Transcription
Okay, I think we're ready to go. Great. So, welcome everybody and thanks for attending today's webinar, Facilities Maintenance Planning: Driving Improved Reliability. Sorry for the slight delay. My name is Grace Veo, and I'll be moderating for today's presentation. We're going to get ahead and get started in just a second.
First, I'd like to say we're very excited to have Doug Henstridge with us as a presenter today. Doug has been at AssetWorks for over 11 years and is currently in the role of Senior Industry Consultant for Enterprise Asset Management. Before I pass things over to Doug, I just wanted to give everybody a quick heads-up. The microphones have been muted, so if any of you have questions at any time during the presentation, you can use the WebEx chat tool. You should also see the chat icon located on your screen, and this acts as an instant messaging tool. Feel free to use the WebEx chat tool to answer questions asked by Doug during the presentation or answer any questions you may have throughout today's webinar. Make sure you send all questions to host, and I'll be happy to field and relay them to Doug at the conclusion of the presentation for a brief Q&A session. So, with that said, I think we're ready to get started. Doug, everything looks great, so you're good to start.
Good morning. So, this morning, we want to talk about, um, basically planning and scheduling maintenance as a means of driving improved performance and improved reliability in your operations. So, as part of that, we're going to touch on some, some items here. The focus is going to be more on best practices, uh, tools for achieving this, and maybe some tips to think about in relation to your own current maintenance programs or where, uh, you might see opportunities to, uh, improve what you're currently doing. So, with that, I'll go ahead and jump in. And as Grace said, if you have questions, just chat them in, and, um, we can either hold them to the end, or if they're relevant for a certain part, we we might take a pause as we go along.
So, with that, let's talk about facilities maintenance. Now, I, I call this out specifically as facilities maintenance, but one thing to be mindful of is, is what we're really looking at is the managing and maintaining of physical assets, uh, and infrastructure around a facility. A facility could be a building, a park, another fixed asset, a bridge, pavement. So, I'm, I'm using the word facility here in a broad, uh, kind of broadly, not specifically to say building or property maintenance, but more broadly to things you build and own and have to maintain. A lot of these in this space too, a lot of these involve, uh, assets that are constructed and maintained for public use as well. So that adds a different wrinkle that you're also in a bit of a customer service facing role that you need to provide a service or a facility for either residents in your community or other customers to have a safe, safe environment, comfortable environment, and to add value to a community, right? Things like parks, libraries, uh, stadiums, potentially, uh, etc.
So, some of the things we look at then are the most obvious when it comes to scheduling is preventive maintenance, but there's also safety compliance, regulatory compliance, which often falls on a schedule, and corrective maintenance as well, which can also be planned and scheduled depending on what it is or how you execute that. So, we'll talk a little bit about that as we go along.
So, maybe off the top, let's talk about some of the benefits of, of, of an effective maintenance program, right? So, one of the things is we're looking at increasing lifespan, right? We want the, the capital investments we make in our facilities to be maximized through, through a lifespan, right? So, if we think about, say, a large piece of, of HVAC or mechanical equipment, typically we're looking at a 20 to 25 year lifespan. We want to make sure that piece of equipment achieves that. They are not inexpensive to replace, and ideally, if you can maintain it in such a way that you extend beyond that lifespan, you also drive additional cost savings. Potentially, we also want a safe environment. You know, we want to make sure that the, uh, the assets that we maintain or that we make available to, to others are safe, whether that be an elevator, playground equipment in a park, a swimming pool, whatever that may be, right? Our customers, our residents should be able to feel safe in, in those facilities. There's regulatory compliance. We want to minimize downtime, of course. So, minimizing downtime means that the, maybe the working environment is more, uh, more amenable to working in, as a way to say that. So, in other words, if we're talking about HVAC equipment, you know, we don't necessarily want cooling equipment to go offline on the hottest day of the year. We don't want heating equipment to go offline on the coldest day of the year. We want them to be working reliably, providing a comfortable environment. When we engage in poor maintenance, you know, then we're looking at higher costs to maintain. You know, repairs become more frequent. Cost of repair will outstrip the cost of preventive maintenance, generally speaking, always. So, you're looking at higher costs. Equipment failures provide safety hazards, they create for poor working environments, which could drive employee morale, increase complaints among constituents, etc. Plus, as you allow equipment to fail before repairing it, you're also looking at shortened lifespans, right? Think about, think about it this way, in terms of the, the, the water heater in your house or the car you drive. If you don't do regular maintenance on these, oil changes or flushing and adjustments, you know, to a water heater, they will fail, and eventually, the cost of replacement now becomes, uh, far more, uh, extensive than just the cost of regular maintenance. Plus, you have the downtime, you have the loss of use, and you have other, other issues that go along with that. So, those are some of the things we're trying to mitigate or avoid.
Um, one, maybe little example or anecdote I'll share here is, you talk about consequences of poor maintenance. Customer I worked with maybe a decade ago, um, they were in the, in the toll road business, and they collected tolls, and they had a, a computer system that managed that, that tolling collection operation, the automated toll tag, uh, collection. And they had backup generators that were designed to kick in should there be a power outage. Those backup generators were supposed to be inspected, checked, and, and test started on a weekly basis. They got in the habit of not doing that. And, uh, one, essentially one day, a storm occurred, they lost power. Power went out, generator didn't turn on. And the agency went several hours, I think, I think the way they explained it to me was as much as four hours, where the roads were free because the generator didn't turn on and the systems that did the, the toll gathering and toll collecting were simply offline for four hours. So, it was a significant loss in revenue for that day, simply because they failed to comply with the schedule for verifying those generators were, in fact, going to turn on when they were needed. So, these are, these are things to keep in mind that there are downstream consequences as well to not effectively maintaining assets, especially assets as part of critical business functions, as was the case with that, those particular backup generators.
Let's talk a little bit about how we get to planning maintenance. What are the key components of these? So, at a high level, this is a list. I'm going to, I'm going to dig into a few of these here in a moment, but just some things to keep in mind that, uh, you need to know what your assets are, you need to have a strategy for maintaining them, you should have ways to measure performance. So, whether that, you know, obviously you're going to need to track through a work management system, track work, uh, document, uh, maintenance history, have a way of determining metrics. Are our assets performing as expected? Is our maintenance program as efficient as it needs to be? Um, you know, have plans for allocating resources, scheduling, budgeting, making sure you're engaged in continuous training and development of your human resources, as well as looking for opportunities for continuous improvement. And as we kind of dive into some of these, highlight some, some examples of things I've seen or provide some ideas around those.
So, let's talk about asset inventory for a moment. So, one of the first steps in this process is understanding what your assets are. How you determine what an asset is. So, in, you know, the slide, you see a few pictures of things that are assets. So, if you're in the Parks and Rec space, you have, you know, playground equipment that's an asset that needs to be maintained. There are safety issues that go along with that. Uh, you have rooftop, uh, mechanical units, right? These are things that, um, you know, maybe you maintain as a group, maybe you set up common, uh, maintenance schedules. This is a, that particular image represents a great example of things that you might need to maintain. And both the upper image of the building there is, is another example. And looking at that picture of what constitutes an asset in this situation. Generally speaking, we look at this, what are we maintaining here? We're maintaining the building. We may capture the roof as an, as an ancillary, kind of a child asset, right? Because it has a separate lifespan than the building. Does it have, uh, some of its own inspection requirements? So, maybe that's a child asset to the building. Inside this building is probably a water heater, right? That's a public restroom in a park. So, you're going to have a water heater. That water heater would be its own asset, but the other fixtures inside of there are probably not. You know, sinks and toilets and partitions, those may just be maintenance tasks or tasks so you can track that they were maintained. You know, we see a parking lot, we see a trail, we see turf, a number of signs. So, understanding what constitutes an asset is important. We don't want to be too granular. You know, you may not need to capture, you know, the garbage bins or even the turf as an asset. That may just roll up to the park or the facility, and then the actions taken against those things would be tasks. So, how frequently did we mow? How, you know, what's the schedule for, uh, picking up garbage? Park, you know, those types of activities kind of to keep track of what's an asset, what's not. So, think about how you're going to document maintenance. What you need to maintain. Are there specific compliance issues? Are there life expectancy issues? Or are these just things that are essentially installed consumables? So, is a, is a sink in the restroom an asset, or is it simply an installed consumable item that I maintain, but when it breaks, I just throw it away and put a new one in, versus that roof? If the roof got damaged in a storm, I wouldn't just throw it away. I would have to fix it, and I have to make sure the fix held, and I would want to do at least some sort of annual or semiannual inspection to make sure it's still in good order, and may even have a, a schedule or a renewal schedule as part of its lifespan. So, those, those are considerations when going into this, and it, it's kind of the baseline, right? So, you, you know what you need, and then start thinking about the timing of, of those inspections.
Next thing to consider is your overall maintenance strategy. So, how are we going to define effective preventive maintenance schedules? Right? So, there's a number of ways to get there. You have best practices, we have usage and frequency needs, maybe it's available resources. So, you need to not only look at, you know, think of, thinking now, if say air handling equipment, a best practice might be to do a monthly inspection, a quarterly where you maybe swap filters, semiannual, and annual, right? And each one of those would have a, a growing checklist depending on where in that annual cycle you are. But then maybe you have an air handling unit in a building that's say, only, only operational during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, say from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., considering multiple shifts, versus an air handling unit at, say, an emergency call center or like a 911 Center that's a 24/7 operation, or those kind of units that are in, say, a correctional facility. There again, 24/7 operations where, even though it's the same piece of equipment, you may, the one that's only used during normal business hours may get a different maintenance schedule than the one that's constantly operating, right? In terms of filter replacement, checking band belt tension, things like that. So, those are considerations to make. The other, and then that goes to the available resources. You know, one of the customers I work with when they were implementing their maintenance plan, they came up with the fact that they had over 400 PMs to conduct every month. Then they looked at their resources, said, "That's simply not doable." So, how do we streamline this to rightsize a plan or a schedule that's executable with the resources we have, while at the same time maintaining equipment in a, in, in, I don't know about optimal, but in a, a usable, acceptable, uh, appropriate level of service, right? So, there is a balance there. And so that's where you start looking at, well, maybe we don't need to, you know, do a monthly, maybe we do a bimonthly and a semiannual rather than a monthly and a quarterly, and so on, in terms of scheduling. So, it's important to think of that in terms of, you know, what's the criticality, what's the usage, what's the real need, and what's going to work. And you may start one way, and you may either tighten it up or loosen it out a little bit time-wise, based on best practices, based on performance, based on the asset's age, its function, etc.
The other thing to look at is to be gathering data that could support predictive maintenance, start anticipating failures, start anticipating maintenance needs. This could be as simple as taking daily log sheets and automating them into an electronic form that allows you to report to look for data trends. Uh, maybe you have additional third-party systems like SCADA systems or or building management systems that you can integrate in with, uh, an asset maintenance management program that'll drive some of that. You know, could be meter readings, could be fault codes, it could be other bits of information that help to provide information that might allow you to anticipate, uh, failures, anticipate maintenance needs, so that you prevent, ultimately prevent failures. The other thing is to get in the habit of frequently assessing condition. So, maybe as part of a, a semiannual annual inspection cycle, set up a framework and assess the condition of an asset based on, essentially, a, a condition checklist to say, you know, if you answer all these questions in a certain way, that means it's in good condition, or it's in fair condition, or it's in poor condition. And use then condition as part of a maintenance strategy or a maintenance scheduling, uh, process. And then finally, you know, you also have to rightsize the, the schedule for the, the people you have available to perform it. There's also the, the consideration of of access restrictions, right? So, one customer I've worked with, they maintain the facilities in, in a correctional facility. They can only access secure areas, the secure areas, at certain times of the day when, essentially, the facility is on lockdown. So, they can go in and do work. So, they need to schedule that between this time frame, you know, whether it is between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. every day is the window they have to have their facility staff go in and address either conduct PMs or address repairs to equipment. So, you need to plan around, make sure you're planning around those types of situations as well. And that's where using a calendar function might be helpful to say, hey, every day from 1:00 to 3:00, we need to be at this facility conducting certain activities.
And then the other thing to consider is your, your work order management. You know, the work order is going to be what drives documentation. It's going to build your maintenance history. It's going to allow you to share information about maintenance with others, whether that be at a peer level where maybe different resources cover each other, you have multiple resources, human staff, essentially conducting the same maintenance or maintenance on the same assets depending on availability on a given day, or it may simply be to capture institutional knowledge. So, a lot of organizations we work with have a lot of staff that have been there a long time, and they simply know that, hey, roof, the rooftop unit number three on this building is, is has these particular issues about it, or it often has this trouble, or I need to look at it more frequently than these other ones because I simply know that because I've been here for 10 years and I've been maintaining that thing for 10 years. That person leaves, the next person coming in won't know that. So, using your work order, the work order management system as a way of capturing that history is important.
The other thing is to make use of priorities and due dates. So, if I have certain activities that are of higher priority than others, I should make use of those priorities and make, make sure that when I set those priorities on a work order, I'm also setting the correct due dates and, and or due date and time, right? So, if I'm dealing with a piece of mechanical equipment, or it's an elevator, or something else that, that staff use every day in order to facilitate their job or to make their work environment comfortable, then I need to also manage downtime and so need to make sure that if I need to take something offline for maintenance, that I'm minimizing the amount of time it's offline, or I need to make sure I'm doing things after hours and making sure I'm getting things done. The other thing are making sure there's clear expectations and assignments. Who's doing what? When they should be doing it? When it should be completed by? You know, and, and look to, look to spread work out. You know, don't bunch everything up. I, I've seen customers that'll trigger all of their preventive maintenance for a month on the first of the month, and they get this huge queue of things to work through, which can be somewhat imposing, right? If I, if you open up your work view and you see you've got 150 items in there, you know, the first thought is, how do I ever get through this? But if you spread that out and say, okay, you know, week one, we're going to do these 20, and week two, we're going to do these 20, and week three, we're going to do these 20, suddenly that work looks more manageable, even though it's kind of the same level of work. And then as you start looking at scheduling it effectively, like, you know, you can find, you can then allow your staff to build their own strategies for getting through their, their work list and their tasks list. You know, and that may be as simple as saying, hey, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you're just going to do preventive maintenance. You know, on Wednesdays, you're going to be at this facility, and so on, right? So, you, you help staff also manage their time.
Never underestimate the value of training. Training which drives continuous improvement. So, making sure that staff is up to speed on new equipment, new procedures, uh, best practices in the industry, uh, effectively able to use the tools available. Um, one of the things we see sometimes with our software is that when they go through upgrades or add features, if, if staff aren't adequately trained at that moment, the learning curve becomes a lot slower. And so, the goal here is to constantly prepare, be preparing staff to adapt to those changing situations so that they can kind of lessen that learning curve, be able to maintain a consistent schedule and consistent, uh, delivery on the, the work they need to do. Some of the things to consider as well is, is frequent little refresher trainings, uh, setup training videos that are accessible to staff, user aids for quick, quick documentation, and also making OEM documentation or maintenance histories available directly against the asset record. So, in the field, if there's a specific procedure that has to be followed, you know, make sure you're attaching that to the, the maintenance action, whether it be the task or the PM service. So, even if your staff is mobilized on a tablet, when they pull that work order up, they have access to that documentation, checklist, workflow diagrams, process flow, whatever, whatever is necessary for them to be able to, uh, effectively complete their the task in front of them in the most timely fashion should be made available, uh, through this. And the other thing is you want to make sure you're empowering your staff to provide feedback, right? To, to inform management to say, hey, you know, this check, we really don't need to have these five items because they're really two items, or, uh, hey, the way this procedure is written is confusing. It, we really don't do it that way, we do it this way, or simply, you know, when we're doing these, these filter changes, these filters actually don't need to be replaced every month, we can go every two months. And so, give them, empower them to provide that feedback and help constantly improve, adjust, and, and redefine these plans. I, and again, when, when you empower people to make decisions on their own, they often will make, I think they often will make good decisions because they're looking at how they can do a better job as well.
So, let's talk a little bit about some scheduling. And I should, I should maybe ask Grace, are there any questions that have popped in so far before we keep going?
No, we're all good.
Okay, great. So, okay, so preventive maintenance, right? So, I would say that most, I'm, I'm assuming most of the organizations, the individuals listening in today, your, at your organizations, you have preventive maintenance schedules. And I guess the question I would have for you, um, around this is, are you happy with the way your schedule's set up? Uh, do you think it's the most effective way that it could be done? And more importantly, are you, you actually completing all of your PMs on a monthly basis? So, maybe if you can, I, I'll go and maybe if you chat in and Grace just, uh, let me know if you, you hear some, some feedback from that. But one of the things while we're looking at that, one of the things I did want to talk about relative to preventive maintenance is it's important to understand the frequencies. You know, you can schedule preventive or inspect, you know, what I'm going to call called preventive maintenance or inspection activities at varying frequencies. It could be daily, right? You could have a daily walkthrough check. You could have weekly inspections, you can monthly, quarterly, semiannual, annual, every two years, every five years, every 10 years, depending on what it is. The, the thing is, are, is this scheduling appropriate for what we're trying to accomplish, or is it busy work? And that's, I think that's important to consider. Considered not every piece of equipment, even if it's the same piece of equipment, may need the same schedule. It may also be seasonal, right? So, if you're looking at say, uh, filters on air handling units, you, depending on what their function is, you may need to replace them more frequently at one time of year than the other, right? What might be in the air and what they're filtering out, it may be more critical certain times of the year. The other thing is, if a, if a, if a facility is not, uh, as heavily used as another, you may not have to, it, you may not have to, uh, PM it as frequently or inspect it as frequently. The example I always look at is, um, for example, near me, there's a, a community center that also includes a library. The library is only open six days a week from 9 to 7, right? And I think only 9 to 5 on the weekend. But the, but the community center that is attached to it via breezeway is open essentially from 8 to 11, 7 days a week. It has an indoor sports court, it has meeting rooms, it has gaming rooms, it has a number of things that are available for rental and use. And so, they, you know, so any air, you know, any HVAC equipment associated with that structure may need more frequent, uh, inspections, filter replacements, uh, preventive maintenance checks, then a, maybe a similar, the same piece of equipment attached to the library. So, it's important to understand that and whether you're over-inspecting, over-replacing items, or not, right? So, you want to rightsize that in, in terms of that. The other, uh, thing to consider, and then also consider the cycle, right? I do things at a monthly basis, quarterly basis, annual basis, make sure you're building a cycle so that you're able to effectively manage where you are at any given time, or align it so it's seasonal, so you're doing your semiannuals in the spring and the fall, and not, you know, randomly throughout the year.
The other, uh, consideration are those things that represent sort of your one-off regulatory requirements. For example, um, an elevator inspection. You, you may want to check the elevator internally for, you know, the, the appearance or, uh, is it clean? Uh, are all the panels and, and maybe railings inside tight? Um, is there graffiti? Or are all the lights on? You know, things that facilities might take care of in, just a, a, you know, a little walkthrough, a visual inspection, versus your annual, uh, regular inspection to basically get the elevator re-permitted or re-certified, uh, which is generally conducted also by an outside entity. But, but the regulatory requirement needs to be done by a specific date, whereas the other ones can be a little more flexible and maybe be performed sort of in a cycle from the last time they were completed. So, it's important to understand those distinctions as well, because certain things have to be done by a specific, specific date, and they have to be done annually by that specific date, on or before. So, it's always important to plan those in. And then another thing to, to consider are, you know, predetermined assignments. Like, if I have maintenance staff that's responsible for a specific facility or a cluster of buildings, I may want to make sure that I'm balancing assignments with their availability, uh, automatically putting things into their queue so that they, they know, rather than, um, you know, randomly assigning things and moving people around. So, think about how you're going to best use your human resources in that regard.
So, Grace, did we get any feedback on the question I asked?
Not at this time. No.
Okay, you're good to keep going.
Okay, cool. So, uh, and again, I talked about predictive maintenance. So, this is, this is important in terms of trying to understand and anticipate when things may start to fail and getting ahead of that failure. So, you know, a lot of times you'll have, uh, you may have SCADA monitoring systems, you may conduct CCTV inspections and, and say, uh, now we're talking about maybe a sewer or through some, uh, limited access space where you can run a camera through, but you can't necessarily get a person in there and gather that data and let that data drive some things, right? Or, um, you may be capturing electronic log sheets or log sheets. So, I, I work with customers that currently have maybe a clipboard attached to a piece of equipment, and they go and they, they check it and they just note on the sheet of paper that, oh, today I was here, and I observed this temperature, or this pressure, or this condition, or this water level, or whatever the case may be. And then, uh, they note it down and then walk away and come back the next day. So, maybe automating these and creating electronic sheets, like a daily boiler log or a glycol pump inspection, where you're, you're capturing actual data. It could be, you know, temperature readings, pressure readings, uh, uh, various, uh, fluid level readings, etc. By capturing that electronically, you can start reporting on that and look for trends, like, is, uh, is a pressure reading trending up or down, um, or is it going down and staying down? That might be the indication of some other problem that we need to maybe go and take a look at, rather than allowing, I think one customer I worked with where we did this, their comment about the paper form was that a lot of times it, it's almost that the guys, they do it every day, but they get what, what they refer to as muscle memory for filling out the paper, where they just take the, the paper, they check all the readings, they write it all down, and move on to the next scene without really contemplating necessarily the values they're writing down after a while. Whereas, capturing electronically, creating maybe a report or dashboard to look at, you know, a chart or a graph of these values, a second set of eyes might look at that and say, oh, that looks like it's trending in a way we don't want to. So, let's go and investigate that more, get out in front of that. Okay, so those are, those are some of the things to be, be thinking about as well, because getting out in front of potential failures, again, will save time, will save money, and also save downtime for equipment that it's not breaking.
Another thing is to consider is setting up an annual maintenance plan, right? So, thinking ahead to what do we have to accomplish in the coming year. Now, obviously, any type of routine preventive, scheduled inspections, those are part, those are part of that, right? So, it's say, okay, we know we have X number of, you know, PMs and inspections to perform every month. Uh, this may go up and down depending on whether we're in a, a monthly or, you know, at the monthly, quarterly, or semiannual point in a cycle or not. Uh, you, you look at maybe, you know, seasonal maintenance, so you look for spikes in, in activity, maybe in like April and in October, for example. So, you can plan that out. You can look at, it gives you also the ability to look at, you know, here's my backlog of things I have to do every year, here's the staffing I have, how do I align that? The other part then is to look at things that are either coming due for replacement, or that are things that are facility renewals, like painting, flooring replacements, furniture replacements, etc., right? So, one example that, that I've seen is, is painting, right? Working with a customer that manages facilities in a park across their entire operation. They want to repaint all of these facilities every seven years. So, they need to plan for that, they need to budget for that, but they also need to know which, which of those facilities are actually due in which year, and how do, how do they budget that in, right? That's something where you can also look for, do you know, is it the best use of my resources to do that, or do we simply say, no, we're just going to outsource all of it, and then our resources will provide oversight or inspection of the work once it's completed, kind of a thing, right? So, that's the other part of that. The annual maintenance planning helps you is also to identify gaps in advance and look for opportunities, potentially either increase staff, which in the public sector can be a challenge, or be look for outsourcing, right? So, one parks and rec agency I worked with a few years back, they looked at that, and they had a, they had a manage mowing activities at almost 140 park facilities. So, it's, which ones do we do versus which ones do we outsource? And then just inspect after the fact, right? To balance, to balance the availability of resources, but also to maintain a consistent level of customer service to the community, so that they have expect, they have expectations for the, the usability or the, the quality of the facility they're at. So, that's where this annual planning helps to identify those types of gaps or those types of, uh, give you the ability to make those types of decisions. And then at the same time, you can start looking at prioritizing, right? Do we need to defer, right? So, if next year we don't have the budget or we don't have the resources that say, to replace a piece of equipment, then we need to plan for deferring that and maybe assessing how much longer we can keep it operational, and then plan for a replacement down the road. The other part is look for tools that'll start triggering a lead time for equipment replacement, so you can actually start budgeting for annual activities ahead of time. So, this is, this is a critical piece as well, is to get a handle on each, coming into each year, what, what we need to do, what we would like to do, what we have to do, and then kind of balancing those priorities and seeing what can be accomplished or what you need to accomplish.
Okay, so then we want to look, so scheduling. So, when thinking about scheduling, there's a couple of different ways to look at this. You have your, your more traditional calendar-based scheduling, where you basically kind of just lay out priorities on a calendar. You know, that you have to do certain things seasonally, you have to do certain things on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis. Maybe you look at that and say, um, hey, you know, we're going to set aside two days every week to do nothing but preventive maintenance for inspections. Uh, we want to carve out time that for different facilities, right? We'll work at this facility on Monday and Tuesday, and we'll do preventive maintenance on that facility on Thursday, you know, balancing it that way, blinging that out, blocking out things on a calendar so you don't end up in conflict, and then always leaving gaps or spaces to deal with the reactive or the corrective actions, right? Again, looking at opportunities for scheduling corrective maintenance, right? And that gets back, that goes to the prioritization piece of it. So, if I am looking at, at maybe not, not as much the, the preventive aspect of or the routine aspect, but just corrective, you know, is, is the failure or is the thing that is being reported as requiring, uh, a maintenance response, is it critical for operations? Is it a nuisance? Is it, is it something that does or does not prevent a safety issue, or does it take us out of a regulatory compliance? Then you can prioritize that. Other things like small fix-its, like, oh, the hinge on the door is squeaky, or the lock sticks, or there's a single light bulb out in a conference room, right? Or, you know, there's, there's, uh, weeds growing through cracks in a sidewalk in, in the parking lot, right? So, these kind of things can be scheduled. They're lower priority items. They do have to be taken care of, but maybe you set aside, you know, one day each week, or part of a day each week, to just deal with those, to say, well, we're going to go out and we're going to replace all the, the out light bulbs on Friday afternoon, or we're going to, you know, do, uh, work on the, the facility site landscaping, you know, on, you know, Monday mornings, or, and just carve out that time so you're effectively scheduling corrective maintenance. It also allows you to better, uh, budget the time for your staff and again, be able to get, I think, more accomplished with minimizing the bouncing around. A lot of times when you're jumping from one thing to another, you end up getting less done. So, if you can block time out for certain things, uh, it, it does facilitate accomplishing, uh, more, I believe.
The other thing is availability. You know, is an asset available? Um, I, I talked about, you know, restrictions maybe in secured spaces where you can only access it at certain times. There's also, um, you know, am I able to take equipment offline, or do I have to do that after hours? One customer we work with, they do building walkthroughs every week to look for defects or or small fixed items or things that maybe need to be, uh, you know, go into a, a deferred or corrective maintenance pool of activity. They do those on the weekend because they can't get them done Monday through Friday. They have all the other priorities they have to take care of. And so, instead, they put their staff on a, on a rotational cycle so that, I think on a quarterly basis, every, you know, all staff get one weekend, they pay overtime, and they go and they spend Saturday and Sunday doing their building walkthroughs and flagging things for repair or just doing minor corrections on things. So, that gets back to availability. The, the act, the actual asset wasn't available for that staff, wasn't available, so they made availability, you know, based on, uh, resources. And then of course, block scheduling, where you look for groups of assets that are, you know, similar and in close proximity that you can put on a schedule together, right? So, like, oh, my, my quarterly inspection or my rooftop units, there's six or seven of them on this building, let's make sure they all trigger and all completed at the same time. That way, everything can get done. So, what, you know, and if each one of them takes a half an hour, I can set aside three hours and it's done, and then I move on to the next thing, rather than having to potentially keep going back up on the roof two or three or four times throughout a month because they're all triggering at different times. That's, that's an inefficient use of time. So, always be thinking about looking for efficient uses of time, which, and then that kind of leads me into a little bit of talking here.
But the other thing is looking at condition-based maintenance. So, how does the condition of an asset affect how it needs to be maintained? Right? So, one is, you need an effective way of capturing condition, right? So, you need to think of that first, that do I have a, you know, a checklist or procedure for what constitutes good, fair, poor, you know, very poor, etc.? And then, you know, based on that, do that rating, update those ratings on some semiannual or annual basis, so you have a sense on, on the quality of, of, of a piece of equipment or a facility. The other thing to consider is that in some cases, critical equipment may require more attention based on its condition and its criticality. So, an, one example I can, I can share is, uh, customer I worked with several years ago, they built a, an inspection schedule for some of the equipment in their treatment plant, water utility, based on the criticality of that piece of equipment within the treatment process. And so, equipment that had a higher importance in the processing, got, got an inspection, you know, had a, a schedule of inspections. If the conditions started to slip, they tightened up the inspection schedule. So, if it was, you know, at a very good status, maybe they inspected it semiannually, but as soon as it dropped to just a good status, they changed that inspection schedule to quarterly. If it dropped to a fair or satisfactory status, it became a monthly inspection. And the goal was to make sure that it wasn't deteriorating more, while at the same time, as it gradually deteriorated, either looking for a replacement, or B, looking for root causes and trying to address those. But at the same token, they needed to make sure it stayed operational. So, you, you basically adjust your maintenance schedule based on the, the condition of the asset, you know.
The other thing is to be focused on reliability. So, you want to, again, look at, uh, how effective is my maintenance schedule? We want it, we want the things we're inspecting, maintaining, to stay online, to stay operational, right? Uh, and, and that could be based on its criticality or its just its operational usage, right? So, going back to the example of the, the generator that was the backup power for a toll collection system, you know, we want to make sure that when we need it, it's going to function. So, we want, we want to make sure it's reliable. We want to make sure we're inspecting it and, uh, testing it and, and verifying its usability, because when we need to use it, we have to be able to use it, right? So, that's, that's something to consider.
And then the other thing we talk about lean maintenance, that I, I think I alluded to this earlier, that I'm sure many of, many of the organizations participating today have challenges with staffing availability, you know, do they have adequate resources to conduct their preventive maintenance? And I know some of the, the customers I work with, they don't, right? That a lot of PMs go undone simply because they don't have the staffing to get to all of them. So, the other thing then is, how do we, how do we remove waste or the unnecessary activities to streamline a workload, to streamline a maintenance process, right? So, we need to, you know, effectively look at how to align resources with the, the maintenance needs of an organization, right? And that, I think that's important as well.
So, when we talk about maintenance schedules, and I know we're coming up here on time, so hopefully we'll get through everything. When we talk about maintenance and schedules, I've, you know, I've talked about the need for building an inventory of assets. We want to make sure we're building an asset inventory of things that actually need to be maintained, that we need to track maintenance against. Uh, a lot of other things that might constitute, look like assets, maybe are just a way of documenting repairs, right? And that, the next thing is also, we want to make sure we're determining what are the actual maintenance needs. Is it something we really need to inspect? We really need to maintain? Or is it a nice to have as part of a maintenance schedule, but maybe just keeping an eye on it in the course of other things is adequate, right? There are certain things you have to do to meet regulatory requirements, there are certain things you have to do to meet health and safety requirements, but then there's things you, you need to do from an, from a capital investment point of view to make sure that the investment in your equipment, in your assets, is actually, uh, lasting for the, the lifetime, right, that it's anticipated for. And that goes hand in hand with setting a maintenance frequency. How frequently do we do this, right? And that, you know, that could be variable based on what's being maintained, how it's being maintained, and where, where it's being used, right? And what, what's the environment in which it's being used. Okay.
The other thing is, we want to make sure we're prioritizing activities, right? So, we've, we've talked about this. We want to make sure we're effectively allocating our, our resources, uh, capturing, uh, you know, making sure they're effectively trained, they have the necessary documentation to do their work, and that as we work through, uh, the maintenance schedules, that we are effectively, uh, revisiting it, reviewing, adjusting, improving as we go, right? You may start in one place, but gradually, uh, move into another place to make sure you're effectively, uh, effectively running a program, effectively aligning the program with the needs as the needs grow and change.
So, um, with, with that, oh, one more thing. Yeah, just a quick follow-up, sorry. Um, you know, and I think I've, I've, I've hit on this as we go through, you want to make sure you have clear objectives. So, what are you trying to accomplish? And knowing that you may not be able to accomplish everything you want to do right away, but at the same token, you should have a goal. So, maybe you say, initially, we want to do this. Long-term, we want to be here. Here's how do we get there, right? So, you want to look at incremental steps on the way. You want to make sure you're setting up regular inspection schedules, routine maintenance schedules, and understanding which assets require more frequent or less frequent visual inspections. I think developing clear procedures will, will be important for driving consistency, so that you're actually getting consistent results, and you can, you can measure your assets across the whole organization in a consistent way, with consistent, you know, consistent documentation, understanding of, of how maintenance is being performed, the reliability of the assets, etc. And you definitely want to engage your, your maintenance staff, involve stakeholders, um, you know, the guys that are basically turning the wrenches and replacing the filters, you know, they will have, they should be able to have input into this process. They're the ones that are hands-on with the equipment, so they will often be able to better gauge sometimes what a specific piece of equipment.
needs and what it doesn't. And you're, remember that you know, the asset management tool you're using, the Work Management tool you're using, should be your primary system of record for capturing all of these activities and maintaining the maintenance history, right?
And you know, as we kind of wind up here, I just want to reinforce, always be looking to adjust your plan, analyze data, look for, look for gathering data that can help you get out in front of, of maintenance. Make sure you're scheduling downtime to minimize disruptions. If you need to take a piece of equipment offline, consider the impacts, uh, to others. And then, can't, I know it's the last thing on the list here, but it's certainly not the least. Make sure you're constantly investing in your staff in terms of training, preparedness, knowledge, etc. They, they should be given the best tools. They should be given training. They should be prepared to effectively execute the program.
With that, um, you know, I think we've highlighted it. We just a quick highlight of takeaways, uh, from the session. And with that, I will turn it over. I know we only have a few minutes for any questions. Yes, okay. So we are now going to open up the floor for some questions. Just one final reminder, if you have any questions at this time, please send them to host using the WebEx chat tool on your screen. And we have about four minutes left. And if we have enough time, I'll pass your question to Doug, and he'll be happy to give you an answer.
So, to start off, do you currently have customers utilizing the platform for non-traditional assets like trees?
So, yes. Um, we have worked with customers that manage trees generally. And it can be as complex as individual trees with, uh, PR, you know, setting up pruning schedules. Pruning schedules might be variable. You know, the first three years it's more, you know, when it's a young tree, it's more frequent. When it's an older tree, it's less frequent. But yeah, we, we can do trees. In fact, I worked with a customer, we even set up all the Latin species names in the system to, um, uh, to track the individual trees. Okay.
And just one more question before we wrap things up. When building a planned maintenance schedule, how do you know you have the timing/frequency of tasks right?
So that's, that can be a tricky one. I mean, there's always best practice, right? You, you know, and, and we can offer some advice on that based on our experience with other customers. And you can also go online. You can use, you know, AI tools and say, gee, what, what's the correct maintenance, uh, scheduling for, uh, a rooftop air handling unit, for example? And, and you, you'll get an answer, you know, what you should do daily and weekly and monthly and all of that. But at the end of the day, you, you, you kind of need to look at a starting point. And maybe it's just to say a best practice that, hey, on a monthly, you know, on a monthly basis, I should be doing this. And then quarterly, I should be doing these other things. And annually, I should be doing all these other things. And then adjusting it as you go. A little bit like I said, looking for continuous improvement. Um, you know, one, you know, one, one customer I worked with, uh, they set it up and once they started running it, they looked at their cycle for, for example, replacing filters. And they said, you know, some of this equipment, we don't need to replace filters monthly. We can go bi-monthly. Or maybe we should be looking at airflow and, and if airflow drops below a certain, we, you know, we, we schedule replacement. So I, I think it's, it's a learning process, really. You might just need to look and say, here's what we got, but let's monitor, right? Let and let's adjust. And as I alluded to earlier, some pieces of equipment aren't used as frequently. They may not need the same schedule that something that say in a 911 op center needs, right? Because it's running 24/7. But a lot of it is, is gets down to the context of where the asset is, the particular piece of equipment or the asset's installed, how it's being used, uh, who, who's using it, how critical it is to the operation. And then, and then adjusting that, right? So, you know, I, I, I, it, it's, it's unfortunately, it's, it can be very variable. And sometimes you just need to start in one place and then see how it goes a little bit and adjust it as you go.
Okay. If you go over one more slide for me, Doug. That looks like all the time we have for today and all the questions we'll have time for today. If you have any additional questions, you can email. Doug's email is listed there. Um, and if we were unable to get your question answered, our team will reach out to you after today's webinar. I'd like to thank you all again for attending today's presentation. I hope you have all secured some valuable takeaways to keep in mind moving forward. Doug, I'd also like to thank you on behalf of AssetWorks once again for sharing your expertise with everyone today. I hope you all have a great day and we look forward to having you with us next time.
Yeah, thank you everyone. I appreciate you attending.