Category: Uncategorized

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are beneficial in every aspect of your business operations. From marketing to manufacturing and every objective in between, the KPI framework offers insight into your business’ strengths and weaknesses. Determining the most important KPIs and using them for strategic planning can provide your facility with invaluable information for long-term sustainability. 

In order to attain maintenance goals, you need to be able to measure them. Just like with other departments, your maintenance team must be held accountable. There is no way to tell whether or not your preventative maintenance schedule is effective unless you can measure differences in equipment breakdown, reduced reactive service, or cost savings. These factors will hold your maintenance team to a high standard and provide them with useful feedback for course correction throughout the year. 

These areas are some of the most important to measure in order to determine if your preventative maintenance plan is effective:

Downtime. Reducing downtime is one of the main objectives of preventative maintenance. In theory, the better you take care of appliances and equipment, the less likely it is to fail on the job. You can measure downtime quite simply by recording any planned or unplanned downtime, including downtime due to scheduled maintenance. If your maintenance schedule is effective, your scheduled maintenance downtime will increase incrementally, but your unplanned downtime will be reduced drastically. 

Asset lifecycle. The other goal of preventative maintenance is to extend the service life of key equipment and machinery. Over time, you can determine whether or not your preventative maintenance plan is extending the lifecycle of your equipment. Measuring performance over several years will help you better ascertain whether or not your preventative maintenance is extending or shortening equipment lifecycles. 

Maintenance costs (preventative vs. reactive). Cost reduction is a lesser goal of preventative maintenance. While proactive maintenance service should help you avoid costly emergency repairs, it may include higher upfront costs. Be vigilant of this trend over time, rather than measuring on the onset of a new preventative maintenance plan. In time you should be able to notice a reduction in reactive maintenance costs as well as a reduction in required upgrades of old equipment (due to better care throughout the lifecycle). 

Work order response time. Service response times are an important indicator to measure because it shows how well your maintenance team responds to emergencies. If your maintenance team is lagging in service request response time, it could testify to a less-than-efficient or less-than-dedicated team. While some service repairs should not be categorized as emergencies, it should be the goal of your maintenance team to respond promptly and effectively to every work order. 

When you measure these critical indicators of maintenance team success, you can better create a culture of reliability and accountability at every level. MaintenX strives to deliver fast, effective, and transparent services to our clients. We continually strive to develop comprehensive maintenance plans that address client objectives while keeping costs low. To learn more about our preventative and emergency maintenance services, contact MaintenX today.

When you experience a maintenance issue on the weekend or after 5 p.m., your heart begins to sink. You’ll likely call every emergency repair service in town, but these are not full-proof solutions. Many times after-hours maintenance staffing is limited, which means you may not get the help you need immediately. For a large-scale commercial facility, this is dangerous. 

If you are in the midst of a serious maintenance emergency, don’t panic. Ask yourself these questions to see if you can ameliorate the situation as you’re waiting for help to arrive:

“Is this actually an emergency?”

Sometimes, when a maintenance issue arises after hours, facility managers prematurely panic because they know help will be hard to find. However, some maintenance requests are better left unresolved until morning. If you have a minor plumbing or electrical issues, determine whether or not your staff will be put in danger or if your critical operations are put under pressure. If not, you may be able to skip calling an emergency maintenance service entirely. 

“Can I find a quick fix?”

Before you panic, do a quick online search of your issue to see if there is a quick fix you can implement while waiting for the professionals. Ask your onsite employees to brainstorm ideas. While you may not be able to implement a long-term solution (and should still seek maintenance service regardless of whether or not you stop the problem), you can sometimes easily stop major disruptions all on your own. 

“Can I locate the owner’s manual or another maintenance resource?”

Many pieces of equipment and heavy machinery come with owner’s manuals and maintenance resources for the owner to utilize as a diagnostic tool. Hopefully, you kept these resources upon purchase of the appliance or piece of equipment. If not, you may be able to find resources on the manufacturer’s website, including their help chat. 

“Can I shut down the facility or isolate the issue until the problem is resolved?”

In some emergencies, you may have to isolate an area of the facility or allow employees to leave in order to follow safety protocol. Depending on your operational goals, this may be a good or poor strategy. If your facility is meant to operate 24 hours a day, this is an undesirable outcome. However, sometimes it is safer and more cost-effective to halt operations rather than working with failing equipment or within a questionable work environment. Consider all the costs before making a decision. 

MaintenX prides itself on being a reliable and affordable emergency maintenance service for commercial facilities in 13 states. We are always on-call and can be at your location, sometimes within minutes, ready to resolve your maintenance issue. When in a difficult situation, call us at 855-751-0075 or report online here.

Your maintenance staff is a precious resource in keeping your facility afloat. Without them, your operations will quickly deteriorate as equipment and machinery fall short of performance standards. Your maintenance staff also ensures that your facility is a safe and clean place for employees to work, and a pleasant place for tenants or customers to visit. They are an integral part to your success. 

Despite the importance of maintenance in the workplace, these hard-working individuals are often left out of the conversation until an emergency arises. This sets a poor precedent, as your maintenance staff can’t help you succeed to their fullest potential if you do not include them in your day-to-day operations. A lack of preventative maintenance and communication with the staff leads to detrimental equipment errors. 

Mistakes only become disasters when they are either swept under the rug or miscommunicated. When an under reactor or overreaction occurs, it can lead to breakdowns in equipment or in trust among the staff. And when communication breaks down, the blame game begins.

Rather than blaming staff for failing to report warning signs of equipment malfunction, or blaming the maintenance team for failing to spot them, you should facilitate communication between the two. When your onsite staff and outsourced maintenance team can work together, you can improve performance and outputs to a scalable degree. Here’s how:

Set goals. When your facility is in reactive maintenance mode, the primary goal is to push equipment at maximum performance output until it breaks down. There is no maintenance goal, other than fixing breakdowns as quickly and efficiently as possible once they occur. However, you can operate your facility more sustainably by implementing preventative maintenance service. Communicate clear performance goals with your maintenance staff, and they can develop a preventative maintenance plan to achieve those objectives. 

Cooperate, don’t criticize. Criticism has its place in business, there’s no doubt. However, criticism of work can quickly turn into criticism of character if not kept in check. If you have issues with the quality of service with your maintenance staff, the first step should be to reach out and ask for a meeting. As your maintenance staff is not onsite all of the time, the disappointment may be due to a misunderstanding rather than a failure to perform quality service. Before you accuse, ask your maintenance staff to help you come up with more clear expectations and solutions to the issue you face.  

Learn from mistakes. Preventative maintenance service only gets better with time. As your maintenance team learns about your facility needs, they can adjust your maintenance schedule for more efficient and cost-effective procedures. You both can learn from maintenance mistakes made in the past, and develop a stronger plan to prevent equipment failures in the future. 

These changes of mindset can help you and your MaintenX team work together to meet facility goals. Contact us to learn more about our preventative and emergency maintenance services.

At MaintenX, our primary goal is to reduce downtime for our clients. Preventative maintenance services ensure that our clients can deliver maximum performance month to month. When equipment failures occur, we offer quick, efficient reactive maintenance services in order to reduce downtime. However, there is much that is out of our hands when it comes to proper equipment maintenance. 

In order to prevent equipment failures, you as the facility must take responsibility for proper training and scheduling of preventive maintenance services. These are the top five reasons that equipment failures occur that you can easily prevent: 

#1: Lack of training

Employees who do not know how to properly handle equipment are more likely to make mistakes that lead to failures. This is not the fault of the staff, but rather the fault of management to invest in the success of their people. Employee training may come with a major upfront cost, but the costs of mistakes due to inadequate training are far greater. 

#2: Cost-cutting preventive maintenance

Preventative maintenance is the best way to avoid equipment failures, in addition to investing in employee training. Equipment that is not well maintained will run inefficiently, and eventually, burn out. If you are not cognizant of when your equipment reaches its breaking point, you will face major disruptions in productivity. Invest in preventative maintenance not only to increase equipment service life, but to acknowledge problems before they become catastrophic. 

#3: Improper preventive maintenance

Skilled and informed preventative will save your facility from major disruptions in productivity. However, preventative maintenance that is rigid (rather than dynamic), uninformed (rather than performed by expert technicians), and scheduled by time (rather than an understanding of changing equipment needs) will lead to unnecessary and disruptive service. The more you service certain pieces of equipment, the more they are exposed to hazardous environments. Preventative maintenance should be smart, not simply scheduled. 

#4: Lack of supervision

Facility machinery is not inherently intelligent. It performs well because the people that handle it are thinking and monitoring performance. Equipment processes that are not monitored or swept under the rug are at the mercy of circumstances, and likely to experience issues. In order to maintain your facility equipment, you must be vigilant and look for changes in performance to predict issues before they happen. 

#5: Lack of leadership

It is not inherently an employee’s job to protect facility assets. Many employees who operate machinery will not report maintenance issues, either because they are improperly trained or will assume that it is out of their scope of responsibility. By making the team responsible for production objectives — from those in management to those on the floor — you can improve maintenance reporting and reduce equipment failures. 

Talk to your local MaintenX team today to learn about preventative maintenance services and facility management best practices. Our technicians can help you develop a smart, agile preventative maintenance plan that will help you succeed.

Asset management is one of the key areas for success of facility managers. Understanding your inventory and assets from the inside out will help you provide interdepartmental organization and maintain a better operational flow. It is for this reason that maintaining a Reap Property Inventory (RPI) is essential to your duty as a facility manager. 

Your Real Property in a commercial building includes all owned assets, such as land, the building, installed systems, facility equipment, and product inventory. Maintaining a record of these assets is critical for budgeting and operations strategy. Without an RPI, the core of your asset management practice is hollowed. 

A successful RPI record will contain the following information on each of your facility assets, including equipment and appliances: 

• Name of asset
• Size or capacity
• Location within the facility
• Date purchased and upfront cost
• Estimated service life
• Estimated maintenance costs
• Identification markers, such as a serial or model number

This information offers you a snapshot of your facility’s material assets, which can be used to budget, strategize, and improve existing operations. In order to bolster your asset management team, remember these tips for RPI success: 

Update your RPI – Your RPI doesn’t offer any value if it isn’t current. This means that with every change in your real assets, you must update your records. Updating once a year or once a quarter is not sufficient recordkeeping, as this leads to gaps in knowledge that can then lead to misinformed decisions.  

Keep it digital – In the digital age, there is no reason why advanced asset management tech should not be implemented for RPI. Digital files make updating your RPI much easier, make them more accessible for review, and reduce the chance of losing important information. An RPI asset management software will help you better communicate with different departments, including your maintenance team to schedule service requests.

MaintenX clients who utilize proper RPI management are more efficient with facility management than those who do not. We encourage our clients to invest in RPI management for improved preventative maintenance service. To learn more about how asset management affects preventative maintenance, contact us.

Environmental sustainability is a hot topic in both the social and corporate world of the United States. As a country, we are leading in green technology development. These developments help modern business not only reduce their environmental impact from “business as usual” practices, but can help improve a business’ bottom line by reducing energy and material waste.

If you want to invest your brand in sustainable facility management, there are many effective practices you can adopt. Below are just three general guidelines we recommend to businesses in order to jumpstart their pledge to environmental sustainability. 

Be ahead of legislation.

It is assumed that as a responsible small business, you are compliant with local, state, and national regulations regarding commercial environmental responsibility. However, you can do much more than complying with minimal emissions controls and waste disposal regulations. As a proactive member of the business community, be willing to adopt new approaches to environmental sustainability. Be a leader as you see trends in legislation, including incentive programs for reducing corporate environmental impact.

Reducing water and material waste. 

Reducing material consumption and recycling waste are some of the best ways to reduce a facility’s environmental impact. Waste is one of the largest contributors to environmental issues in America, and companies can be a part of the solution by reducing material waste and recycling waste when possible. In addition to reducing your environmental impact on the community, you can drastically reduce your disposal costs and better understand your facility’s needs. Recycling of water and other materials can be a game-changer for your eco-conscious facility. 

Using alternative fuels and appliances that reduce your carbon footprint. 

Corporate environmental conservatism is typically measured in carbon output; i.e. the amount of carbon pollution produced at a facility. Investing in alternative fuels and energy sources can drastically reduce your carbon footprint. In addition to investing in renewable fuel and energy sources, you can look for ways in which to reduce energy consumption with efficient equipment and appliances. Air-source heat pumps, low-energy lighting, and low-flow faucets are just a few examples of energy-reducing technologies that can be implemented in a commercial facility. 

Remember, change takes time. You’ve made the first step in deciding to commit to environmental sustainability. As you research innovative and cost-effective programs for your business, keep an open mind and think smart before allocating resources to facility upgrades. And, if you’re on the fence about certain facility upgrades, reach out to your local MaintenX team.

AT Maintenx, we are dedicated to environmental sustainability in our business practices. We want to help those who wish to invest in green technology make that transition with proper maintenance and installation services. We are happy to answer your questions at any time. 

Contact MaintenX today to learn about green appliances for your business today. 

In today’s modern business culture, training is seen as something that happens outside the workplace. Entry-level jobs now typically require training — either in vocational or collegiate education — prior to hiring, and little training is given afterward. While there are many positive reasons for this, there are several drawbacks that companies fail to address when skipping out on employee training. 

Today, the greatest obstacle for small business success isn’t customer acquisition or competitive merit, but team building and employee competence. The issues stem from a reactive mindset, where problems are addressed only when they become problems. A proactive mindset, which accrues more upfront cost but saves significant expense long-term, is often forgone in favor of short-term cost savings. However, this causes two detrimental, empirically testified results: 

• Studies have proven that nearly 70% of equipment failures are caused by improper use
• In-house maintenance operations typically run between 10-40% efficiency 

These issues manifest themselves in several ways. Competitors may manage to beat out the enterprises where maintenance and training procedures are not included in strategic planning. Or, companies may go under from the public relations backlash after an equipment failure leads to a product defect. These worst-case scenarios only seem to be in the distant future — in reality, they are lurking around the corner for any business that doesn’t invest in proper maintenance and training for employees. 

Training facility managers and employees reduces maintenance costs due to improper use or ignorance of equipment performance. When the onsite staff and maintenance team work in tandem to improve facility efficiency, fantastic results can be achieved. However, an investment in training after hiring is required to bring your employees to the next level of success. You must invest in their success as much as they’ve invested in getting to the position upfront. 

If you do not have the budget to train your maintenance staff, you have the option to outsource. Outsourcing maintenance services has many benefits, not limited to lower operating costs. Maintenance contractors are typically less expensive than keeping a maintenance team on the staff. They also have specialized training in their field and will be able to perform superior services in some aspects. The choice is up to you as to whether you want a specialized technician on call, or a generalized maintenance team onsite for day-to-day operations. 

MaintenX offers one of the country’s largest contractor networks, comprised of trained roofing, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC technicians. We pride ourselves on thorough training and hiring practices to ensure that when your MaintenX team arrives, you are taken care of. To learn more about our services, contact MaintenX today!

At MaintenX, our customers know that preventative maintenance is a top priority for our staff. We believe that proper care of equipment and systems provides the best solution for our clients as well as our technicians. However, unavoidable accidents and unexpected malfunctions will occur. So, the question remains, how do we keep the expense of reactive maintenance under control? 

This question should be resolved between your maintenance and your management teams. Your maintenance team should also be able to operate under the assumption that you are investing in predictive and preventative maintenance before developing strategies for reduction of reactive maintenance costs. If you are not investing in preventative maintenance, you are behind in your maintenance strategic planning. It is the #1 way your facility can reduce reactive maintenance services across the board. 

If you have already invested in preventative maintenance services but are still struggling to pay for reactive maintenance costs, there are several steps you can take to eliminate these outliers:

Identify trigger points of failure. Immediately after reactive maintenance service is performed, you should work with your technician to identify the root cause of the failure. Your technician may be able to easily identify it, or they may need to perform a defect identifying walk-through of the facility to uncover systemic issues that lead to malfunction. By finding root causes to equipment issues (such as improper handling, lack of routine maintenance, etc.) you can dictate and implement changes to avoid the problem in the future.  

Summarize data. Data analysis should be a part of the failure diagnostics process. Looking at data on equipment malfunctions will tell you a lot not only on the performance of critical machinery, but can guide you to budgeting for reactive maintenance as well as equipment upgrades in the future. If you know the likelihood of failure for a piece of equipment, you can better prepare for reactive maintenance costs, and know when it’s time to search for a replacement rather than a repair service. 

Communicate with your maintenance team. Your maintenance team has years of wisdom to share with your facility management. By working with your maintenance team, you can gain valuable information about your facility as a whole. No one knows the ins and outs of your building like electricians, plumbers, roofers, and HVAC techs onsite. Ask them for input in maintenance strategic planning and you’ll see an undeniable drop in reactive maintenance costs. 

The team at MaintenX wants to help you avoid reactive maintenance costs whenever possible. Talk to your local MaintenX team to learn about our predictive and preventative maintenance services. 

Annual objectives, action steps, SWOT analyses: business and facility managers are well-versed in these areas of strategic planning. The “big picture” ideas are the focus of strategy meetings, though often the details used to fill in the gaps are lacking. However, very few facility leaders consider the consequences of putting key tasks such as staffing and maintenance on the back burner. 

At MaintenX, we understand the dynamic nature of facility management. In order to succeed, you must be lean, cutting-edge, and relentless in cutting costs. However, we urge our clients to consider their maintenance as a core element of strategic planning. While not as “glamorous” as discussions about innovation, maintaining your building, services, and staff is the foundation for success. 

Maintenance programs provide competitive advantages in several ways. They provide an outlet for continual growth, as opposed to minute declines in productivity that go undetected until they become catastrophic. Ineffective preventative maintenance may seem like a sound cost-cutting measure until the day comes when an equipment malfunction becomes a major hindrance. 

A lack of maintenance protocol also invites the risk of reputation damage. Facilities and equipment that are not well-maintained can malfunction in ways that cause disruptions in productivity or put employees at risk. This manifests into news headlines that can bring unwanted attention to your company name. By investing in maintenance you’re not only avoiding equipment malfunctions but potential PR crises, as lacking in maintenance can make for newsworthy issues at the facility interior and exterior structure. 

Maintenance training should also be included in strategic planning. Ineffective training in any discipline leads to costly mistakes and safety risks. While the upfront costs of training may seem high, the cost of an accident due to ignorance is much higher. 

Training investments are also essential due to the declining number of workers in maintenance fields. There is an “aging out” trend in maintenance fields such as plumbing, HVAC repair, and electrical work, which puts unprepared companies at a great disadvantage. As fewer young professionals go into these fields, those that excel will be highly valued. If your company invests in training the next generation, you will end up on top in facility performance. 

You can invest in proper training and maintenance staff, or outsource to a facility maintenance contractor. There are several advantages to outsourcing, including reduced training and staffing costs, and guaranteed effective service. MaintenX offers outsourced maintenance services from one of the largest contractor networks in the nation. If you want to plan smart for your facility maintenance, our staff is the best choice all around. 

Contact MaintenX today to learn about our preventative and emergency maintenance services!

Most business managers still view maintenance work as a reactive service. The “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality is pervasive in business culture, and for good reason. Accruing expenses based on predicted problems take away financial resources from other strategies to fuel long-term growth. Maintenance simply upholds the status quo, and therefore logically should be invested in minimally in comparison to R&D, marketing, and other essential business operations.

At MaintenX, we believe this mindset should be challenged. There are many benefits to planned preventative maintenance that can save you time, money, and resources. Maintaining your facility’s equipment and building as a whole can provide long-term benefits for minimal upfront costs. Here’s how:

Planned preventative maintenance fosters a safer, more productive environment. 

A planned maintenance schedule produces a safer work environment in two ways. When equipment is regularly serviced, there is a reduced chance for major equipment malfunctions that lead to safety hazards. If your workers must use heavy machinery, they will be safer if it is properly maintained and screened for error. Planned maintenance is also safer for your maintenance staff to perform than unplanned maintenance. 

Safety isn’t the only concern, however. Studies have shown that labor productivity in manufacturing sites can increase by up to 60% when equipment is well-maintained and performing optimally. This increase dramatically changes your scope of work, the goals you can achieve, and profitability throughout the year.  

Planned maintenance can help you reduce future maintenance costs. 

Planned preventative maintenance can help you reduce expensive reactive maintenance costs that result from equipment failure. In most cases this logic is uncontested, yet many managers still fail to invest in preventative maintenance. Reframing this idea as a competitive advantage, however, has changed the minds of many to reinvest in their maintenance staffing. 

When you schedule preventative maintenance, you can analyze data for future maintenance planning. The ability to collect data on maintenance services can help you better predict maintenance budgeting for the short and long-term. This allows you to reduce costs where possible and prevent errors that will increase reactive maintenance costs.

Your maintenance team understands your facility needs better than your in-house staff. 

Most workers on the floor do not need to understand the intricate ins and outs of facility equipment. Those working in offices certainly do not need to understand the maintenance requirements of key machinery in order to perform job functions. However, this lack of maintenance knowledge can put your facility at a disadvantage if you do not have a competent maintenance staff to provide routine checks.  

Rather than relying on your staff to put in maintenance requests, ask your maintenance staff to develop a schedule that is dynamic, preventative, and efficient. The team at MaintenX works directly with facility managers and staff to develop preventative maintenance plans to fit your needs. 

Contact MaintenX to learn more about our preventative maintenance services!