The Sustainment Management System (SMS) is a system of software applications developed by ERDC’s Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) to help civil engineers, technicians, and managers decide when, where, and how to best maintain building infrastructure. Because assets are so vast and diverse, a “knowledge-based” philosophy drives the SMS process.
The process starts with an upload of real property data, and then more detailed system inventory is modeled and/or collected which identifies components and their key life cycle attributes such as the age and material. From this inventory, Condition Index (CI) measures for each component are predicted based on its expected stage in the life cycle. Objective and repeatable inspections can then be performed on various components to verify their condition with respect to the expected life-cycle deterioration. The level of detail and frequency of these inspections are not fixed like other processes; they are dependent on knowledge of component criticality, the expected and measured condition and rate of deterioration, and remaining maintenance and service life. This “Knowledge-based” inspection focuses attention to the most critical components at the time. In addition to these condition assessments, functionality assessments can be performed to evaluate user requirement changes, compliance and obsolescence issues. This provides a comprehensive picture of the overall performance of building assets and their key components.
