Facility emergencies come in many forms. They could be due to natural causes, equipment failures, employee situations, or corporate crises. However, the aptitude of your facility manager plays a crucial role in how these emergencies affect your staff.
At MaintenX, we deal with many maintenance emergencies that could have been prevented by more careful management. While most natural and corporate disasters cannot be prevented, many of the damages incurred could have been with more diligent preventative maintenance or a more thorough emergency preparation plan.
In order to prevent maintenance emergencies at your facility, here is what your maintenance manager should be doing:
Invest in employee training.
Your employees’ competence plays an important role in the prevention of equipment emergencies at your facility. Start by monitoring your employees’ proficiency in certain tasks to ascertain their collective strengths and weaknesses. When you can identify areas in which your team struggles, you can provide more targeted training programs to bolster their skills.
Budgeting for equipment replacement in advance.
In order to fund necessary equipment replacements, your maintenance manager should communicate to your facility manager what will need to be replaced in advance. Ideally, your facility manager should start saving three to five years in advance for replacements of aging equipment. When you are proactive with your maintenance budget, you can afford better equipment upgrades rather than settling for less.
Take into account equipment life-cycle when planning maintenance.
Preventative maintenance should be agile and built around your facility’s specific needs. For example, a brand new HVAC system won’t require the same preventative maintenance as a unit that is 10 years old. Though the HVAC system (perhaps a split system) would still be critical to facility operations, you can still use life-cycles to better refine your maintenance plan. When you’re working with your maintenance manager, find a preventative maintenance checklist that prevents emergencies but doesn’t include unnecessary service.
Work with a disaster response team to plan for natural disasters.
There are some things we simply can’t plan for. In Tampa, Florida, where MaintenX is headquartered, we are at risk for hurricanes during the summer months. Having a hurricane preparedness plan is a part of your maintenance manager’s responsibility, to ensure minimal downtime and maximum tenant safety. Your MaintenX team should be a part of that plan so you can restore power and open your doors as quickly as possible after a natural disaster.
Your facility and maintenance managers should have these bases covered for sustainability of operations after an emergency. Talk to the MaintenX team in your area to learn about our emergency response and preventative maintenance services.
