We all prefer preventative maintenance, be it with our cars, our teeth and yes, the facilities we manage. And yet, how often do we skip routine maintenance because we are busy, or the money needs to be used for something else, or it just never gets scheduled, only to get hit with an unexpected issues and a BIG bill. Sure maintenance and repairs are just an expected part of the landscape when it comes to facility maintenance and yet, the high costs unexpected repairs bring can be significant. It can seem like just when you are sailing smoothly, on budget and on track, an issue comes up that can eat up your budget with months left to go. And once you have a needed repair or replacement, there isn’t much you can do except grit your teeth and write the check. Yet if planned right, you can incorporate predictive maintenance and preventive maintenance into your yearly plan and budget and save yourself the highs and lows of going at it without a plan.
All maintenance requires your time and costs money and yet, reactive maintenance is hands down the most costly. What are the three main types of maintenance and how do they differ? There is reactive building maintenance, preventative maintenance and predictive maintenance. These approaches are used by different Facility Managers in difference scenarios, but here’s some basics on how they break down. Reactive maintenance is pretty much what it sounds like, you REACT to an issue as it arises, basically a ‘fix it when it breaks’ method, or lack thereof. With preventative maintenance, the mindset is to ‘inspect, check and repair’ BEFORE it breaks. Preventative maintenance has the added benefit of allowing you to plan inspections and maintenance outside of peak cost periods. For example, have your AC inspected in fall as A/C reactive repairs wind down. Finally, there is predictive maintenance. This is using a history of your building’s maintenance along with technology to forecast issues before they happen in order to plan and budget for likely issues. While much of maintenance ends up being reactive maintenance, it ultimately costs more than the careful planning of predictive maintenance and the forward thinking preventative maintenance. The only time reactive maintenance costs less in when nothing breaks, and we all know how seldom that is.
Preventative building maintenance and predictive maintenance take planning and thought and yes, allocating dollars to it. But by choosing this more proactive facility maintenance, you net a significant cost efficiency and plan your time and that of your facilities maintenance company in a way that saves you money and time. If you have a preventive building maintenance plan with an effective and experienced Commercial handyman services, you can also plan work around your buildings use patterns and critical times so that disruption of your business or tenants’ businesses are kept to a minimum.
There are a few areas to start off with that can net you big gains with a little preventive maintenance. These are lighting, carpets and hard flooring and HVAC. For instance, in very large buildings, you might find yourself or your team frequently changing light bulbs. While this might not seem like wasted time, it adds up. Relamping and even converting to LED lighting can significantly reduce your energy costs. LEDs can last as much as fifty times a standard incandescent bulb! Sure LEDs cost more at the outset but with reduced relamping and reduced energy costs, the long term savings is huge. Another area of your building that can benefit from preventive maintenance is your carpets and hard flooring. Did you know a carpet management program could add five to ten years to our carpet’s lifespan? All too often, Facility Managers wait until hard flooring and carpet is visibly soiled to maintain it. With hard floorings with a clear coat, it is critical to strip and finish before dirt and grime push pas the clear coat to abrade and permanently mark your floors base. Likewise, carpet that is not maintained regularly allows abrasive, sharp dirt and debris to cut at carpet fibers and prematurely wear carpet and dull its appearance. An effective, experienced commercial handyman service can help you develop a preventive building maintenance program that keeps your costly assets like carpet and flooring looking good and lasting longer. Regularly cleaning of carpets and flooring can cut a great deal of expensive repair or restoration work and even delay the expense of a planned carpet replacement. Finally, the last area that can save you money on costly, ill timed repairs and replacements is your HVAC. When heating and cooling go on the fritz, you can be forced to spend top dollar to get your building comfortable and up and running quickly. When you facility’s HVAC is a part of your preventive building maintenance schedule, you save on both money and headaches. Ideally, your HVAC should be inspected at least twice yearly. Likewise, you should conduct start up and run inspections seasonally before you need air or heat so you have time to plan any needed service.
Partner with the right Building Services Company and you can get planned maintenance or even on-demand maintenance that still helps you cut service times and costs by having a go to team already on the bench. Working with a commercial handyman service or janitorial services company that handles building maintenance can help you record and monitor maintenance over time allowing you to plan and budget effectively. You can’t totally eliminate those expensive surprises but by shifting more of your facility maintenance from reactive to preventative or even predictive, you can reduce the number of unplanned expenses and shut downs that impact the overall smooth operation of your facility.