Author: MaintenX

Preparing Your Facility for Holiday Closures

As the holiday season rolls around, you may be planning for some facility closures in the near future. Whether you are planning a day or two of closures or have weeks marked off the calendar to get maintenance done, there are several things you need to remember before closing the office. Below are four steps you should take in the weeks leading up to your office closure to ensure a smooth transition into and out of the holidays: 

 

Communicate with stakeholders

Your customers, vendors, employees, and other stakeholders need to know well in advance about your plan to close, even if it is only for a few days. Employees should be notified first via email or office calendar so they can plan for vacation time. Then, be sure to connect with customers and vendors to ensure they know to not expect communication during the closure. You should also communicate with vendors of any recurring deliveries or make arrangements with the post office to ensure no mail is delivered to the office while it is closed. 

 

Leave a message

Be sure to record an automated phone message that explains the closure and gives a start date and a reopening date. This is crucial if you typically operate phones in-house, but should also be used if you work with a remote front desk service. You should also instruct employees to schedule “out of office” emails before their last day. 

 

Reduce energy usage

One of the most important things you can do is to turn off unnecessary appliances during the holiday closure. This includes lamps, personal computers, printers, and other equipment that can easily be turned off at the switch. Be sure to back up your computer systems before doing this, however, as you don’t want to come back to a chaotic office if data is lost. 

 

Use your time wisely

Planned factory shutdowns, also called “factory fortnights” in manufacturing, are becoming more common as an opportunity to enhance facility equipment and perform preventative maintenance on major equipment. If your facility shutdown is planned for an extended period of time (such as for a week at Thanksgiving instead of for just one day) you can schedule preventative maintenance services with MaintenX to make the most of your time. 

 

MaintenX can help you make the most of your holiday season. Contact us today about scheduling preventative maintenance services during your holiday break so you can come back to a cleaner, more efficient office space. 

What Makes A Facility Manager a Leader?

As a facility manager, you may sometimes feel more like a taskmaster than a leader. You are faced with a revolving door of to-do’s and rarely a moment to reorient the big picture. After all, “first things first” is the common mantra when it comes to management. But, as a facility manager you are ultimately in charge of the direction of your maintenance programs. You have the capability to change and become a true leader within your facility with a little help.

 

Leadership is fundamentally about improving your facility from within. There are two ways in which leaders achieve this goal, both of which are effective for facility managers: 

 

The empowerment-driven approach. 

A substantial number of highly effective leaders get to their positions because they are exceptional resources for the rest of their teams. Rather than directing and micromanaging, these leaders empower their teams to make decisions based on a clear objective and ample support given by the leadership. This takes the burden of being taskmaster off your shoulders, as your team can better solve problems on their own and take direction on projects you assign. 

 

The mission-driven approach. 

This is the more difficult approach to leadership because it requires you to not only come up with a mission and vision for your facility but also be the driving force behind that mission. The mission-driven approach is a lead-by-example approach and is more hands-on than an empowerment-driven approach. However, by becoming more involved at the hands-on level and exemplifying the values of your department, you can unite your maintenance team under a common goal. 

 

Leaders can use these two styles under different circumstances to inspire and empower their maintenance teams. This is the approach we take at MaintenX with our immense subcontractor network, and with it, we are able to achieve a higher level of service and enthusiasm with every member of our team. 

 

To learn more about effective facility management for businesses of all sizes, visit our resource center. 

How To Better Communicate Maintenance Needs To Upper Management

How many times, as the maintenance manager or a technician, have you felt unheard by upper management? You desperately need a bigger budget for preventative care, new equipment, or greater staffing and yet your budget continually shrinks instead of expands each year. If you feel this way, you’re not alone. Most maintenance departments are considered the last priority by upper management and business owners. While you may think that there’s no solution, you could have more agency than you think. 

 

Oftentimes the problem is in the communication between maintenance and management, not simply the refusal to invest in preventative care. As for maintenance managers and technicians we thoroughly understand the problem of not keeping up with preventative maintenance. We see the issues that surface later, and know almost immediately why and how they could have been prevented. But, your management does not. 

 

It is easy to assume that management will understand what you’re talking about in your reports and proposals for increased budgeting. However, you may be using unnecessary technician jargon and numbers that don’t mean anything to your management team. While they all have extensive experience within the operational sectors of the business, most won’t have any maintenance management experience. What they’re looking for is impact, not facts and figures. It is up to us as maintenance experts to communicate the real results that occur when investments are made in better maintenance. 

 

When communicating with upper management, it is essential to illustrate the true impact of your preventative maintenance programs. It is what they will understand best, and what will motivate them to treat your maintenance department like an integral part of the operations team — not simply an afterthought. If you want to make the most of your maintenance programs, communication is key. 

 

Tips for Better Communication Between Maintenance and Upper Management: 

 

  • Increase interactions between departments. It is difficult to effectively communicate when you have no rapport between departments. By increasing your presence outside of the maintenance department, you can become a more integral part of the decision-making process. 

 

  • Bring up the big picture. No management leader is going to want to increase your budget based on theory or statistics. However, if you show them the real-world potential for catastrophe if preventative maintenance programs are not sustained (such as equipment shutdowns and long-term expense increases), then you’ve incorporated your numbers into the bigger picture.

 

  • Meet face-to-face. Audio or written material carries very little emotional weight or impact, which makes them ineffective tools for relationship building. Not only is it easier to reject a written proposal than it is an in-person one, but by making that extra effort, your upper management can see why the issue at hand is important to you. 

 

MaintenX works hard to build relationships with our clients so that we can both effectively communicate and compromise to create a truly effective preventative maintenance program. To learn more about what makes MaintenX stand out from other maintenance contractors, contact us today. 

The Cost of a Preventative Maintenance vs. No Maintenance Strategy

At MaintenX, we strongly encourage our clients to invest in preventative maintenance. These services — from regular tune-ups to cleaning and manufacturer’s recommended parts replacements — help to keep your facility’s plumbing, HVAC, and electrical systems intact. However, we rarely discuss the potential benefits and costs of the no-maintenance strategy. 

 

What is a No Maintenance Strategy?

Some companies implement a no-maintenance or reactive maintenance strategy, which simply means that repairs are not scheduled until a breakdown occurs. There are some unique advantages to this maintenance strategy. While the cost of breakdowns is typically more expensive, these companies do not pay for unnecessary preventative repairs or services. They also typically have a lower monthly budget for maintenance that is easier to sell to upper management than a more costly preventative care schedule. 

 

The Hidden Cost of a No-Maintenance Strategy

While a reactive maintenance strategy is cheaper today, it is exponentially more costly once a breakdown actually occurs. Think about it this way: is it more expensive to perform routine maintenance checks on your HVAC system every quarter, or to have to replace your entire system at the drop of a hat when something major goes wrong? 

 

Oftentimes the cost-savings of preventative care are not apparent because they work in preventing these sorts of breakdowns. You may not even realize the potential hazards you are escaping from investing in preventative care. But, we as maintenance technicians have seen them happen, which is why we push preventative maintenance service for all of our clients. 

 

Combining the Best of Preventative and Reactive Maintenance

The best solution for a maintenance team is not to choose one over the other, but rather to choose which systems need more preventative care, versus which ones can operate on a run-to-fail system. Older appliances and pieces of equipment naturally need more maintenance in order to perform. However, a brand new system may not need any preventative care until it reaches a certain stage in its life cycle. 

 

Maintenance strategies are nuanced, which is why we work collaboratively with clients to ensure they get the best value for their dollar. To learn more about our preventative care strategies and services, contact MaintenX today.

Attention to Detail Is The Difference Between Effective and Exceptional Facility Maintenance

In today’s modern workforce, speed is crucial. The technological world is moving faster than any of us imagined, and as maintenance technicians, we have to keep up as best we can with our clients’ fast-paced business environment. However, this emphasis on efficiency can pressure maintenance workers into doing less-than a perfect job in order to meet upper management’s expectations. 

 

If your maintenance department seems to be stagnating, ask yourself, “Am I pushing for quality work or faster service?” The attention to detail that a highly skilled technician can perform is incredibly valuable, but only if you encourage it over pushing service ahead of schedule. The extra time they take to diagnose or to perform preventative maintenance while onsite can save you thousands of dollars in emergency maintenance repair. Isn’t that more important than shaving off a few minutes or hours of labor time?

 

In maintenance, “good enough” is rarely what you want. Any technician out of their apprenticeship or technical school can do a “good enough” job in order to fix your plumbing leak or repair a blown fuse. However, what you pay for at MaintenX is the years of time and dedication to the job that develops an artisan-level of skill. This expertise not only helps you get the job done but allows your maintenance technician to identify root causes and prevent rework. Attention to detail is what separates efficiency from exceptional standards. 

 

One of the problems is how we measure performance. Wrench time studies are critical to improving performance where a lack of knowledge or skill is slowing down service. However, oftentimes these studies don’t account for the additional time it takes for a skilled technician to fully diagnose and prevent future problems during the repair. When you’re working with your maintenance team, be sure to conduct performance reviews beyond wrench time and partner your most experienced artisan technicians with new hires to show them that skill does indeed improve efficiency. 

 

Your maintenance team is capable of incredible work if you empower them to work beyond their most “efficient” capabilities. When attention to detail is a top priority, your business will thrive. 

 

Ask your MaintenX technician about how our preventative maintenance strategies help to improve facility performance long-term or visit our resource center for more information.

Investing in New Infrastructure vs. Maintenance for School Campuses

School districts are facing a multitude of problems across the country in the wake of COVID-19. Mask requirements, online learning, and an ever-increasingly smaller budget are putting pressure on many school boards to cut costs wherever possible. And, far too often those funds are being cut from maintenance and new infrastructure budgets to fund seemingly more urgent programs. 

 

This is understandable from the school board and taxpayer’s perspective. Maintenance is already a low priority, and even more so when many parents are opting to do online learning while the school structure remains uncertain. However, this poses a critical opportunity for schools to renovate and maintain the buildings that desperately need the extra TLC.

 

In 2013, a study of U.S. K-12 schools suggested that it would take over $270B to renovate existing schools across the country to their original condition, or up to $542B to rebuild and modernize these same buildings. Unfortunately, not even the $270B benchmarks were met, as school maintenance budgets are typically slashed rather than raised each year. Now, nearly 10 years later, our schools are struggling to introduce new technologies to their classrooms, let alone find the budgets for modernizing classrooms to meet educational standards. The problem only gets worse with each passing year, and the schools are running out of time to change. 

 

However, we believe now is a prime opportunity for many schools to start rebuilding and investing in modern infrastructure for their campuses. As online earning increases its reach and efficiency, more students are able to take a break from campus and continue with their studies. With fewer students on campus and fewer resources needed for lessons and assignments (as even in-class learning has an integral online component in most cases), there is a golden opportunity for school districts to take advantage. 

 

The question now is whether or not the school districts will do so, or if their hard-pressed budget will remain locked down with lower maintenance budgets each year. At MaintenX, we encourage preventative maintenance services for school campuses to help reduce long-term costs. These preventative care services, coupled with new construction projects, can help schools turn this decade into one of incredible progress. 

 

There is no question that campuses, teachers, and students are struggling right now. However, MaintenX has faith in our communities to take these challenges and turn them into opportunities for the future. 

Do You Take Maintenance Cost Increases Seriously?

At MaintenX, we talk a lot about reducing maintenance costs for facility managers. In most preventative maintenance plans, there is an underlying goal of reducing expenses as maintenance efficiency improves. But this does not mean that your maintenance budget should continue to decrease indefinitely. In fact, as your systems and equipment age and as different outside contributors change, you can and should expect your maintenance budget to increase. Here’s why:

 

Preventative maintenance reduces cost by preventing emergency repairs and extending the service life of certain parts and pieces of equipment. It does not, however, decrease the overall need for maintenance as a system ages. The older a piece of machinery, the more maintenance it will need to continue performing at an optimum level. This means that maintenance budgets should increase as the system gets older — the difference is that it won’t do so as rapidly as it would if no preventative maintenance was performed. 

 

Think about the maintenance of your car. You expect repair costs to go up as the car gets older, even if you are diligent about oil changes and tune-ups each year. This doesn’t mean that your preventative maintenance schedule isn’t effective — it just means that your car needs more TLC as it reaches the end of its service life. 

 

The same logic applies to your facility equipment, but unfortunately, upper management has the tendency to cut maintenance budgets regardless of the age or shape of facility equipment. This actually leads to increases in emergency costs and the need to replace aging systems earlier. With another piece of equipment, this logic would never be followed through (as you would never budget less on car repairs for an older model than you would your brand new ride), and yet this is often par for the course for facility maintenance departments. 

 

As the facility manager, it is essential to advocate for maintenance budget increases when you need them. Whether it is because of an aging system, increased labor costs, or supply shortages, you need to adequately provide the resources for your facility to thrive. This ensures that over the course of several years, even decades, your maintenance department is meeting their goals and can help prevent the truly costly maintenance services like early replacement of assets and emergency services for total shutdowns. 

 

MaintenX can help you prioritize your maintenance and prevent these costly repairs with our comprehensive preventative maintenance services. Contact us to learn more about what our maintenance team can do for you!

Are You An Inspired Leader As Facility Manager?

Facility management is not often considered a glamorous or highly influential field. To your tenants, the facility management is the people you call when there’s a plumbing leak or when you want to schedule landscaping services. However, your job is much more than that. You are the support system that keeps the infrastructure alive. You are the leaders who ensure that the business community can thrive and that your tenants can continue to do what they do best. 

 

This job requires both management finesse and leadership potential. But what exactly makes a good maintenance team lead or facility manager? According to Harvard Business Review, these four traits make a leader in any industry exceptional:

 

  • They set goals with their team, not for them
  • They develop the skills of subordinates to empower them to perform
  • They encourage collaboration in the workplace
  • They support innovation 
  • They connect emotionally and empathetically with subordinates 
  • They communicate their vision clearly and practice communication often 
  • They act as role models rather than bosses

 

You may wonder, “How am I supposed to inspire and encourage innovation as a maintenance manager? Isn’t the way we’ve always done things good enough?” 

 

It may be, but there is always room to grow in your position as a leader. While you may not make sweeping changes in the maintenance industry as a whole, by empowering individual technicians to exercise creativity in the workplace and inviting them to share input on your goals and procedures, you create a more cohesive maintenance team. Technicians who are challenged and rewarded for their creativity (and not just their obedience) are those who will perform above expectations. 

 

These leadership traits can be practiced in any position or industry, and they can be cultivated in technicians and new hires as well as within the management. By empowering your staff to make decisions and come up with novel solutions, they grow your maintenance program for you. 

 

MaintenX encourages all facility leaders to embody these principles in their daily work lives. The stronger the maintenance department, the stronger the building and the business within it can become. 

How to Make Maintenance Benchmarking More Effective

Benchmarking your maintenance strategy against other similarly sized and staffed companies is an excellent way to improve efficiency and reduce costs over time. By comparing your maintenance costs, emergency service requests, and ability to recover after major disasters against other companies, you can see where your strengths and weaknesses lie. But, how do you know if you’re measuring the right metrics? How do you know if your benchmarking is actually usable as a guide for your ground-floor maintenance team?

 

Oftentimes, benchmarking only focuses on the numbers. How many dollars, service requests, and man-hours were used in a given year as compared to the competition. However, these numbers don’t tell you “how.” They don’t answer the most important question, “How are our strategies succeeding or failing in achieving maintenance goals?” They only tell you whether or not you’re meeting an arbitrary mark. 

 

The only way to make your benchmarking effective is to study the processes and support systems needed to meet your target numbers. For example, if your goal is to reduce maintenance costs by a certain percentage by the end of the year, you can benchmark to see where other maintenance teams are cutting costs effectively that you aren’t currently implementing. Something as simple as a new waste reduction process or more efficient energy systems can help you reach your target goals immediately. 

 

Processes don’t just include the work, but also how the work is managed and supported through the staff. A work environment where long-term facility health is prioritized over the short-term fixes typically sees the best numbers in the end as well. By offering employee support and ample resources to your maintenance team can help them go above and beyond for your business. 

 

MaintenX is a leader in our industry because we prioritize long-term facility excellence for our clients. To learn more about our work order management and preventative maintenance strategies, contact us today. 

How To Recruit Maintenance Apprentices

It is not news to those of us in the facility management field that apprentices and young talent in electrical, plumbing, and HVAC repair are rare. With so many young adults being pushed toward the colleges over vocational training, and scholarships becoming easier to obtain, there is a steep dropoff in the number of new mechanics, electricians, plumbers, and technicians available in the workforce. And, as the “baby boomer” generation retires, there will be even fewer skilled workers for maintenance teams to recruit. 

 

Generating new talent is very important for MaintenX, which is why we use and recommend these tactics for recruiting high school students and young adults to the maintenance trades:

 

Competitive salaries and signing bonuses

Many high schoolers go straight to college in order to take advantage of their younger years and hopefully earn a bigger salary long-term. However, the maintenance field is increasingly becoming a more affordable means to an education, often with competitive salaries to boot. Some maintenance companies will even offer signing bonuses in order to attract top talent, which is an enticing proposition for someone choosing between college and vocational school. 

 

Compensating on- and off-the-job training 

For those who don’t go to a traditional vocational school, apprenticeships offer the opportunity to learn on the job and earn a bit of money while doing it. Though not all apprenticeships are paid, the most competitive spots provide a living wage. This incentivizes the apprentices and provides them a means to focus solely on their training. 

 

Selling the benefits

There are plenty of reasons that young professionals would choose maintenance work over the traditional college route. It provides a quicker route into the workforce and offers a job that doesn’t involve desk work or tedious schooling. Active young adults are often drawn to professions that allow them to work with their hands and balance their jobs with learning opportunities. By selling the benefits of your apprenticeship that aren’t salary-based, you can show why becoming a maintenance technician is a fulfilling long-term option. 

 

MaintenX is thrilled to have young technicians come work for us and build the next generation of facility maintenance. To learn more about our job opportunities, visit our resource center.