Building a functional facility maintenance plan from scratch can be a challenge even for experienced facility managers. There are many important parts in maintenance planning and failing to include a step or action can directly affect the bottom line.
We will review critical points to keep in mind when putting together your facility’s maintenance plan. We will also provide you with an effective template for each section. After all, why reinvent the wheel?
What makes a facility maintenance plan effective
A comprehensive maintenance plan must outline all the stages of maintenance for all the facility’s assets, including machines, equipment, building systems, and structural parts.
An effective maintenance plan is compromised of a variety of approaches to maintenance: a preventive maintenance program, inventory management, work order activities, predictive maintenance program, and more.
Another important part of any facility maintenance plan is identifying who is responsible for performing each maintenance responsibility. For example, who is responsible for performing smaller reactive maintenance activities like a broken sprinkler, and who is responsible for performing major repairs such as a machine shutdown.
It’s always a good idea to align each task to individual assets. For the efficient maintenance of your assets, you must outline the skillset required for each maintenance activity.
All in all, an effective facility maintenance plan must have all assets and maintenance stages connected flowing naturally. It should have all maintenance staff involved and actively participate in proactive maintenance and ready to handle corrective maintenance when necessary.
Let’s get into the details.
Checklist for Creating a Preventive Maintenance Plan
Following a consistent Preventive Maintenance Plan can make life easier. Use this checklist to create your own!
Facility maintenance plan template
Every maintenance plan is different from the other because each type of building requires different activities. A school, for example, requires different maintenance activities when compared to a hospital maintenance schedule.
This template will cover the key sections of a facility maintenance plan. Keep in mind that you must personalize it considering the specific needs of the building you are managing. Let’s dive into it:
Facility Maintenance Table of Contents
Facility Maintenance Plan Goal………………………………….[insert page number]
Staffing Levels………………………………………………………….[insert page number]
Maintenance Priorities………………………………………………[insert page number]
Maintenance Approaches………………………………………….[insert page number]
Maintenance Workflow………………………………………………..[insert page number]
Facility Maintenance Plan Goal
The purpose of this facility maintenance plan is to establish guidelines for managing [insert name of the organization] buildings and systems, which includes building maintenance, custodial services, building occupancy, asset management, safety inspection, loss prevention, and energy conservation programs.
This facility must remain safe, accessible, and conform to all current codes and safety requirements. This plan is also designed to maximize the efficiency of each building system, minimize the need for major repairs and replacements, and to promote productivity, and maximize the maintenance budget.
Staffing Levels
Maintenance staff includes maintenance managers, custodial specialists, maintenance technicians, lead mechanics. [add or remove maintenance roles according to your company’s maintenance management needs]
Staffing levels must not be less than 2 mechanics and technicians per 10,000 square feet. With the current [insert your facility size] square feet of facilities, [insert number of technical workers needed] mechanics are required.
The regular workday for maintenance staff consists of X hours and a Y hour designated lunch break. Maintenance personnel must work between [insert time] a.m. and [insert time] p.m. and remain on-call after hours, five days a week.
There should be [insert number] maintenance employees in total. This consists of [insert number] facility manager, [insert number] facility supervisor, [insert number] lead technicians, [insert number] equipment maintenance mechanics, [insert number] custodial specialist, and [insert number] administrative personnel.
Maintenance Priorities
The designated facility manager is responsible for establishing an order of priority for all repairs. The highest priority should always be given to assets, pieces of equipment, or systems that affect the health and safety of individuals in the building.
The following levels were also adopted and should be prioritized by the facility manager according to the nature of the problem, as follows:
Priority I: Emergency work orders that present an imminent or immediate danger to health, safety, security, or operational damage to buildings, equipment, or property should be taken as first priority.
Priority II: Urgent work orders that are considered to pose a threat of personal injury, equipment damage, or serious disruption of workflow, but are not considered emergencies hold a second-level priority.
Priority III: Work orders associated with routine maintenance that do not pose a threat to employees’ safety or serious disruption to the operation are not required immediate corrective action, and should be taken as a third-level priority.
All other work order requests, that don’t present risk, should be organized into a scope of work for the job.
Maintenance Approaches
This maintenance plan includes preventative maintenance; replacement of parts; corrective maintenance, and predictive maintenance. [add or remove maintenance methods according to your company’s size, budget, and needs]
The maintenance department’s goal is to use CMMS to keep all building systems and equipment properly maintained to achieve their longest life cycle.
The preventive maintenance program will increase the useful life of pieces of equipment, reduce breakdowns, and provide a comfortable and safe environment for employees. The following critical pieces of equipment should be included in the PM plan:
[List pieces of equipment that you judge critical to daily operations and employees’ safety. For example:
– Air conditioning filter and air compressor
– Fire extinguishers and fire alarms
– Water heaters
– Electrical systems and HVAC systems
– Pest control
– Add other assets/building system here]
Maintenance tasks associated with these pieces of equipment and building systems should be scheduled on a regular basis, every quarter using the maintenance schedule module on the CMMS.
PM to corrective maintenance (CM) work order ratio should be about 6:1.
Corrective maintenance activities should be generated from regular maintenance inspections (PM), routine maintenance procedures, or routine technical operations. The goal is to have PM maintenance technicians, machine operators, or employees noticing potential issues before they need an emergency response. These individuals must create a corrective work request using the Mobile Work Order module on the CMMS software.
Corrective maintenance should avoid most reactive maintenance work. Reactive maintenance should be performed when there are unexpected problems with equipment operation. These activities are emergency or urgent responses to the facility’s needs and activities. Employees must use the CMMS software to create work orders and set it as first priority and call the maintenance manager’s phone numbers if there’s an emergency.
Maintenance Workflow
All maintenance activities should be listed on the CMMS maintenance calendar. Mechanics and technicians should refer to the calendar for the planned daily activities. All details about materials needed for each work order, as well as spare parts needed, should be outlined in the work request description.
Technicians should pick up the necessary material before going to the field.
Technicians must have Limble CMMS mobile app downloaded in order to access instructions while out on the field.
When creating a work order, employees must use their smartphones to take pictures of details and attach them to the work request.
Maintenance managers must leverage CMMS software AI capabilities that forecast material that will be needed in the next year to manage inventory.
Ready to build your own FM plan?
Use this basic template to start up your own facility management plan.
Keep in mind that leveraging CMMS software is crucial if you want to streamline the process. Modern CMMS, such as Limble does all the hard work by using artificial intelligence to make predictions, organize priorities, assign workers, plan the maintenance checklist, and more.
You no longer have to spend hours filling our Excel spreadsheet, look for information in a pile of work orders, and waste precious time calling or emailing workers to assign work.
Make wise choices and be ready to see exceptional results.
