7 Steps for Building a Proper Maintenance Team
Successful businesses must have a good maintenance team. Maintenance managers are responsible for more than maintenance. Budget, skills, production, people, and compliance are a few items on a Maintenance manager’s list of responsibilities.
The maintenance staff is responsible for maximizing asset uptime to avoid business disruptions, increasing asset lifecycles, providing maintenance support to all departments, and sourcing equipment parts, and supplies, among other tasks critical for business success. To support this workload, a maintenance manager must have a competent team, including supervisors and technicians. Building a proper maintenance team involves common factors for small and large maintenance teams because they share many of the same responsibilities.
In this post, we are sharing seven steps for building a proper maintenance team.
Define Purpose and Standards
A company mission and vision will align with the purpose and standards of a strong maintenance team. Understanding the purpose and standards behind the team’s expectations will help you develop measurable goals such as increasing uptime and reducing turnover. A maintenance team that understands what is expected of the department and why will be a more cohesive, motivated team.
Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely (SMART) goals will help you set clear expectations for your team. Empowering everyone to succeed is crucial when building a team.
Hire The Right People
Hire people with the skill sets you need for your facility. Maintenance technicians will need a working knowledge of mechanical and electrical machines, be comfortable working independently, have strong communication skills, time management skills, and attention to detail. Maintenance technicians today must be committed to continued education. Hiring the right people for the job can help you increase productivity and streamline the inevitable troubleshooting that comes along with maintenance work.
Establish Systems
Creating a motivated, engaged team requires establishing a framework and systems to help them maximize the results they can deliver and their impact on the company. A consistent challenge for many maintenance teams is consistency. Well-established systems can help eliminate inconsistencies and elevate the entire team.
Maintenance Planning
Maintenance planning is identifying and addressing potential problems ahead of time and ensuring parts and tools are available, organized, and ready for use. Instructions for specific jobs and setting a schedule for when they need to be completed. Maintenance work planning determines the what and how for assignments on the task list.
Scheduling Maintenance Tasks
Establishing the best time to complete tasks is critical for business success. Front line workers and those behind the scenes benefit from proper maintenance scheduling. Proper scheduling helps reduce the number of urgent maintenance requests and allows your team to work proactively instead of reactively.
Clarify Communication Lines
Things fall apart without proper communication. Clear communication lines are essential for smooth information flow throughout the entire department, and operational efficiency depends on it. Another vital aspect of clear communication involves having an open-door policy allowing employees to share ideas and submit concerns freely.
Embrace Technology
Modern maintenance teams use up-to-date technology. Embracing this practice is critical for successfully managing a maintenance team. A computerized maintenance management system CMMS is software that helps maintenance teams. For example, a CMMS system can help plan and schedule daily maintenance duties, preventative maintenance tasks, inspection rounds, and more. Furthermore, 51% of Maintenance professionals who use a CMMS system say the tools help reduce downtime.
SimpleFM
At SimpleFM, we can make life simpler for maintenance teams and business owners. With a leadership team that has almost twenty years of experience in property and facility maintenance, SimpleFM is designed to meet the unique needs of today’s maintenance teams. We offer several service levels and can even manage all of your facilities in one place. Utilizing intelligent software and a user-friendly platform, SimpleFM can provide a way to track progress, report, and spend for one or many locations. With a dashboard accessible to your entire team, you can streamline maintenance issues and improve communication and overall productivity.
SimpleFM offers a facilities maintenance team for business owners, ready to serve you by taking the facilities issues and solving them so you can focus on your business. Choosing SimpleFM also gives you access to our vast compliance and partner network. Finding qualified contractors who are fully compliant, licensed, insured, and credible is a worry-free process when you use our partner network.
We hope you will consider SimpleFM when establishing your maintenance team. Schedule a free demo today or email us at sales@simplefm.com.
