Infrastructure Firm Moffatt & Nichol Standardizes Maintenance and Aces Audits with eMaint

Moffatt & Nichol offers engineering and consulting services around the world in infrastructure, transportation, energy, and other industries. Much of their work focuses on marine and coastal environments, from marinas to dams to naval bases. Their planning, design, and operations work includes a wide range of equipment types — and many layers of compliance. Some of their specialized work, such as diving, requires inspections of the equipment before and after each job, as well as annually, to ensure safety.

Centralizing data is one of the main benefits of using a computerized maintenance management system such as eMaint. Moffatt & Nichol is subject to regular audits, so having centralized access and digitized recordkeeping means no scrambling or searching for data or documentation. Everything is easy to find and share when it’s needed.

Nick Ferrante, equipment manager at Moffatt & Nichol, used to manage equipment, planning, and logistics using a spreadsheet. Technicians would complete paper-based work orders. But as Moffatt & Nichol grew, this system created bottlenecks. “One of the biggest problems we were having was that all the data was with me,” he said. “When I would leave or go out of town, everything left with me, and there wasn’t a lot of transparency or sharing of knowledge.” They knew of another firm using eMaint and chose it to bring all of their information into one place.

Proper maintenance of all of their diving equipment is critical for the safety of their employees. Each helmet has its own entry, for example, with photos, the manual, a link to the product website, and all the other details that could be needed.

“We do a lot of child-parent assets,” said Jeffrey Gazarek, compliance manager at Moffatt & Nichol. “Like for our boats, we’ll have a boat as a parent asset. And then we have our compressors and our tanks and our manifold — everything that lives on that boat — as a child. It just works out great for tracking everything.”

With their specialized needs, Moffatt & Nichol takes advantage of features such as a daily inspections tab and an EHS tab to manage their day-to-day. “We were really diligent in the beginning about the data we put in,” Ferrante said. “We were able to customize it so much that now it really works for us.”

The U.S. Navy is one of Moffatt & Nichol’s biggest clients. Obviously, the military has strict documentation and certification needs. Submittals for projects used to take hours — every key piece of information had to be tracked down. Now, all of the relevant information is easily accessible, and submittals are fast and easy.

Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Audits require Moffatt & Nichol to be consistent across the board with how they do their billing. For example, they cannot bill clients for equipment directly. Moffatt & Nichol uses eMaint to categorize and manage their billing for all clients. eMaint makes it simpler to work directly with their internal accounting team as well.

Inventory is another key area Moffatt & Nichol has to manage. Their divers do a lot of travel between offices for projects. Ensuring consistency, such as having the same medical kit in every office, streamlines some of the inventory process — and training. Divers know what to expect everywhere.

Moffatt & Nichol keeps repair parts the same as much as possible across sites, too. “Then we all know how to work on them and it’s not one-offs here and there,” Ferrante said.

“So we’ve been working hard to unify everything.” Consistency has simplified things for both employees and regulators, Ferrante said. “In the field we just want to get them back in the water” when something goes wrong, Gazarek said. “So we always carry two to three spares of everything that has failed in the past.” Moffatt & Nichol plans to use even more of eMaint’s inventory features in the future.