A Successful Preventive Maintenance Strategy

A preventative maintenance strategy is one of the tenants of every LESCO360 Integrated Facility Maintenance program. As we’ve refined our procedures over the years, we’ve helped our clients achieve success time and time again with their maintenance initiatives. These are nine of the tips we’ve found to be most successful when developing a preventative maintenance strategy.

Evaluate the current state of the facility

Don’t start with what you want the end result to look like. Rather, take a step back and analyze what you have at the moment. This acts as your baseline for improvement down the road.

Inventory everything

Documentation is critical to preventative maintenance strategy. This may take a while, but it will help you determine the age of your equipment, the dates of the last repair, as well as look at the prior year’s repair costs.

Shift to digital documents

Technology helps tremendously when building a preventative maintenance strategy. Paper records serve their purpose, but electronic documents are far easier to index, search, and categorize. Find a system that works for you and use it to store everything.

Integrate technology

Beyond document retention, a software solution that allows you to assign tickets, maintain vendors, and even pay your bills will be a major asset to your operation. As you build out your program over the coming months, you can also integrate smart tech for proactive monitoring of your systems.

Look to the past for the future

Budgeting for preventative maintenance is easier when you have historical records to refer to. Your prior year’s costs, including unexpected repairs and replacements, can help you decide how much to allocate to those categories in your next budget.

Evaluate and set KPIs

Do you have goals in mind for your preventative maintenance program? If so, are they measurable? “I want to do better” is too generic. “I want to decrease response time by 10% within three months” is a measure KPI.

Track progress

Setting goals is one thing. Tracking your progress towards them is another. Use data to analyze your movement towards your goals so you know whether you’re on track or falling behind with your KPIs.

Update your records

Is your vendor database up to date? Do you know when your warranties expire on your equipment? Do you know when you last had your systems inspected? If you said no to any of those, update your records with the most recent activity.

Teach your tenants or employees about your process

Finally, focus on educating your tenants or employees about your maintenance goals and processes. Don’t assume they’ll automatically know it. Take the time to teach them what you’re looking to accomplish and how they can help you along the way — including the right way to submit maintenance tickets.

Let us help you with your preventative maintenance

When we partner with facility managers, we aim to help them organize and redefine their preventative maintenance program. We work alongside them to optimize what they have and help them take it to the next level. Developing an effective strategy takes both time and experience, so if you’d like to get in touch with one of the LESCO360 team members, fill out our contact form here or give us a call at 866-947-5044