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Small commercial buildings — such as office spaces, boutique retail stores, or studios — are typically occupied by small businesses looking to save cash. Whether the property is rented or owned by the tenant business, it is still important for these businesses to be able to enjoy their workspace while also reducing their maintenance and operational costs. If the building is new, the question may arise whether a smaller HVAC unit could replace a larger, more expensive commercial unit. 

Before coming to a conclusion, it’s important to know the differences in residential and commercial HVAC systems. Not only are they built and installed differently, but they will also require different maintenance depending on which one is right for your building. Below are just a few examples of the ways in which commercial HVAC systems differ from residential units: 

Differences Between Residential and Commercial HVAC Systems

• Size and complexity – Intuitively, commercial HVAC systems are typically much larger than residential systems because they must cover a larger area. They are also built to handle more complex tasks, such as individually heating and cooling different rooms and adjusting to building capacity and specific usage. For example, a multi-use office facility may need more ventilation and cooling in one space than the other. Commercial HVAC systems are built for this complexity, while residential systems are not.
• Placement – Most residential units are placed in the backyard, or somewhere else not visible or too close to any bedroom. They can be noisy and not aesthetically appealing, so HVAC technicians will carefully place them to minimize their noticeability. Commercial HVAC systems, however, are typically placed on the roof. It then saves additional space and is protected from dirt and other contaminants.
• Drainage – Because commercial HVAC systems are much larger, they require more than one drainage area to run efficiently and effectively. Instead of one pan draining to the outside of the building, commercial HVAC systems have complex drainage to ensure that water intrusion is highly unlikely. 
• Maintenance – Because commercial HVAC systems are much larger and more complex, they require routine preventative maintenance to reduce or eliminate the chance of downtime. If an HVAC system in a home starts to slow down or goes out, it is up to the homeowner to decide when to make the maintenance call. However, commercial buildings have much stricter guidelines; therefore preventative care is typically required. 

Because of these key differences, it is important to choose the HVAC system that will meet the needs and capacity of your building. If you have converted a residential home into an office or studio space, there is no reason to upgrade to a commercial unit, unless you need a more advanced ventilation system. However, if your building is part of a multi-unit facility or is larger than the typical residential space, it is important you invest in a properly fitted HVAC unit. 

To learn more about HVAC installation and maintenance services, contact your local MaintenX team today!

Most maintenance or facility managers view water intrusion as part of reactive maintenance. Why plan for a maintenance issue that rarely occurs? This line of thinking is logical, but unfortunately, it leaves you unprepared for the very real possibility of major leaks and flooding. Below, we will look at the most common types of water intrusion and how to prepare for them in your maintenance plan.

Most Common Types of Water Intrusion

• Roof leaks and condensation – Roofing is a common problem area for water intrusion. If your shingles and roofing infrastructure are not properly maintained, you can face leaks after a storm or condensation issues when it is humid.
• Pipe leaks – Piping is another highly probably culprit to water intrusion. If your plumbing does not see regular maintenance, small leaks can turn into major water damages overnight. 
• Flooding and storm surge – If you live on the waterfront or an area at risk of flooding and storm surge, you may face annual risks to catastrophic water damage. While you cannot prevent these events from happening, you can prepare for them in your financial plan. 

Prevention Steps

• Clean roof drains and gutters regularly to prevent leaks and weakening of the structure
• Maintain a waterproof sealant on roof flashings
• Maintain watershed and drainage around the facility 
• Schedule preventive maintenance for plumbing, and insulate piping
• Look for signs of water damage near HVAC systems and other major equipment pieces
• Protect the building during new construction by planning around the weather and protecting exposed surfaces

What To Do When You Have Water Intrusion at Your Facility

If water intrusion occurs, you must be financially prepared for the damages. In your annual maintenance budgeting, earmark some funds for emergency maintenance that will cover all types of water intrusion. Your emergency maintenance fund should be inclusive to any type of repairs that would cause more than a day of downtime. You should also talk to your maintenance provider about their emergency availability and pricing for off-hours service calls. 

MaintenX specializes in emergency maintenance for commercial facilities. We understand how important it is not only to prepare for emergencies, but to prevent them entirely if possible. To learn more about our preventative care service and emergency maintenance, contact your local MaintenX team today!

2020 has been a whirlwind for businesses, families, and most individuals across the country. The COVID-19 pandemic put many industries to a halt, and has forever changed the way businesses will operate. Luckily, the maintenance industry has been able to thrive, as it does through most recessions. However, the novelty of the coronavirus has impacted operations and employee protocols for many of us. 

Below are some of the trends we expect to see in 2021 in reaction to the changes in the maintenance industry this year: 

Significant cost-cutting in business operations. 

2020 has hit many businesses hard financially. With months of closures and some businesses not being able to reopen at full capacity, they will be looking for ways to cut costs without cutting employees. In the facility maintenance industry, it is predicted that most companies will cut costs by switching to automated work order management and other operational systems. By reducing costs through automation, there will be more room to bring back core staffing. 

Growth in smart buildings. 

Technologies such as smart HVAC systems, alternative energy, and efficient lighting will become even more popular in 2021. With luck, the nation’s economy will bounce back with an emphasis on long-term cost savings. Creating a “smart” facility is one of the best ways for businesses to cut costs-long term, so there will likely be an increase in these investments as the economic climate improves. 

Self-performing maintenance. 

In addition to advancements in energy-efficiency, many maintenance teams predict the implementation of self-cleaning and repairing appliances. Self-cleaning windows, self-performing vacuums, or self-performing maintenance monitoring installations will aid maintenance teams in cutting costs and saving resources for more delicate maintenance work. 

Increase in workforce talent pool. 

As the country faced a recession, millions of Ameicans lost their jobs. This has changed the focus of the workforce from long-term to short-term, and will change the views of high school and college students entering the workforce. They will likely be looking for recession-proof careers, as many also faced the 2008 recession in early childhood. This could lead to an increased interest in trade school, and therefore a greater pool of talent in fields such as plumbing, electrical work, and HVAC repair. 

2021 will bring many exciting changes to the facility maintenance industry. If facilities want to be prepared, they must adopt the latest technology and find innovative ways to recruit a new type of maintenance workforce. These changes will be difficult for some, but will launch others to new levels of innovation and success. 

To learn more about facility maintenance news and trends, visit our resource center. 

Safety protocol is arguably the most important aspect of facility management. Without proper safety measures in place, your business cannot function properly at all. However, many facility managers prioritize safety only in name. In practicality, they do not make the safety of their employees a top concern in their communications or protocol. 

In order to create a truly safe place to work, you must make it clear to employees that safety comes before productivity. This will not only improve your workplace culture but it will save your bottom line. Workplace injuries cost businesses over $170 billion each year. By making the safety of employees and customers a serious concern, you can make your business better in every way. 

Below are a few ways in which you can improve safety communications at every level: 

• Use the right language – Most safety protocols have a list of “Do Not…” actions, but very few focus on proper handling of equipment and safety procedures. This immediately turns your employees off to the idea of safety training. Instead, use positive language to ensure your employees the right thing to do, instead of all the wrong things. 
• Be specific in your training – When you train employees on equipment use and general safety procedures such as fire escape, be very specific. Employees may be afraid to ask questions or not know which questions to ask, so you must be thorough when explaining all safety procedures. 
• Use visuals and real scenarios in your training – Visual safety guides are greatly effective because they take half the time to understand and will stick better in the memory of your employees. Real-life scenarios of safety procedures, or examples of preventable onsite injuries of the past can help your employees understand the importance of the protocols. 
• Require breaks after certain working times – Repetitive and overexertion injuries are some of the most common — and costly — injuries in commercial facilities. Many employers push employees for greater productivity, but it costs them in the long-term when these employees develop serious injuries. In order to combat this, make sure your employees take frequent breaks. 
• Make training and education a cycle – You can’t simply train each employee on their first day and expect them to retain all the safety protocols at your facility. Annual, quarterly, or even monthly training is vital to ensure that when an accident or emergency occurs, everyone is prepared. 

These simple safety measures will go a long way toward protecting your employees and your bottom line. For more information on facility safety and training, visit our resource center.

Onsite injuries are tragic, expensive, and in so many cases, preventable. They account for over $170 billion in worker’s compensation and wrongful death costs every year. Onsite injuries can also cause undue stress on families, your staff, and your business as a whole. Many onsite injuries are preventable when leadership takes them seriously. Below we will take a look at the top ten reasons for onsite injuries, and how to best avoid them: 

1. Overexertion injuries – Overexertion injuries include injury from pushing, lifting, throwing, or doing other activities that can cause excessive strain on the body. These typically happen over time, but can happen in one incident or one workday. Encourage your employees to speak up when they’re reaching their physical limits to prevent these injuries. 
2. Slip, trip, and fall injuries – These injuries occur when an employee or customer slips and injures themselves. These most commonly occur on wet floors or obstructed pathways. Prevent these injuries by ensuring that employees are well-aware of slip and trip hazards in the workforce. 
3. Bodily reaction injuries –  Reaction injuries are similar to overexertion or slip and trip injuries. They happen when an external force causes an injury, whether internal or external. Again, you must ensure that employees feel comfortable speaking up when they believe they have reached their physical limits. 
4. Fall to lower level injuries – Unlike slip and trip injuries, these falling accidents happen when an employee falls off of a roof, ladder, stairs, forklift, or another heightened surface. To prevent these injuries, you must provide proper training for every member of your maintenance staff. 
5. Struck by object injuries – These are common injuries in retail and grocery stores, when an employee drops something off a shelf when stocking. These are some of the most common head injuries, and can cost you greatly. Proper training is also the best remedy for this common injury. 
6. Struck against object injuries – If someone walks into a protruding object and injures their leg or foot you could be dealing with one of these injuries. Prevent these in your workplace by removing safety hazards and ensuring proper signage is in place. 
7. Repetitive motion injuries – These are very common in office spaces, as years of typing can cause stress on the wrists and hands. They can also happen when loading trucks, driving long hours, or sitting in the same position for too long at a job site. Prevent these by encouraging employee health and ensuring that no one does the same tasks for more than a few hours at a time between breaks. 
8. Highway accidents – Any job that requires driving has an added risk that should be addressed by your company leadership. Ensure that your drivers have proper training and a solid driving record with the state. You can als reduce nighttime driving whenever possible to reduce the chance of accidents. 
9. Caught in/compressed by injuries – These injuries involve any crush or traumatic injury involving facility machinery. These are most common in mills and factories, so it is important that strict uniform and dress protocols are followed to avoid clothing getting caught in such equipment. Lifetime training is also important to ensure that your staff knows the risks and proper operation of such equipment. 
10. Assault/violent acts – Luckily, assault injuries are the least common of onsite accidents, but they still do happen. To prevent these, ensure that your HR department has an open-door policy for interpersonal employee problems. And, if you start to notice hostility between or among employees, address it right away. 

At MaintenX, we know our technicians are at especially high risk for onsite injuries, which is why we prioritize these solutions at every job site. We put safety first every time because our employees are the cornerstone of our business. 

To learn more about MaintenX safety procedures, or how you can create a safer work environment at your facility, contact us.

Proper asset management is one of the more complex tasks of a facility manager’s responsibility. Understanding the day-to-day needs of your facility equipment, while also seeing the bigger picture of your assets’ worth to the facility as a whole can be a challenge to even the most experienced manager. Where these two worlds of macro- and micro-management meet are in asset depreciation. 

With every repair or maintenance service that must be performed, your facility equipment depreciates in value. Day-to-day use of equipment will one day end up on your books and affect your taxes. This means that the quality of your maintenance, as well as the proper tracking of your maintenance program, is essential to correctly evaluate asset depreciation. 

Your work order management is important to more than just your maintenance team. The maintenance and repairs you do on critical equipment will matter for your bookkeeping and tax records, so it is important to be diligent when logging service requests. Therefore, prioritizing work order management will be beneficial to your business long-term, even if it seems tedious. 

To better prepare an asset management plan, here is what you will need to know in your maintenance records: 

• The purchase price of each individual facility asset, as well as the total purchase price of a system (including installation service costs) 
• The placed-in-service date
• The predicted salvage value of each asset at the end of its service life
• The predicted service life, as well as expected maintenance costs over that time

This information will not only help your finance team keep accurate records, but it will help your maintenance team to tailor a program that will best suit your equipment. They are primarily responsible for ensuring that your equipment reaches the end of its service life with little to no emergency maintenance. When they work together, your finance and maintenance teams can make your job as facility manager much easier. 

Understanding the effects of maintenance on your asset value is essential in maintaining a healthy, profitable business. To learn more about maintenance strategy and tips for performance maximizing, visit our resource center. 

At MaintenX, we put a lot of emphasis on preventative maintenance for commercial facilities. It is a part of our core mission to ensure that proper preventative care leads to cost reductions and reduced downtime for our clients. But, preventative maintenance is not the only viable maintenance strategy. Among the many reactive maintenance strategies, there is one that is particularly common: run-to-fail (RTF) maintenance. 

RTF maintenance is considered the most cost-effective of the types of reactive maintenance strategies. In essence, using this system you allow appliances and equipment to run, without any maintenance, until it reaches the very end of its service life. While this may seem counterintuitive to our strategy at MaintenX, there are situations in which the RTF strategy is your best maintenance choice. 

RTF maintenance is typically used for cheap parts and infrastructure rather than machinery and essential systems. For example, your lightbulbs, air filters, roofing shingles, and doors will likely not need any true maintenance. They will be used until they fail, and then will be replaced. This strategy is used for both replaceable parts and durable assets that are cheaper to replace than to repair. 

A true RTF strategy is planned to minimize costs, and the service life is predicted to ensure you are prepared for the failure. By thinking through the service life and use of certain appliances and parts, you can save money for the preventative services you really need. 

RTF, however, is not a standalone maintenance strategy. This system cannot be used for major systems such as your HVAC system, plumbing, or electrical units. RTF maintenance on these appliances will cost your facility greatly. Preventative maintenance must be prioritized to ensure you’re not wasting money replacing units or parts that could easily be cared for and sustained. 

Using preventative maintenance, RTF, and strategies in between will help you tailor your maintenance plan to the exact needs of your facility. No maintenance schedule can be prepackaged and work for the same equipment and building. That is why it’s important to talk to your MaintenX team to see what’s best for your business. 

MaintenX focuses on preventative maintenance, but we also take care of routine RTF maintenance procedures. We help your facility run more smoothly so you have time to focus on what matters most to you. 

To learn more about our preventative maintenance services, contact your local MaintenX team today!

A major part of maintenance and facility management is work order processing. When a staff member identifies a need or completes a maintenance task, they must be able to effectively communicate that to the rest of the facility. If they are unable to do so, your preventative maintenance strategies will not work. Services may be completed and not logged; other service requests go unfulfilled; equipment and supplies orders are not made on time; your entire maintenance program goes awry with this system.

Preventing this system of disorder will go a long way toward creating an effective maintenance strategy for your essential systems. It should cover every step, from the submission of a work order request to follow up upon the completion of each service. When you implement an organized system, the entire facility runs more smoothly. Here are a few tips to get this process right:  

Prioritize work orders.

Poorly run maintenance programs will simply complete maintenance tasks in order of submission. However, it should be obvious that a major HVAC repair takes precedence in the summer over an isolated plumbing leak or non-hazardous electrical short. Seeing the bigger picture is essential in creating a seamless work order processing system, which leads us to our next point. 

Convert to digital.

By now your maintenance management system should be completely converted to digital software. Instead of leaving a disorderly paper trail, a digital system will help you keep track of all work orders past and present, and will ensure that anyone with access to the software or platform can find what they’re looking for. MaintenX uses an advanced work-order management system that helps us keep track of services and projects for every technician across the country! 

Ensure accountability for tracking work orders.

To make a digital work order processing system effective, it must be used by every member of your team. Ensure that your maintenance staff is updating the system when they complete maintenance tasks, and that your staff is quickly submitting work orders for services as soon as a problem is identified. 

Manage your inventory.

Work order management should include a section to keep track of replacement parts, materials, supplies, and other essential inventory. This should be updated regularly with service order requests to avoid downtime or unnecessary hindrances in your day-to-day operations. 

With these four tips, you should be able to easily implement a work order management system for your maintenance team. To learn more about maintenance options and work order procedures, contact your local MaintenX team today!

Facility staffing is a delicate process that is difficult for many managers to master. Seeing the whole picture of how your facility functions, and how to correctly place people in the right positions, can take years to fully understand. This problem has stumped and inspired countless leaders, and led to a great amount of research on team development. Today, there is a wealth of information available on how to optimize teams for every business structure. 

In 2017, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) ran a study to identify the key factors that lead to innovation and business success. They found that a diverse staff was one of these main drivers, and could lead to a 19% increase in revenue as opposed to companies with a homogenous staff. BCG concluded that diversity led to a more thorough understanding of the target market, and more varying perspectives on problem-solving and innovative strategy. 

Studies from the Harvard Business Review and company Coverpop have both found that diversity also leads to better decision making. A white paper from Cloverpop discovered that diverse teams within a company can outperform individual decision-makers 87% of the time. This shows that while leadership skill is necessary for any business, collaboration is equally valuable in making your facility a great place to work. 

So, the research tells us that diversity is essential to create a thriving business and company culture. But, how do you practically implement this into your hiring and team-building? 

Diversity comes not just from someone’s age, gender, or nationality. These are important, but they’re not the only thing that differentiates your staff. Choose employees from a range of career backgrounds, experience levels, personality traits, and leadership styles to create a team that is truly diverse and cooperative. 

Having a range of experiences means that the younger , up-and-coming employees can find mentors and those that have been with your company for years can help train the next generation. Diversity of personality types and leadership styles will ensure that your team doesn’t develop a stifling groupthink mentality and neglect new perspectives. And of course, diversity of age, gender, and nationality will help you create a customer experience that relates to all types of people. 

A diverse staff is the first step in creating a successful facility. For more information on facility management best practices, visit the MaintenX blog.

Today, we see women thriving in nearly every sector of the workforce. From leading in fields of medicine to taking over the C-suite, professional women have made great strides over the past 100 years. However, we still see many fields in which women are largely absent, despite the incredible growth of women’s rights and inclusion in the workforce. 

Research has shown time and time again that a diverse workplace encourages creative thinking, better collaboration, and an overall more productive work environment. While it comes with its own set of challenges, fostering a diverse staff helps your business reach new heights. 

Trade jobs should be some of the most diverse fields in the workforce, but unfortunately, this is not the case. Despite the affordability of trade schools as opposed to attending college, many high-paying trade jobs are dominated by men. 

Women have traditionally shied away from trade school jobs, with the exception of cosmetology, CNA certification, and similar fields. Trade school jobs such as HVAC repair, plumbing, and electrical specialties are seen as “men’s work,” and therefore not many young women are encouraged into these fields after high school. However, there are numerous benefits for women entering these fields including: 

• Women in trades have a much smaller wage gap between men, at 93c per dollar as opposed to the average 82c per dollar.
• Trade jobs are considered “low cost/high return;” because the education is more affordable than college, yet it can yield similar payouts in lifetime earnings
• Trade jobs are often considered “recession-proof” careers
• Many trade jobs are physically active and do not cause the same adverse health effects as desk jobs
• Hiring in most trade jobs is based on skill alone; potential limiting factors such as one’s education, appearance, connections, or social status are rarely considered. 

Additionally, these trades need women now more than ever. Many trade jobs such as plumbing and HVAC repair are seeing a decline in new talent entering the field. Experienced trade workers looking toward retirement are finding it more difficult to recruit, and therefore need the workforce to be more inviting to people of all kinds.

However, women still make up only 2.4% of electricians, 1.6% of plumbers, and only 1.2% of HVAC technicians. At MaintenX, we’d like to change that. 

We want to make our workplace more inclusive to women by highlighting the strengths that women bring to the workforce. We work hard to ensure that our women employees are treated and compensated equally, valued for their labor, and able to pursue the work/life balance that suits their needs. For more information on our career opportunities, click here.