How Governments Can Use Facility Maintenance for Property Management?

 

Counties and cities all over the United States have to deal with budget cuts.  Any capital outlay or maintenance costs that crop up unexpectedly can throw the budget off quite a bit.  It is therefore important to ensure that they are avoided as much as possible. You can actually save costs on maintenance and enhance your cost efficiency for public works maintenance.

County and city managers are often called out for reacting to issues instead of being proactive.  It is not uncommon to find broken-down snow ploughs on the day that they are needed out there clearing roads.  The same applies in the summertime when it is discovered that air conditioners are not working just when they are needed. It is critical for both government and private organizations to have a preventative maintenance schedule and to make sure that they have a maintenance plan in order to stave off costly emergency repairs which then have to be outsourced to external contractors.

Since they are often dealing with hundreds, if not thousands, of such air conditioning units, creating a manual schedule can become tedious.  That is why it is essential to introduce a computer maintenance management system.  Make technology your friend!

Manual to Automation

Most government organizations are not experts in technology. They continue to use the traditional method, which is the pen and paper method, which affects their productivity. 

They must eliminate the paperwork and move to digital methods. This is because practising with pen and paper has many weaknesses since it is error-prone and not accurate. This method isn't particularly effective if you have too many assets to worry about! 

There would also be so many documents that would have to be saved for a single ticket and in those documents if any information is incorrect or contains an error. Then it won't be useful and labor will be wasted. In general, there will be no result. In addition, it takes a long time to find specific documents to process work orders. But with this software, any document can be found in a matter of minutes. 

Extends Asset Life

The useful life of assets is an important aspect to consider. It helps you know when to dispose of it, otherwise, you will have to pay a large number of maintenance costs and, when a breakdown occurs, a chain reaction will also start. This will have an impact on other business processes and your company's productivity will be affected. In addition, it also has an impact on the results of your company. However, with this software, you don't have to worry about maintenance! This software ensures that the asset works correctly and as expected. If maintenance is carried out on time, the life of the equipment is extended. 

Eliminate Outsourcing Costs

Most cities, counties and large not-for-profit organizations hire full-time technicians to take care of the maintenance work, but if equipment completely breaks down, they have to outsource the repairs to contractors at a hefty price.  

With CMMS, you can quickly and easily have a preventative maintenance schedule set up for all your equipment.  When maintenance is due on a particular piece of equipment, an automatic work order is sent to your technicians based on their level of experience and expertise. This preventative maintenance goes a long way in preventing the complete breakdown of equipment, thus reducing the number of outsourced repairs as well as the cost.

With the right maintenance system, you can reorganize your maintenance staff and operations and reverse your reactive approach to one of automatic preventative maintenance.  Your technicians will be reminded to service equipment and to replace parts well before you start experiencing any problems.

Keeping Track of Vendors, Parts and Projects

With proper maintenance management software, you will also be able to keep an inventory of various parts, track the projects you are working on and create purchase orders.  It is also able to keep track of the materials used in each project as well as the costs and the labor that goes into it.  

In terms of repair, you will be able to track the unit that was worked on, what kind of work was done on it and which parts were replaced. It is this kind of information that allows you to successfully create preventative maintenance schedules.

The level of detail that you get with good maintenance software also serves to protect you from any liability claims.  If the need arises, you can quickly and easily access the repair history of the particular unit in question rather than trying to figure out from memory or sketchy notes what work was done on it and when the work was done.

Since you are now on top of what is going on with your equipment, you are also better able to budget for new equipment and to know how much quantity of each piece of equipment you need.  The information you have in your computer maintenance management system will also let you know what it costs you to maintain each piece of equipment, thus allowing you to make informed choices with your next purchases.

With the current economic situation, both public and private sector managers need all the help they can get to manage their dockets efficiently at minimal costs.  The right public work maintenance management can help.