FAQ

Who are Facility Monitoring Systems (FMS)?

The company was formed in 2000 to provide monitoring solutions within the highly regulated pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. This quickly developed into a broader approach to all aspects of environmental monitoring across the various market sectors, described below.

The secure, robust and simple to use requirements demanded by the pharmaceutical industry and their regulators, provide the ideal core for all other types of environmental monitoring systems.

What is FMS?

FMS is a real-time data logging and reporting software package. Its main purpose is to integrate a variety of scientific instrumentation and associated hardware (sensors) into an easy to use system and to provide data as evidence of compliance with requirements.

There is no limit to the total number of measurement points and outputs from any type of sensor can be used with FMS. Systems can easily be upgraded and expanded to cope with additional requirements.

Real-time and historical data is easily accessed and reports can be automatically generated, or bespoke reports simply configured.

Where is FMS used?

FMS is used worldwide, in Pharmaceutical and Healthcare, Laboratory, Data Storage, Air and Water Quality, Industrial Processes, Automotive, Aerospace, Occupational Health and Environmental Health applications.
There are systems installed throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, United States of America and Asia.

Who uses FMS?

Any organisation that requires to monitor the operating environment, either as a regulatory requirement, or to improve their product yield and profitability, or to improve our everyday environment, or to protect items in transit, in storage or on display. Often systems provide data for a combination of these requirements.

Applications range from City Air Quality Data to Specialist Hospital Departments to Bank Data Archives.

What sensors can be used with FMS?

Many of the various applications across all market sectors have similar monitoring requirements for the basic parameters, such as temperature, relative humidity, pressure, lux, UV, and particulate levels.

FMS is not restricted to these basic parameters. Outputs from any type of sensor and any parameter can be incorporated, provided that we have some basic cooperation and information from the sensor manufacturers.

Although we have partnering and distributorship agreements with some of our suppliers, this does not compromise our ability to source the best type of sensor for a particular application or location.

FMS will accept data from any type of sensor. This will be displayed in the correct units of measure and correctly scaled for the application

Is FMS a wired or wireless system?
FMS provides both wired and wireless solutions (or a combination of the two).

As with sensor types, we have partnering agreements with wireless solution providers, but this does not restrict our ability to select the best wireless solution for the specific application.

Can I move or add sensors?

FMS software offers configuration functions that make it easy to add and remove sensors and to change details of existing sensors. These functions are only available at the higher levels of security access.

I have some existing sensors; can these be monitored by FMS?

As with proposed new sensors, FMS will interface with any type of sensor.

Providing that we have basic cooperation and information from the suppliers of any existing sensors, these can be monitored by FMS.

Can FMS interface with my existing Building Management System (BMS)?
FMS can send data to and receive data from BMS systems. Cooperation is required from the BMS supplier in order to achieve this.

Consideration must be given when importing data from the BMS to FMS as the FMS is usually operation at a higher level of validation than the BMS.

How does FMS interface with existing and future IT systems?

FMS connects to the existing IT network and can be viewed on any computer on the network where the appropriate FMS software is installed.

Can FMS be viewed on the internet?

FMS can be viewed via a standard web browser interface. Cooperation is required with internal IT to facilitate this functionality.

Can FMS interface with existing data loggers?

Yes, FMS can retrieve data from existing loggers. Cooperation and information from the suppliers of these loggers would be required.

Can FMS interface with existing roadside Air Quality Monitoring equipment?

Yes, this also requires the same basic cooperation from the suppliers regarding communication protocols.

When alerts or alarms are generated, how are these notified?

The status of the system is displayed on screen and alerts and alarms will be visible as colour coded cells or icons on a map.

Actions in the form of email and/or SMS/analogue dial out notification can be taken by FMS software when alerts or alarms are generated.

Beacons and Sounders can be activated when alarms or alerts occur.

How secure is FMS?

FMS is a highly secure system that complies with the strict requirements of the pharmaceutical industry and their regulatory bodies.

The software is developed in accordance with current GAMP4 guidelines and provides for compliance to FDA 21 CFR part 11.

This provides the best indication of the integrity of FMS as a system and Facility Monitoring Systems Ltd as the company responsible for the development, installation and support of that system.

Secure password access (with password aging) is part of that design. All interactions (alarm acknowledgements, sensor configurations etc.) are only available to operators with applicable levels of access and are completely tamper-proof and have full audit tail capability.

How robust is FMS?
FMS is a highly robust system with many failsafe mechanisms; it will automatically recover from a wide range of fault conditions. The system can be set-up with redundancy and database mirroring incorporated.

How easy is it to view historical data?

Historical data can be viewed on screen and printed reports can be generated for any time period

For real-time and historic data, sensors can be “grouped” to provide an immediate overview of a specific critical area.

Can reports be generated to show out of specification events and provide daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly analysis and key performance indicators (KPIs)

Reports can be generated containing management statistics and summaries for requested time periods. Graphs can be included in reports that will show out-of-specification events. Reports can be generated automatically at pre-set times or on demand.

Can arsenic and mercury based residual pesticides be monitored?

Yes, in a similar way to above but using an Aquaria CF20 air sampler and absorption tube for sampling. (Please see separate technical note in other products section).

Can FMS provide monitoring for demolition/building dust and asbestos?

Yes, the Aquaria CF20 air sampler can be used in this way.

Can FMS provide sampling equipment for airborne microbiological contamination?

Yes, we provide a range of portable and fixed point of use microbiological air samplers. Laboratory results can be entered into FMS to enable correlation with data from other sensors.

Can other data be manually entered into FMS?

Yes, any other data can be manually entered. This can be correlated with temperature and humidity data etc. to build up trend profiles.

What other products and services does Facility Monitoring System Ltd provide to assist in effective environmental monitoring?

Facility Monitoring Systems Ltd provides a wide range of environmental monitoring solutions products and services. Some of those are already mentioned in the above responses others are closely related.

FMS is not restricted to any type, manufacturer or supplier of ancillary equipment,
we are always pleased to be involved in sourcing, developing and implementing new monitoring requirements.