3 Common Facility Maintenance Challenges and How to Solve Them
According to Reliable Plant, 80 percent of employees waste an average of 30 minutes a day retrieving information.
As a facility manager, you can adopt a CMMS, which can help ensure your employees are working in a more efficient way. So, what is a CMMS? CMMS stands for computerized maintenance management system – and it’s something you need to keep your business running smoothly.
Check out our guide on how to overcome these three common facility maintenance challenges.
The Stress of Facility Management
Facility management isn’t a walk in the park. There are many current issues that need to be addressed.
Your role as a facility manager involves identifying, planning, scheduling, overseeing, and evaluating the work that needs to be done. You need to manage, process, and track many work orders, which can sometimes lead to mistakes because you are only human. Work order maintenance and management requires you to always be very organized and one step ahead at all times.
How to Avoid Common Maintenance Challenges
There are many challenges you’re going to face as a facility manager, which is why you need to be an excellent problem solver.
Managing time and controlling costs, keeping accurate records, and having the right analytical tools are all in a days work for your average facility manager.
Controlling Costs and Managing Time
Most companies want to control their costs. This is especially true in the facilities maintenance department.
Controlling your expenses is a big challenge because you want to make sure the job is done well, but you also want to please your boss and save as much money as possible. You can have better control over your budget by tracking your inventory and negotiating prices with your vendors.
Keeping track of your inventory will help you to analyze where you’ll be able to cut back on costs. It’s also useful because you can show your supervisor where the money is going. You and your supervisor will be able to determine a suitable budget.
Another way you can control costs is by conducting an energy audit and identifying if you’re able to save energy and money. Ask yourself if your company is leaving on the lights. Can you turn down the temperature of the facility when nobody is there? If so, make the necessary changes to help cut the energy bill.
Managing time is another challenging resource you need to solve. Your schedule will be hectic, so you need to have procedures in place that make it easier to juggle everything. Many facility managers rely on CMMS software to help them plan and prioritize their tasks and projects. This helps minimize facility issues and improves the overall performance.
Keeping Accurate Records
Making sure your records are accurate and organized is critical for all facility managers. You need to make sure you can always access the data you need when you need it. You might be in charge of a whole range of different systems, all of which require accurate data to operate. Failing to find crucial data can result in wasting valuable time and money.
In order to avoid this challenge, you need to make sure you have a system to track the services and maintenance work that has been done. Keep important information together, such as the work that was last done and the date. This will help you identify patterns and schedules when something needs to be maintained or replaced.
Using the Right Tools
We mentioned implementing CMMS to help you manage your time, but CMMS software is much more than that.
This type of program can help you plan and analyze your efficiency. A good CMMS allows you to schedule tasks in advance, take care of preventative maintenance, keep up with equipment, and run reports that help you see what you can improve on.
Manually inputting, submitting, and recording data is a very inefficient way of completing your work order management duties.
Having work order management software can help you:
- place service requests
- monitor contractors using GPS
- keep track of all your work orders
- leave feedback on the completed work
Implementing effective digital communication tools, such as work order management software, for your team is a great way to ensure that they are organized and receive information faster.
Find out more about how facility management can overcome the challenges your business is experiencing.
Other Challenges You Might Face
There are other challenges you might face as a facility manager and could involve handling failures or maintaining aging equipment and facility structures.
To overcome and effectively handle failures, you need to make sure your employees and field staff are empowered to log failures in real-time and as they occur. Then you need to track the failures that have occurred and decide the best course of action moving forward.
To overcome aging equipment and facilities, you might take careful measures in ensuring equipment failures by being more proactive with routine preventative maintenance schedules. Correctly maintaining facilities can slow down the process of aging.
Overcoming Common Maintenance Challenges
There are many maintenance challenges a facility manager can and will encounter during their career. The best way to overcome any problem is to think outside of the box, be proactive, and be intential. Luckily, with advances in technology, facility maintenance can run more efficiently, and you only need to empower your workforce with the tools, resources and knowledge to do it.
If you haven’t already, think about implementing CMMS and work order management software to your business. Take control and get better organized with improved scheduling and mangement of your busy maintenance work orders.
