Whether performing risk assessments, disaster planning services or providing technical engineering reports qualifying a company and professionalism is important. When you choose a technical consultant to resolve a claim issue or you need an expert for recovery of technical items you need to careful and be warned. Selecting an electronics restoration services company to make recommendations or service the high value business assets requires serious vetting. Knowledge of technical matters and a sense of what logically needs to happen to service different equipment types and damage scenarios is a must. Considering a company on the internet that states “we provide electronics restoration” alone requires a much deeper investigation into the background and professional experience of a company. They should, include a formal training program for already establish technical experts and provide job resumes. Anyone claiming to be an expert in this field should be happy to provide proof of experience and confirm that these services are their staple commodity and that technical services are performed on a regular basis in a successful manner. After qualification of a specialist expert’s status it is also important to understand the client’s needs for a successful project. For each project to always have a step process and to begin with we must qualify the job particulars to understand what issues and parameters our client is facing and what we goals we are working towards the resumption efforts and so we can do our critical piece to affect progress toward the overall recovery goals for the client.
Before we start any project the first step is to obtain enough details so we are able to plot and layout the critical path considering all the dynamics which allows us to properly plan, implement and complete within our industry and standard operating best practices. This is the only way to maximize efficiency, maintain time sensitive goals and render a realistic restoration that plan can be followed and finished. We start every job with the same questionnaire every time allowing us to make the best determinations of the critical junctures and milestones for the project. This simple method allows us to be sure we have all questions and that they have been sufficiently answered on each and every job. After a loss event we must survey the client and the site to determine project parameters.
Critical steps check list for technical restoration
1. Offending contamination causing most issues to technical equipment is due to smoke and water damage. These two types of damages initially are the most common culprits affecting the technical restoration process of equipment, computers and electronic devices that result in damage.
2. Electrical power issues add another common factor in electronic devices having faults or sometime resulting in items not being able to be restored. Various electronics components affected by acid soot residues or the presence of water and/or high moisture will potentially and often automatically result in electrical short circuiting or microscopic damages to surfaces that may be hard to reverse; because these contaminates will bridge circuitry, strip coatings, attack and pit metals thus affecting various voltage carrying components and parts causing weakness, dead shorts resulting in errors, faults, fatal errors or critical failures. Sometimes the damage is discovered later due to the lack of detection and identification of the potential problems resulting in future component failures. Therefore it is necessary for all power sources to be isolated and de-energized as long as contaminates are present.
3. Secondary damages besides the obvious are a result from lack of experience and understanding as well as initial personnel not employing necessary mitigation techniques often allows the initial offending contamination to worsen especially poor environmental conditions and length of time untreated can cause exponential damage that is more difficult to remediate and may ultimately render damages permanent and thus irreversible.
4. Hazardous or bio-hazardous materials being present cause additional concerns. The types of materials or byproducts which are either part of the environment around the machinery or part of the production process add a higher degree of difficulty requiring additional steps to the restoration process of technical claims.
5. Data loss is prevalent with IT equipment when contaminates are present and electrical power affect the operation or when hard shut downs of PLC’s and composters occur risk is greater. Loss of operating systems, programs and data are always potential problems and must be minimized and guarded absent.
6. Sensitive electronic equipment must be handled carefully to avoid static electricity, loss memory and must be handled within operating parameters to avoid additional problems.
5. Equipment situation & condition versus business recovery goals prior to restoration. Many factors affect this decision primarily the insured’s need to get back in to operation rapidly. Also to be considered is scheduled upgrades or replacements, equipment age, equipment obsolesce, preventative maintenance schedules, parts availability, end of life issues, wear & tear, replacement cost as well as availability and commonality of equipment types.
6. Facility repair issues that are ongoing can hamper or delay the restoration of equipment. Solutions for protection of large in place equipment items and their systems can be developed to ensure maximum security and protection of at risk items.
7. Clean & stabile electrical power that is unaffected by repairs and construction to the facility is necessary to bring sensitive motorized and controlled equipment safely back on line without voltage drops, surges, interruptions and interferences further impacting the equipment.
8. Good control wiring and communication signal. Affecting computers and logic controlled devices and machinery alike can be the discovery of damaged or bad field wiring through which the devices communicate. A thorough inspection and testing should be performed to ensure that the communication wiring is not part of the problem.
9. Repairs related to the incident may be necessary and it may be well advised to make other wear & tear replacements while equipment is down however these repairs may not be related to the claim and may need separate authorization for approval and payments.
10. Field adjustments are often required on sensitive bio-medical equipment or laser level precision tooling that must be carefully level to ensure proper and accurate operation. Improper or failure to adjust or level can result in catastrophic failure or bodily injury.
11. Fluids and lubrication services as well as filter replacement, belt tensioning, chains and cog service may need performed to ensure proper lubrication and cooling as well as operation.
9. Electrical safety testing to ensure voltage, motor condition, phase rotation as well as bonding and grounding requirements is important to the longevity of the equipment and the safety of the operator.
10. Calibration of sensitive measurement controllers and devices to ensure compliance requirements and efficiency of the machinery and equipment being calibrated.
11. OEM inspections and recertification of equipment can then commence allowing for OEM and serve providers to reinstate warranties, service contracts and extended warranties for remaining periods or new periods as deemed necessary to support the equipment.
12. Startup and commissioning with OEM or Service Company and the client operator to ensure proper startup and sequence of use and final operation
13. Final acceptance and sign off by client
This process is used by Electro-Mechanical Recertifiers, LLC on every job as a check list. Please contact Mark Schafer at 877-378-4183 or email him at marks@er-emergency.com if we can assist you on any technical mater you may need to resolve.
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