dump at alternate location
• In the event of natural/manmade disaster, secure State or Federal funding if appropriate

Natural Gas – The natural gas system on campus has limited redundancies.  Boilers operating off natural gas have diesel backups.  Emergency Generators and Labs that require natural gas will be interrupted.  Strategies have been developed as follows:

• Control room and affected areas will be notified of disruption
• Natural gas provider will be contacted and repairs will begin
• If interruption occurs within the building, services to the building will be shutdown
• Boilers will be switched to diesel operations
• Facilities Operations Technicians will communicate with labs and ensure that safety measures are meet

Physical Building – Facility Maintenance and Repair – This activity has been identified as having two possible levels of damage and repair.  First, minor damage that does not require the closing of areas during repair and, second, is major damage, which requires the area to be evacuated and remain closed until repairs can be made.  Coordination with development would occur to expedite repairs.
 

Sewer Support – Loss of sewer service could be caused by damage during construction or by failure in the sewer system.  The following recovery strategies have been identified to help lessen the environmental and health impact of an event such as this.

• Environmental Services will be given notice of interruption and non-working facilities would be marked as unusable
• If outage is not campus wide, alternate facilities would be identified and adequately stocked and maintained
• Signs would be posted at non-working facilities directing users to alternate working facilities
• Temporary plumbing and/or pumps would be used for removal of waste water Environmental Health and Safety would be consulted for any possible environmental impact
• Waste removal trucks could be stationed at main sewer lines
• Temporary sanitary waste stations can be located outside of building and sanitary hand cleansing towels would be provided if necessary
• Contractors would be hired to store and remove waste water until sewer service could be restored
• Repairs would be completed and fixtures returned to operations

Steam Production – Steam is produced for environmental controls and for sterilization.  Loss of steam could result in colder building temperature and the interruption of equipment being sterilization.    Recovery strategies have been identified and are listed below.

• Isolation of the area that is affected; this will allow buildings that are not affected to keep a constant temperature
• Non-critical buildings will be shut off to reduce the consumption of water, which is the primary cause of an extended outage
• A recommendation will be made to nursing that patients be consolidated as much as possible; this could result in a shut off of floors
• Critical areas may be supported by portable boilers with portable water
• Equipment sterilization can be done in both John Sealy North Addition and Rebecca Sealy Hospital.  Each site has a separate system and one could be functioning when the other is not