Facility Operations & Maintenance Flashcards
7 cards from real CPE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Facility Operations & Maintenance flashcards as text
What does the term 'deferred maintenance' refer to in facility management?
Answer: Scheduled maintenance that is postponed due to budget or resource constraints
Deferred maintenance is necessary upkeep that has been postponed, often accumulating into a larger backlog with higher future costs.
A plant engineer must calculate the economic justification for replacing an aging motor with a premium efficiency model. The key financial metric used is:
Answer: Payback period based on annual energy cost savings
Simple payback period — capital cost divided by annual energy savings — is the standard metric for motor efficiency upgrade justification.
Which maintenance document provides step-by-step instructions for performing a specific maintenance task safely and correctly?
Answer: Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) or Maintenance Procedure
SOPs and maintenance procedures standardize how tasks are performed, ensuring safety, quality, and consistency across technicians.
In a chilled water system, what does it mean when the chiller delta-T (supply vs. return temperature difference) is lower than design?
Answer: The system is experiencing low delta-T syndrome, indicating hydraulic imbalance or coil fouling
Low delta-T syndrome reduces chiller efficiency and capacity, commonly caused by coil fouling, poor flow distribution, or air handler bypass.
Which regulation requires facilities to report and manage hazardous chemical inventories above threshold quantities?
Answer: EPA EPCRA / SARA Title III Tier II reporting
EPCRA/SARA Title III requires facilities to report hazardous chemical inventories to state and local emergency planning committees.
A maintenance team is experiencing frequent repeat failures on the same pump. The BEST long-term solution is to:
Answer: Perform root cause analysis (RCA) to identify and eliminate the underlying cause
Root cause analysis identifies why failures recur so the fundamental cause can be eliminated, not just the symptoms treated.
What is the primary benefit of installing variable frequency drives (VFDs) on centrifugal pumps and fans?
Answer: They allow equipment to operate at speeds matched to actual demand, reducing energy consumption
VFDs reduce motor speed to match actual load, and since centrifugal pump/fan power varies with the cube of speed, even small speed reductions yield large energy savings.