Monitoring Critical Spaces with Fault Detection and Diagnostics [VIDEO]
November 15, 2024
In an era where facilities face mounting pressure to maintain strict environmental controls while optimizing operational efficiency, two industry leaders in the healthcare space are leveraging fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) technology for continuous monitoring of critical spaces. Their success offers a blueprint for all facilities that manage critical spaces—surgical rooms, labs, data centers, pharmaceutical manufacturing, or anywhere specific temperature, humidity, uptime, and air pressure levels are critical for proper operation.
During this year’s Clockworks Client Summit, facility leaders from two of the nation’s most respected healthcare systems shared case studies on how they are leveraging HVAC analytics to manage compounding pharmacy compliance and infection prevention control, specifically.
Case Study 1: Transforming Pharmacy Compliance Monitoring with Building Analytics
At the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where pharmacies serve 700 patients daily with 2,000 drug preparations, Director of Operations James Store faced a critical challenge: manually monitoring 500,000 data points across multiple pharmacies while ensuring strict USP compliance for patient safety.
“When you’re generating $10-12 million daily in infusions, you can’t afford environmental control failures,” Store explains. The implementation of Clockworks’ FDD platform transformed their operation:
Replaced 36 daily Excel reports with real-time compliance dashboards
Eliminated 15 days of manual data analysis per month
Provided instant root cause analysis for environmental excursions
Enabled proactive maintenance through predictive fault detection
Central to this transformation is Clockworks Analytics’ Pharmacy Compliance Dashboard, specifically designed to meet U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) 795/797/800 standards for critical compounding spaces. USP cleanroom standards establish guidelines for compounding nonsterile, sterile, and hazardous drugs The dashboard provides comprehensive monitoring of temperature, relative humidity, pressurization, and air change requirements—essential parameters for maintaining safe pharmaceutical operations. The team at MD Anderson monitors real-time room conditions in their coumpounding pharmacy spaces and leverages the “Pharmacy Compliance Dashboard” to easily spot anomolies outside of USP 797/800 requirements and trigger immediate action when excursions occur.
This continuous monitoring allows the MD Anderson team to identify equipment faults proactively and address potential issues before they impact operations. The platform’s customizable views and direct access for pharmacy staff have dramatically improved cross-departmental visibility while showcasing the facilities team’s crucial role in maintaining patient safety.
“The fault detection capabilities save our staff tremendous troubleshooting time,” Store notes. “Instead of guessing why a room is too humid, the system identifies specific valve or equipment issues immediately.”
– James Store, Director of Operations, MD Anderson
Case Study 2: FDD for Infection Prevention Control (IPC)
A leading national healthcare provider in 44 markets nationwide also faced a similar challenge of needing more proactive insight into critical spaces, specifically related to infection prevention control. Leveraging Clockworks’ building analytics software, they transformed their operating room environmental monitoring from a labor-intensive, manual process to an automated, intelligent system.
The organization faced several critical challenges in monitoring their operating room environments. Staff members were required to manually pull reports at 5 AM daily, regardless of holidays or vacations, creating an unsustainable burden on personnel. The complexity was compounded by multiple Building Management Systems (BMS) across different facilities, leading to inconsistent data trending and point naming conventions. They lacked a standardized way to monitor critical space compliance and infection prevention and control teams had limited visibility into environmental conditions. Additionally, the troubleshooting process for environmental issues was time-consuming and often required extensive investigation to identify root causes.
Through Clockworks flexible dashboarding tool, they created a custom Infection Prevention Control dashboard to monitor operating room compliance, inlcluding room air temperatures, humidity, static pressure, and air exchange rate (ACH). Additionally, Clockworks has empowered them to:
Integrate data from multiple BMS systems into a single, comprehensive dashboard with continuous data trending capabilities. The platform features single sign-on access for staff and cross-filterable diagnostics for detailed analysis. The system provides near real-time monitoring with data refreshing every 1-1.5 hours, ensuring timely insights into environmental conditions.
Leverage custom dashboards designed specifically for infection prevention and control teams, providing them with direct access to root-cause analysis tools. The system integrates seamlessly with existing real-time BAS alarm systems and supports comprehensive compliance monitoring and reporting. The platform accomodates different space types, allowing for customized monitoring of various critical areas.
The implementation has delivered significant improvements across several key areas:
1. Operational Efficiency
The new system has eliminated the burdensome requirement for daily 5 AM manual reporting. Troubleshooting time has been substantially reduced through advanced root cause analysis capabilities. The platform enables proactive issue identification, allowing staff to address potential problems before they impact operations. Infection prevention teams now have streamlined access to critical environmental data, improving their ability to monitor and maintain safe conditions.
2. Compliance Management
Environmental monitoring has become more comprehensive and reliable, with improved documentation to support regulatory requirements. The system provides enhanced visibility into system performance and supports the ASHRAE 43 risk-based management approach, allowing for more flexible and efficient operations while maintaining strict compliance standards.
3. Staff Empowerment
Operating room staff now have read-only access to environmental monitoring data, enabling them to quickly verify conditions in their spaces. Facility operations can respond more rapidly to environmental adjustment requests, and the system has reduced dependency on specialized technical staff for basic adjustments. This has led to improved cross-departmental collaboration and more efficient resource utilization.
“What started as an energy initiative evolved into a comprehensive facilities management transformation. The more layers of value we could add, the more engagement we saw from our engineering teams.” more layers of value we could add, the more engagement we saw from our engineering teams.”
– Senior Energy and Water Compliance Manager, National Healthcare Organization
Future-Proofing Critical Space Monitoring
Both institutions are expanding their FDD implementations, with MD Anderson planning to add 11 more pharmacies to their monitoring system. Their successes demonstrate how advanced fault detection technology can:
Ensure regulatory compliance
Protect patient safety
Optimize staff efficiency
Reduce operational costs
Support critical space management aligned with industry standards and guidelines like ASHRAE 43, USP 795/797/800, and more.
For facilities looking to modernize their critical space monitoring, these implementations provide a clear roadmap to operational excellence through data-driven facility management.
