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Glenstone Museum Cut Corrective Work by Two-Thirds by Rebuilding Its PM Program Before Treating FDD as the Next Maturity Layer
Before turning to technology to solve its operational challenges, Glenstone Museum rebuilt its preventive maintenance program, cutting corrective work orders by roughly two-thirds.
When Brendan Robinson took over facilities operations at the Potomac, Maryland campus, maintenance work was being done without proper documentation or structure. Technicians were completing tasks, but leadership had no reliable way to measure completion or understand equipment condition across the museum.
The team rebuilt the preventative maintenance program from the ground up with an emphasis on tracking. Documented preventive maintenance increased from about 20 tasks per month to more than 400, with over 90% on-time completion.
Subsequently, corrective work orders dropped sharply as equipment stabilized:
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Only after that operational foundation was in place did Glenstone deploy Fault Detection and Diagnostics.
Analytics cannot compensate for a weak maintenance program. “You have to get your house in order first,” said Robinson.
Once maintenance discipline and system optimization were established, FDD served a different role. The Schneider-based platform provided continuous monitoring and historical records proving that temperature and humidity conditions were being maintained correctly across art storage and gallery spaces.
That evidence matters because museum environments change constantly.
Galleries are frequently reconfigured for new exhibits, which introduces new environmental challenges. Robinson shared two examples.
In one installation, curators built temporary “rooms within rooms.” New walls partially covered thermostats and sensors while creating isolated microclimates inside the gallery. The air distribution that previously worked in the open room no longer behaved the same way. The facilities team had to quickly adjust how the space was controlled to stabilize the environment.
In another exhibit in the same gallery, a large neon-light sculpture introduced a significant heat source in the center of the room. The artwork changed the entire heating and cooling dynamic of the space, forcing the team to reassess airflow and temperature control.
Trend analysis from the FDD platform allowed the team to quickly diagnose these changes, understand how the room’s conditions were drifting, and confirm when adjustments restored stable temperature and humidity.
For Glenstone, the road to condition-based maintenance with FDD analytics started with getting preventative maintenance under control. When FDD was eventually added, it enhanced their ability to see how a building behaves as the environment changes.
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Before turning to technology to solve its operational challenges, Glenstone Museum rebuilt its preventive maintenance program, cutting corrective work orders by roughly two-thirds.
When Brendan Robinson took over facilities operations at the Potomac, Maryland campus, maintenance work was being done without proper documentation or structure. Technicians were completing tasks, but leadership had no reliable way to measure completion or understand equipment condition across the museum.
The team rebuilt the preventative maintenance program from the ground up with an emphasis on tracking. Documented preventive maintenance increased from about 20 tasks per month to more than 400, with over 90% on-time completion.
Subsequently, corrective work orders dropped sharply as equipment stabilized:
Only after that operational foundation was in place did Glenstone deploy Fault Detection and Diagnostics.
Analytics cannot compensate for a weak maintenance program. “You have to get your house in order first,” said Robinson.
Once maintenance discipline and system optimization were established, FDD served a different role. The Schneider-based platform provided continuous monitoring and historical records proving that temperature and humidity conditions were being maintained correctly across art storage and gallery spaces.
That evidence matters because museum environments change constantly.
Galleries are frequently reconfigured for new exhibits, which introduces new environmental challenges. Robinson shared two examples.
In one installation, curators built temporary “rooms within rooms.” New walls partially covered thermostats and sensors while creating isolated microclimates inside the gallery. The air distribution that previously worked in the open room no longer behaved the same way. The facilities team had to quickly adjust how the space was controlled to stabilize the environment.
In another exhibit in the same gallery, a large neon-light sculpture introduced a significant heat source in the center of the room. The artwork changed the entire heating and cooling dynamic of the space, forcing the team to reassess airflow and temperature control.
Trend analysis from the FDD platform allowed the team to quickly diagnose these changes, understand how the room’s conditions were drifting, and confirm when adjustments restored stable temperature and humidity.
For Glenstone, the road to condition-based maintenance with FDD analytics started with getting preventative maintenance under control. When FDD was eventually added, it enhanced their ability to see how a building behaves as the environment changes.
Register for the next Nexus Labs event.
Sign up for the newsletter to get 5 stories like this per week:
This is a great piece!
I agree.