At MaintenX, we strive to provide affordable services for businesses of every size. Whether you’re operating in multiple states or have one small, local facility, we work hard to provide services at a budget that works for you. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t understand the difficulties in accurately budgeting for annual maintenance costs.
Because of the inherent volatility of maintenance servicing, facility managers struggle to accurately predict maintenance cost needs year to year. You may be making a mistake without realizing it. Below are just a few common ways in which we see facility managers miscalculate their maintenance budgets, and what you can do to fix it:
You’re using zero-based budgeting.
Zero-based budgeting has been adopted by many high-performing enterprises. While this approach is useful in many applications, it does not fully address maintenance needs based on intelligence gathered from the previous year. Your maintenance budget should factor in the service life of all equipment, the average maintenance costs, and include a budget for equipment upgrades as needed.
The maintenance budget is arbitrary.
Oftentimes, when facility managers are in a rush to finish their budget reports, they provide an arbitrary budget for maintenance, either adding or subtracting a percentage from last year’s budget. Again, this fails to take into account the many fluctuations in maintenance service and can pressure the maintenance management into cutting corners when they are not adequately funded. A holistic approach is best suited for ensuring your maintenance team stays on budget but is well-funded for all preventative tasks.
Your budget is made without feedback from those “in the know.”
Management makes the budgets for most departments, but oftentimes it is the people on the floor who understand the needs and limitations of the equipment within a facility. Your groundfloor staff will know when equipment needs to be replaced better than you do, so ask them for input before you assign numbers to your annual maintenance budget.
The budget is broken for the wrong reasons.
When an unexpected breakdown happens, you have no choice but to break the budget and pay for a repair or replacement. However, this same logic is rarely applied to preventative maintenance tasks that could help you avoid these expensive breakdowns. Instead of only breaking your maintenance budget in emergencies, invest a little extra to prevent them from happening in the first place. This is the easiest and most efficient way to cut maintenance costs.
Investing in proper maintenance now will increase reliability and reduce unexpected repair costs for the rest of the year. It is the easiest solution to your maintenance budgeting problems, and can be applied immediately. Consider retooling your maintenance budget and see what maintenance can do for you.
Call your local MaintenX team today for a preventative maintenance consultation.
