Author: MaintenX

Why You Should Audit Your Facilities

Most business owners (and even facility managers) don’t know as much as they should about the health of their biggest single asset: their facilities and equipment. In fact, it’s often the case that successful companies have faulty buildings holding them back from even more success.

With a thorough facility audit, however, business owners and facility management staff can organize more precise budgets, better direct fundraising efforts, and plan more accurately for the long-term.

What’s involved in a Facility Audit?

A comprehensive facility audit includes all relevant systems in a facility—from HVAC and electrical to water, septic, and safety systems. It can also address things like:

  • Needed technology updates
  • Energy conservation strategies
  • Accessibility management

Most audits also involve a review of regulatory compliance.

Parts of a Facility Audit

  • Scheduling and forecasting future asset replacement needs
  • An inventory of building assets
  • Suggested approaches for future and ongoing corrective measures
  • Energy conservation plans
  • National, state, and local regulatory compliance overviews

Time and Money Well-Spent

While all this auditing can seem overwhelming, it can be a lifesaver for your business. A provider simply needs to set up a structure for organizing and formalizing some processes and procedures.

The best defense is a good offense. Owners and facility managers who handle an audit in a proactive way will safeguard themselves and assure a seamless work environment while protecting their costly investments for years to come.

Want to know more about facility audits? Call a MaintenX representative today!

How Wellness Trends Are Affecting Modern Office Design

The days of an endless sea of cubicles under harsh fluorescent lights are gone. But what are the current and upcoming design strategies? As more and more workers prefer spaces that encourage health and well-being, office design layouts are changing to adapt.

Below we will explore some of the office design trends that are helping promote well-being.

Thinking Outside the Box

Alternative workspaces are becoming increasingly popular. From art therapy areas to indoor rock climbing walls, there are a lot of ways office designers are transforming the traditional office layout. A few examples:

Dynamic Workspaces

This design is meant to facilitate multiple functions, and can be easily transformed depending on your office’s needs at any given time. Dynamic office spaces offer flexibility and open the door for creativity and innovation. Some things you might find in these spaces are convertible furniture, multi-level wall dividers, and full wall dry-erase boards. For businesses looking for new ideas or a creativity boost, this is a clear winner.

Experience-Driven Spaces

These features of an office are not a one-size-fits-all addition. They’re meant to enrich the relationships among employees, foster creativity, or just to help workers relax and distress after—or during—a long day at the office.

Some examples include:

  • Massage therapy spaces
  • Meditation areas
  • Acupuncture parlors
  • Yoga studios
  • Walking trails
  • Espresso or cocktail bars
  • Game rooms
  • Theater or music spaces

There are many ways to increase the general health and well-being of your valued workers. Want to know more about wellness trends in office design? Contact MaintenX today!

3 Ways Facilities Can Use Less Heat this Winter

Winter is here. Check out these tips to help make your building more energy-efficient this winter.

Get the Right Heater

In many cases, stationary air heaters turn out to be a perfect solution. They heat large areas by simply blowing warm air. Their advantage is that they provide heated air quickly and in large quantities, irrespective of the surrounding conditions. Moreover, their use of easily available fuel helps lower heating expenses. Carefully consider the size of your facility when looking for the right model – match its capacity to your space.

Maintain your HVAC System

Maintaining your HVAC system is one of the best ways to cut down on energy costs. A pre-winter check-up is a good idea for all HVACs, as you don’t want to lose function during the cold months when you need the system most. Making sure that your furnace’s filters and heating coils are regularly cleaned and/or replaced will help keep your HVAC system working at maximum efficiency and hold your electricity bill down.

Keep Outside Air Out and Inside Air In

Many buildings are bringing in more outside air than they need to, which makes their HVAC units work unnecessarily hard. Outside airflow rates should be reduced to a minimum for each space. Think about installing CO2 sensors in return air ductwork and maintaining interior CO2 levels.

Would you like to know more about how you can save on your energy costs this winter? Call MaintenX today!

Preparing Your Facility for Winter

It’s a simple fact that facilities that organize themselves proactively ahead of harsh winter weather do better than those that wait until the last minute. These tips can help you get your facility ready for the oncoming cold.

Be Prepared for Power Outages

Blizzards and ice storms often knock the power out for a few hours or more. If your facility is in an area prone to winter storms, it’s a smart idea to get prepared now.

Have a generator on hand and make sure it’s functional. In addition, if you are expecting the roads to your facility to be difficult to navigate in bad weather, keep things like salt and traffic cones handy so you can fix some issues yourself in an emergency if a service employee can’t reach you.

Examine the Exterior

Is the parking lot showing damage from summer flooding that might get worse with water freezing into the cracks? Have tree branches grown long enough that they’re over or under power lines?

Schedule needed services now, so you will have fewer things to worry about once winter arrives.

Hard Floor

Regardless of the flooring in your facility, it’s smart to build up the finish to create an extra protective coat on your floor. If you have vinyl composite tile floors, you should apply a minimum of five coats. Winter is very hard on floors, so take care to protect them.

Want to know more about how to prepare your facility for winter? Give MaintenX a call today!

Winter Roof Maintenance Tips

Winter is already on its way, bringing freezing rain and heavy snow onto lawns and streets across the country. Unfortunately, there’s no stopping the winter cold; the only thing you can do is prepare for it. And your roof needs your help to prepare for the beating it’s about to receive. Here are some tips:

Remove Snow

Snow on a rooftop can look beautiful and classically wintry. Unfortunately, it can also cause a lot of damage if it sits for too long.

Despite its fluffiness, snow is heavy! Also, if left on a roof, it can create ice dams in your gutters if it melts and then refreezes. This can lead to loosened shingles or worse.

Remove all ice and snow from your roof as quickly as possible.

Wind Damage

People often forget about wind when thinking about winter roof damage. If a snow storm comes through your area, wind can wreak a lot of havoc.

Inspect your roof for wind damage, and repair spots that have been compromised. Look for missing, broken, or damaged shingles, and take care of them immediately.

Hire a Professional Inspector

While there are some roof maintenance tasks you can handle yourself, it’s best to hire a professional roofer to tackle the major work.

By hiring licensed professionals, you’ll have peace of mind that everything is properly repaired.

Have questions about proper winter roof maintenance? Call MaintenX today!

Will Winter Affect Your Building?

Is your facility prepared to weather winter storms?  Power loss, cold temperatures, snow, wind, ice, and a host of other potential problems need to be considered and addressed now to ensure your facility will run safely and smoothly through the winter season. Here are some tips to keep your building in great shape year-round.

HVAC System Inspection

When temperatures get colder, your building needs to be kept warm enough to keep people comfortable and assets protected. Now is the perfect time to make sure your facility’s HVAC systems are prepared to handle the stresses of the coming winter months.

The best way to make sure the system is efficient is to hire an HVAC maintenance company familiar with commercial systems, like MaintenX, to inspect and optimize the system before the coldest months of winter hit.

Don’t Waste Heat

In addition to checking the heating system, have your facility checked for drafts, leaks, and cracks — all of which allow heated air to escape buildings. Taking care of these will limit wasted energy throughout the cold weather months while saving you money.

Roof Inspection

Roofs take a lot of damage in the winter. Flat roofs, which are typical on commercial buildings, require routine inspection and maintenance. Make sure the roofs don’t have areas where ice or heavy snow can build up. After the preliminary inspection, schedule weekly or monthly inspections for the entire winter season. During these inspections, look for built-up water, ice, and snow, and if you find it, dispose of it immediately.

Tips for Proper Grounds Care

Year-round, climate presents increasingly difficult challenges to facilities and their managers. Getting and keeping properties in immaculate condition is key for a company’s image, and can also be a health and safety benefit to a workforce. Below are some tips for proper grounds care.

Aerate

Aeration, making tiny holes in the lawn of your facility’s grounds, allows water to soak in, stimulating root growth and improving fertilizer absorption. When you aerate a lawn, it soaks up more water, which prevents runoff. Aeration improves the effectiveness of irrigation and protects your grounds from dead plant build-up that can collect between the grass blades and the soil. This will keep your facility’s grounds looking great season after season, year after year.

Watering

For trees and shrubs, ensure you thoroughly soak every 2 days in hot weather and every 4 days in cool weather.

Hire a Groundskeeper

This won’t be a viable choice for every business, but depending on your facility’s size and needs it might be a great idea to hire a groundskeeping service to take care of these issues for you. Some things to consider before hiring a groundskeeper or service:

  • Make sure you’ve carefully vetted your service provider
  • Create an effective set of KPIs to track and measure quality
  • Communicate these KPIs to your service provider and conduct fixed review meetings to discuss and fix issues
  • Make sure that your KPIs directly relate to your business goals
  • Encourage innovation and the use of developing technologies to support strategic grounds care
  • Check for upcoming needs six months ahead of time, and prioritize tasks in order of importance and urgency

If you want to know more about proper grounds maintenance, contact MaintenX today!

Reducing Waste in Your Facility

Whether they are office buildings, schools, stores, hotels, or restaurants, facilities generate a lot of waste. Here are some tools and resources to help facility managers, building owners, tenants and other stakeholders improve waste management in their buildings while also reducing costs.

Importance of Waste Reduction

By reducing waste, a business can:

  • Conserve natural resources
  • Reduce waste disposal costs
  • Meet demand for “green” products and environmentally savvy businesses
  • Avoid adding to the environmental burden caused by waste disposal

Fine-Tuning

Facility managers can take steps to ensure the accomplishment of sustainability efforts by:

  • Using computer systems to help manage chemicals and waste while making suggestions on EPP. Managers can review the free electronic resources on the EPA Web site, www.epa.gov.
  • Establishing a sustainability program. The EPA has free calculators to help measure the likely environmental benefits of using greener cleaning supplies, chemicals, and of recycling. These also are available on the EPA’s website.
  • Promoting green initiatives with the use of labels and signs. Legal guidelines often mandate their use, but facility managers can consider signs and labels that encourage the use of environmentally friendly and non-toxic chemicals. The signs and labels ensure regulatory compliance and demonstrate a commitment to green initiatives.

Facility managers need to show the value they bring to the business. Promoting green initiatives is one area where facility managers can fully display their positive effect on the organization by protecting people, reducing waste, and helping the bottom line.

Want to know more about facility waste reduction? Contact MaintenX today!

Decentralized vs. Centralized Maintenance

Maintenance is a vital part of running your facility safely and efficiently. It involves things like tracking work orders and assets, as well as making the most of your workforce’s skills and drive to give you the edge in a competitive business space. To do this, you need regular, professional maintenance. But which is better for your facility, centralized or decentralized? Let’s explore the pros and cons of both.

There are some important differences between centralized and decentralized maintenance. For example:

  • Centralized maintenance is done on a fixed schedule, meaning it produces fixed expenses. This means it’s usually more expensive, but also more likely to find and correct problems before they occur.
  • Decentralized maintenance is done in limited areas. Overall productivity can decline with this method, although individual maintenance tasks are carried out in a relatively shorter time.

Centralized Maintenance

Pros:

  • Full control over organization and implementation
  • Usually a good option for smaller businesses

Cons:

  • Progress can often be slower
  • Not always a good fit for large companies

Decentralized Maintenance

Pros:

  • Requires more open communication
  • Can achieve faster results
  • Often a good fit for larger businesses

Cons:

  • May not get a consistent flow of authority, as there is more than one set of decision makers involved

There’s no one-size-fits-all method for successful maintenance. The method that’s right for you will depend on your industry, size, future trends, and the needs of your particular facility.

Need to streamline maintenance for your facility? MaintenX is here to help you every step of the way!

How to Run a Successful Fire Drill

Fire drills ensure your employees get to safety quickly in the event of a fire, power outage or other disaster in your facility. From chemical spills to terrorism, your workers need to be properly prepared. Conducting regular fire drills is one of the ways to keep your most precious asset, your staff, safe.

To run a successful fire drill, follow these steps:

How often you conduct fire drills depends on local regulations and fire codes, and on the local fire hazards your industry and local environment faces. For example, in a facility with serious fire hazards, fire drills should be conducted at least four times a year. In other facilities, once or twice a year may suffice. Check with local regulations and fire codes before you plan drills.

When you first implement fire drills, run them once or twice a month. Once employees get the hang of it, you can lengthen the intervals between fire drills. If you conduct them too often, employees may become nonchalant about the process and not take a real evacuation seriously. After your workers are well-practiced, you can go to the permanent schedule you’ve developed.

It’s a fact of life that emergencies happen. When you have a fire drill procedure and a staff that can competently follow it, you can rest easy knowing that if the unthinkable occurs in your facility, everyone will be well-prepared.