There are three critical components to implementing a successful preventive maintenance program at your facility: collecting data, integrating preventive maintenance schedules and scheduling and assigning tasks to team members. Setting the frequency of maintenance and inspections isn’t typically an issue for most facility managers. However, effectively communicating scheduled maintenance tasks to team members can be a challenge.

The Importance of Preventive Maintenance Scheduling

One of the biggest hinderances of communicating tasks to facility teams comes the mismanagement of data. For many facilities, room, space and asset data is outdated or downright nonexistent. If your building data is up-to-date, this is no longer a problem, and your preventative maintenance schedules can immediately be tied to specific assets from your data sets. If you’re using a location-based facility management software, you’ll even be able to view all of the corresponding information for these assets within each building’s floor plan.

Having this data tethered from machine to maintenance software will save your technicians from countless hours of information hunting, as they will know what assets require preventative maintenance and where exactly they are located. Time spent looking for spare parts, running to-and-from locations for additional information and trips to the wrong destination instantly become a time in the past.

As your technicians work on their preventive maintenance schedules, it’s important to keep all information for each room and asset up-to-date. Besides detailed logs of what maintenance was conducted, procedures, manuals and recall information should be documented in your facility management software for future reference and the ability to expedite preventive maintenance checks in the future.

If your preventive maintenance schedules require a checklist, we recommend the following items to get your team started for basic mechanical assets:

• General cleaning and inspection of unit
• Change air filters
• Check belt tension & adjust
• Check motor amps for each phase
• Check actuator valve operation

Remember, the ultimate goal of preventive maintenance is to save your organization money by reducing reactive building management and equipment downtime. Make the most of your team’s time by providing them the information they need to perform preventive maintenance without hunting for documents in a cluttered email inbox or plan room.

Use predictive strategies when deciding how to schedule preventive maintenance, and always factor in how your buildings are used when creating a preventive maintenance plan. If there are buildings you know will go underutilized throughout the year, you may not need to perform all scheduled preventive tasks.

In addition to strategizing when preventive maintenance is performed, make sure that your team actually performs preventive maintenance. This may seem obvious, but with the many moving parts in a facility management organization, particularly because of reactive maintenance, preventive maintenance can often times get put on hold. It’s vital that you choose a facility management software with a maintenance reporting feature that reports out the number of open preventative maintenance tasks your team has remaining versus work orders, as they can quickly pile up.

How to Create a Preventive Maintenance Plan

Flipping a facility to a preventive maintenance program can transform the way a building is maintained. From capital planning to better building documentation, the benefits of using a proactive plan make the work well worth the final outcome. Many facility managers like the idea of preventative maintenance but quickly become frustrated by not knowing where to start. The good news is that implementing a proactive process can be painless if building teams develop a solid strategy and use the right tools.

Want to learn more about becoming proactive? Get the full guide to kickstarting a preventive maintenance plan here.