Although you can’t eliminate reactive service requests, you can plan to minimize them.

Now more than ever, facilities maintenance providers are plentiful, comprehensive and affordable. If you want to have an effective break/fix procedure in place for your employees, there is no shortage of work order tracking software options and general repair companies to pair up together and create a thorough solution. The issue you’ll need to address is how proactive versus reactive do you want to be? Your answer will ultimately dictate budgets and attitudes. There is no way to completely control your desired ratio, but you can certainly take steps to work towards and hopefully achieve a goal.

Preventative Maintenance

Just like cleaning your gutters or replacing your HVAC filters at home, at the start of each calendar year you know there are actions you need to take to protect your investment at your business’s physical locations. Depending on the type of real estate space you occupy, the list will fluctuate. Starting calendar day one with a proactive approach towards facility maintenance in place will work to ensure damage is minimal and costly emergency service calls are lessened. Reference manufacturer or contractor recommendations to create a list of PM objectives. Draw from your experience as to what may be predictable as well. If you know unique building service issues arise, deal with them ahead of time best as you can.

Reactive Maintenance

When things break, fix them. Don’t allow issues to continue on and be ignored. Stop building damage before it worsens and create a culture where employees don’t learn to live with it and accept it as the norm. Enforcing facility standards at your locations and properties helps to promote respect and caring. If you as the owner accept subpar conditions, you can rest assure that your employees will follow your example and do the same. Giving people a simple to follow process to report facilities maintenance needs for repairs will lower costs in the long run – not raise them.