Facility Management: We Hit the Cable 3 Times

Facility Management: We Hit the Cable 3 Times Three cable strikes. Power outages lasting up to 24 hours — sometimes longer. Tenants losing valuable trading time. But according to the approved electrical drawings, the cables weren't even there. They were approximately 70 metres away from where the drawings said they should be. This is a true Facility Management story from 2011, when I was managing a large retail shopping centre of approximately 45,000 m² during a major redevelopment. The original mall had been built in the 1970s. During demolition and excavation, contractors repeatedly struck electrical cables forming part of the main supply from the municipal substation into the shopping centre. The project team had the original approved drawings. The problem was that the physical building didn't match them. Eventually, a long-serving centre manager remembered an electrical engineer who had worked on the original shopping centre nearly 40 years earlier. By then he was retired and in his seventies, but we found him and he agreed to return to the property. He stood beside the excavation, spread the old drawings across the bonnet of a bakkie and showed us where the cables actually ran. During the original construction, groundwater from the site's former vlei had made the planned cable route problematic. The route was changed and the cables were installed in a different position. But the drawings were never updated. For nearly 40 years, the cables physically existed in one place while the documentation said they existed somewhere else. And that wasn't the only surprise. The engineer also remembered changes to the stormwater system, and beneath parts of the property we even discovered large undocumented underground tunnels. This is what I call **building archaeology**. Older buildings accumulate decades of alterations, repairs, rerouted services and undocumented decisions. Eventually, someone opens an old drawing and assumes: “That's where it is.” Maybe. But maybe not. THE FACILITY MANAGEMENT LESSON A drawing is a valuable source of information. But a drawing is not physical verification. Where the consequences of getting it wrong are significant, verify the existing conditions. Use appropriate cable locating, underground service detection, CCTV drainage inspections, surveying and physical verification before critical work or excavation. "Verify before you rely." There's another lesson: "institutional knowledge". How much information about your building exists only in the heads of experienced Facility Managers, engineers, technicians and contractors? Update your drawings and asset registers. Record modifications. Photograph concealed infrastructure. Keep histories of major failures and repairs. And when experienced people leave, don't just collect their keys and laptop. "Capture what they know." Back in 2011, we were lucky. We found the engineer who remembered a decision made almost 40 years earlier. Facility Management shouldn't depend on luck. "How much of your building exists only in somebody's head — and what are you doing about it?" I'm Gary Ward. Ward Facility Management wardfm.com "Keep it safe. Keep it compliant. And verify what you've actually got." #FacilityManagement #FacilitiesManagement #FacilityManager #PropertyManagement #AssetManagement #BuildingMaintenance #ConstructionSafety #WardFM