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Weekly UpdatesTHE GOAL OF GOOD MAINTENANCE IS TO MINIMIZE THE IMPACT OF AGING OF BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT ON THE BOTTOM LINE, AND TO PROVIDE THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF THE PROPERTY AT THE LOWEST COST CONSISTENT WITH THE OWNER'S SHORT--AND LONG-TERM GOALS. As the property manager, you are a steward of these assets.
A solid maintenance program begins with the owner's understanding, commitment, support and involvement in a structured plan. Maintenance must be kept in the forefront of the operating team's consciousness. The mission statement, or the standard, should be the driving force for keeping the team on course to deliver world-class service to its customers, including owners, customers, tenants and vendors. It is the responsibility of property managers to help the front-line team keep the standard--and its relationship to their owners' businesses--in perspective. This perspective enables the management and front-line team to appreciate the priorities the owner has set forth, which may lessen their frustration when work cannot be scheduled as planned.
Begin developing your plan with an assessment of the productivity of the building you are managing. You may use one or more of the following to begin your assessment.
1. STRATEGIC MEASURES
Strategic measures can be derived from measuring maintenance costs to net operating income (NOI), maintenance costs to asset value or equipment replacement costs per square foot. Process/safety measures that impact profitability are assessed as U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) injuries per man-hours, utility expense per square foot; kilowatt hours per occupied square foot per year. Because such measures impact the owner's profitably and/or return on investment, you may have used them in developing your CPM management plan. You can reference benchmarking studies like the Income/Expense Analysis: Office Buildings from IREM or the Dollars and Cents of Shopping Centers from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to obtain a sense of what is an average measure for your property type.
2. INTERNAL MEASURES
Internal measures are often considered the operating standards of the owner and can be derived from the following: 1) Reviewing onsite facility conditions (and comparing them to the standard); 2) Tenant satisfaction--including an evaluation of response time to urgent work requests; 3) Understanding the level of deferred capital investment; 4) Measuring complaint levels and the backlogs of work. At my organization, these standards are audited by a third party at random times of the year. Results are reported back to the team and deficiencies are addressed. Tenant satisfaction is usually measured by a third-party survey which gives the property teams feedback to help them improve.
3. EQUIPMENT RELIABILITY
The reliability of your equipment can be measured by calculating average equipment downtime, time between equipment failures, maintenance overtime percentage, training reliability and the average number of preventive maintenance actions you schedule to prevent the failure of equipment before it occurs (see sidebar on next page). Monitoring capital-intensive systems like central plants and roof top units is critical to their preservation.
4. OPERATIONS CONTROL
The control of your operations can be measured by calculating the percentage of direct work conducted by the owner's team, the percentage of supervisory hours required to operate, the team's performance against standards, work schedule compliance, and the ratio of man-hours used for planned and unplanned work. Metrics like these best enable a manager to determine man-hours needed to maintain an efficient operation. Additionally, the allocation of staff or contracting out for a specialized craft, like HVAC, may be achieved by understanding the results. Calculating such metrics by hand can be time consuming. It has been my experience that measurements are most effective when a Computerized Management Maintenance System (CMMS) is in place and benchmarks are reviewed consistently and frequently.
You will begin developing a master plan after you have established key assessment measures that are meaningful to your owner, and to the size and sophistication level of your portfolio. Identifying key measures will enable the team to define a starting point, prepare a master plan that is meaningful for the team and help the team measure and celebrate success.
The master maintenance plan should cover the organizational, system, building, equipment, quality and procedural needs of the company. The plan defines and prioritizes a logical sequence of actions within a measurable period of time. The plan should be realistic, define responsibility and be consistent with the financial objectives of the organization.
The maintenance team is typically supported by a property manager and/or an operations manager who is responsible for communicating the maintenance plan to the team, monitoring the financial impact of work in the field and orchestrating action by developing overall timelines and eliminating barriers that the front line team of engineers may experience. A maintenance team may also enjoy the talents of a field supervisor who is typically a hands-on leader who works alongside the maintenance team to ensure the work is accomplished.
BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS
Developing a maintenance budget is complex work. I think it is important to note that maintenance is neither a variable nor a fixed expense. The budget will flex in a stepped pattern based on the philosophy of the owner and how expenses have been incurred in the past. The key is to understand those patterns and plan for the next phase. Budgeting of this nature often requires not only an analysis of accounting records but of work records as well. A more sophisticated owner will further develop this plan to include a five-year capital planned for significant improvements (like roof replacement, parking lot replacement, etc.) that require large amount of capital investment.
A weekly activity report (usually comprised of work orders issued in the prior week) is a key report that will help you develop your master plan. Activity reports may produce the following metrics that can be used to create your plan and administer budget controls:
* Work order number
* Work order status
* Estimated man-hours for task
* Estimated man-hour expended in the period
* Prioritization of work
* Work type
* Work order request date
* Work order due date
* Requestor/Requesting department
* Equipment number and description
If you have the good fortune of managing your maintenance department workflow with a Computerized Management Maintenance System (CMMS), you will be able to capture even more statistics from this data, like misallocation of resources based on the work's priority, equipment failure trends, current work log, back-work log, preventive maintenance status, call-in frequency, overtime and more. Some systems even allow the property manager to survey tenant's (who recently received work) satisfaction and proactively manage tenant relations. As mentioned earlier, this is an efficient means to proactively manage third party survey results, delivering higher tenant satisfaction.
As an example, I received one monthly CMMS survey that indicated tenants believed the engineers on my team were not responding to their requests, when in fact, they were. We determined that the primary tenant contact may have been busy when the engineer was on site. As a result, our team developed a service card that the engineer could leave on the contact's desk to make him or her aware when the requested services are completed.
In any event, the maintenance information obtained for forecasting your budget and developing a work plan should include efficiency trending reports (like back-work logs, completed preventive maintenance actions, overtime trends, and equipment reliability trends). This information provides critical decision-making tools for the management staff so the maintenance organization can function efficiently.
MANAGING MAINTENANCE STAFF
The maintenance staff is responsible for including a number of critical areas such as the supervision of work execution, planned work preparation and engineering.
The maintenance supervisor is responsible for the control, quality, costs and effectiveness of actual maintenance work. This can be achieved by ensuring that there is little time lost between jobs, ensuring the next job is always ready and prioritizing maintenance tasks. The mantra, "manage by walking around" has never been truer than it is for maintenance work in today's buildings. Visiting, recognizing and encouraging our front-line team not only adds credibility to their work but motivates them as well.
Maintenance supervisors should also identify and provide any necessary training required for their crew members. Responding quickly to employees who ask for support or training heightens performance.
Staying on schedule means good planning and ensuring that the team has the tools needed to get their work done. Holding each member accountable for their work also helps to keep employee morale high.
Where there are opportunities, the maintenance work-load can be contracted to specialized vendors. Types of work commonly contracted out include: seasonal jobs like exterior landscaping, grounds work and snow removal, one time construction work, specialized work like managing chemicals for certain types of equipment, low-skill work like housekeeping, high-skill work like managing building security--especially those properties with extensive closed circuit television (CCTV) programs, vertical transportation, work that requires a license, and work where the contractor takes legal responsibility like fire safety and alarm management.
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