Lubrication Services

At BES Group Asset Reliability, we offer a wide range of lubrication services designed to enhance your industrial equipment’s performance, reliability, and longevity. Our team of experienced engineers and technicians are the experts when it comes to delivering customised lubrication solutions tailored to our customers’ specific needs. With our expertise and advanced techniques, we’ll help you maximise equipment uptime, minimise maintenance costs, and improve overall operational efficiency.

Proper lubrication is essential for the smooth operation of your machinery. By using our lubrication services, your systems can benefit from:

• Improved Reliability and Safety: Proper lubrication keeps your equipment working reliably, reducing the chances of unplanned downtime and associated production losses. It also enhances safety by minimising the risk of equipment malfunctions or failures that could cause accidents.
• Optimised Resourcing: the need for internal staff resources is reduced allowing engineering staff to focus on other areas of maintenance.
• Improved Confidence: Knowing that your equipment’s lubrication is being managed by a specialised and expert lead provider means you can rest assured that your lubrication is well cared for.

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• Enhanced Equipment Performance: Professionally managed lubrication ensures optimal equipment performance by avoiding unnecessary friction, heat, and wear, resulting in a well-managed operation, energy efficiency, and increased productivity.
• Achieving Equipment Lifespan: Effective lubrication plays a crucial role in achieving the intended lifespan of your equipment. In addition, for a plant that is being operated beyond the initial design expectations, such as power generation, wind turbine and offshore assets, we can ensure that these critical machinery items are cared for appropriately. By providing a structured service we can help you to protect you and your equipment against unnecessary wear, corrosion, and contamination, as well as avoid failures and the costs of downtime and repair.
• Reduced Cost of Ownership: Well-lubricated and managed equipment requires less maintenance and tends to experience fewer breakdowns. By mitigating the risk of unexpected failures and minimizing wear, our services help you save by reducing unplanned maintenance costs, lowering operational costs, and increasing your overall return on investment.

There is no single solution for how to provide a managed lubrication service. We’ll consider your requirements when deciding on the right strategy for you and your machinery.

Our team of Lubrication specialists can support you with:

Monthly visits

We’ll visit your site to take monthly oil samples and perform greasing. We’ll develop a schedule of oil sampling to suit your machinery, providing the right resources when you need it.

Periodic site visits

We’ll perform routine greasing, perform any necessary asset inspections, check fluid levels, and take oil samples. This may be enhanced with periodic campaigns during shutdowns or weekends to perform scheduled oil changes.

Strategic deployment onsite full time

This is another option of periodic visits for larger sites with a complex array of assets. We’ll work alongside your team to carry out critical lubrication services, acting as a supportive extension of your team when demand calls for it.

Management of lubrication

From goods inward and stores management to site logistics and waste handling, our specialists have it covered. We’ll carry out a full line lubrication service, create an optimised strategy with oil analysis and fluid management strategy development. Here, we effectively take over all lubrication tasks and responsibilities, not including procurement. We’ll advise on product specifications, lubrication tasks, machinery improvements and enhancements.

Full reliability and lubrication partnering

With this, we’ll add Condition Monitoring and Condition Based Maintenance strategy development as your specialist working partner. We provide all monitoring activities, including fluid analysis, vibration, acoustic emission, thermography, ultrasonics and a range of testing and inspection methodologies. This is crucial to providing a comprehensive support service that delivers actionable intelligence for your maintenance planners and schedulers that can be built into your proactive maintenance management strategy.

For whichever option you choose, we will provide the necessary site surveys to make the assessment at either strategic or operational level and devise the necessary work plans to enable the partnership to function in harmony with your production schedules and maintenance resources.

Lubrication is often overlooked as a maintenance function and yet the criticality of lubrication cannot be understated.  Lubricants are the lifeblood of your machinery and must:

• Be able to perform as intended by being maintained at the right fill level
• Be free from contaminants such as water and particulates that can degrade lubrication and impact reliability
• Be managed well to ensure that each machine can reach its intended lifespan and where early indications of emerging faults can be found and eliminated easily.

Many studies state that poor lubrication practices and standards account for over 70% of asset reliability issues.

Poor lubrication can be caused by:

• Using the wrong type or amount of lubricant,
• Using contaminated lubricant,
• Applying and storing is incorrectly
• Any combination of the above.

Poor lubrication can have a catastrophic and expensive impact on your plant and machinery. Not only can it result in increased friction but can also cause wear debris to be produced, leading to reduced service life, higher energy consumption, and equipment failure.

• Falling behind on lubrication intervals
• Condition monitoring highlighting frequent lubrication issues
• Incompatibility issues caused by incorrect lubricants being used during oil changes or top ups
• Struggling with stock maintenance
• No lubrication programme currently in place
• Contamination issues

With our tailored Lubrication Service offering, we can help.

• Optimised lubrication: Our lubrication tasks are verified and planned using analysis, data, and experience.
• Comprehensive program: Our services go beyond simple lubrication. We look at everything: lubricants, filtration, and equipment.
• Expert advice: We pride ourselves on improving and revolutionising client lubrication programs to improve the reliability of the entire site.

Our lubrication experts and dedicated engineers will conduct a comprehensive audit of your site and processes. This will allow us to develop a merged approach to a lubrication based predictive, preventative, and proactive maintenance strategies. This can include:

• Lubricant Selection and Specification: Our experts can assist you in selecting the appropriate lubricant specifications for your specific applications, considering factors such as operating conditions, equipment type, and manufacturer recommendations. We ensure compatibility and optimal performance to maximise equipment reliability.
• Lubrication System Design and Optimisation: Our team will evaluate your lubrication systems and recommend solutions to ensure efficient and effective lubricant delivery. We optimise system components, such as pumps, filters, and reservoirs, to enhance lubricant circulation and minimize contamination risks.
• Lubricant Application and Dispensing: We employ advanced techniques and tools to accurately apply lubricants to your equipment, ensuring proper coverage and minimising wastage. Our technicians are trained in best practices for lubricant dispensing, ensuring consistent and uniform application.
• Lubrication Audits and Assessments: We can conduct comprehensive audits of your lubrication practices and systems to identify areas for improvement. Through assessments of lubricant condition, storage, handling, and contamination control, we provide actionable recommendations to enhance your lubrication processes.
• Lubrication Training and Education: We can offer customised training programs to educate your maintenance teams on the importance of proper lubrication practices. Our training sessions cover topics such as lubricant selection, application techniques, contamination prevention, and routine maintenance.

Once a full plan surrounding lubrication has been put in place, our lubrication engineers will take over and begin an improvement focused lubrication program.

If you would prefer to keep your lubrication services in-house, we can provide full training and guidance to allow your team and site to carry out your new tailored lubrication program.

If you prefer a blended approach, we can work with you to reach a mutually beneficial solution.

With decades of experience in the field, our team possesses extensive expertise in lubrication services across various industries. Our engineers and technicians undergo regular training and stay updated with the latest advancements in lubrication technology. We are committed to delivering high-quality services and maintaining industry best practices.

Dependent upon the scale and scope of the proposed activity there will be several stages that need to be followed to gather the right data and build an appropriate solution.

1. Initial consultation
2. Headline site survey
3. Detailed site survey and workshops with your teams to assess need
4. Creation of proposal
5. Creation of a statement of KPI’s goals and objectives
6. Deployment and situation analysis to determine the true state of play and datum references
7. Recruitment/Redeployment and training
8. Procurement of logistical equipment and consumables
9. Selection of CM tools
10. Installation of teams and hardware

• Reference ISO 55001 and 55002 Asset Management
• ISO 17359 Condition Monitoring
• ICML 5.1 Lubrication Management Standard
  • Addresses the following aspects of the lubrication strategy
    • Skills
    • Machinery Details
    • Lubricants
    • Tools required
    • Inspection methodologies
    • Lubricant analysis
    • Trouble shooting
    • Waste Management
    • Energy Conservation
    • Oil Reclamation
    • Management of the operation

• Use of OilsafeTM containers and storage solutions
• Use of Pitot tubes to allow sampling in service of assets that normally are required to be sampled offline
• Ultrasonic on-condition greasing (Mandatory)
• Handheld Thermal cameras (Optional)
• Digital cameras for lubrication route planning (ATEX where necessary)
• Use of minimess hydraulic connectors for oil sampling to minimise contamination and ensure repeatability
• Use of inline particle counters to prove system cleanliness
• Use of our bespoke Asset Insight 365 reporting platform where you can access the results of your fluid analysis, and see what actions are recommended to rectify any issues

By incorporating up to date supportive technology like ultrasonics for greasing and thermal imaging cameras for hot spots, we can “hear” or “see” what was previously unavailable to us. With these technologies we can prove the effectiveness of lubrication activities and demonstrate with an evidence based approach, the successful outcomes  of our actions.

• Best practice in terms of oil logistics, handling, sampling, distribution, and disposal require specialist containers to make sure that the fluids are kept in a good condition from the clean storage facility to the asset and then to waste.
• Pitot tubes eliminate the need for drop-tube sampling so we can guarantee that we sample form the same place every time and that the place is ideally suited to live zone requirements.
• Greasing with ultrasonics allows us to assess the bearing as it is receiving grease thus confirming that lubrication if effective and complete.
• Use of thermal cameras as a support tool for lube route is an especially useful way of being able to capture temperature related issues during routine inspection routes.
• Digital cameras to enable us to visually document all assets, machines, sampling points, leaks, seal failures, other issues etc.
• Minimess connectors allow us to sample hydraulic systems and other positive pressure devices in a consistent and clean manner further enhancing the reliability of fluid sampling regimes.
• Use of filter carts and inline particle counting devices means we can filter to a target cleanliness and ensure that systems that should be clean really are clean.