Why You Need To Be Implementing A Preventative Maintenance Strategy
As a site supervisor, you have most likely heard some form of the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ However, while this approach may be effective in the short term, ongoing reactive maintenance can result in a lot of dollars in wasted revenue each year owing to a lack of systematic, proactive fixes. In addition, unexpected asset failure can be stressful and time-consuming for a facilities crew to repair and restore functionality.
If your business is still using a reactive approach to maintenance, it is time to try something different. Maintaining your property safely and in operation requires a comprehensive preventative maintenance strategy. This post can guide understanding and putting a successful and proactive maintenance program in place in 2022.
What is preventative maintenance?
Preventive maintenance is a systematic approach to building operations that aims to predict and prevent catastrophic equipment failures before they occur. To accomplish this goal, facilities personnel conduct routine inspections, maintenance and repairs on assets to ensure they work as the manufacturer intended. Functional equipment allows facilities staff members to focus less on reactive maintenance and more on upcoming maintenance tasks or time-sensitive work orders.
As a general rule, it is preferable to prevent problems than react to them. Preventive maintenance decreases the chances of unanticipated issues by ensuring that equipment is operating at peak performance. The following is a list of several methods that maintenance teams can use to stay on top of preventive maintenance in their respective departments:
- Regular inspection tests such as carrying out ariel surveys
- Cleaning of buildings, assets and grounds
- Lubricate moving parts
- Repairing damaged equipment
What are the benefits of a preventative maintenance strategy?
Generally speaking, preventive maintenance has two overriding goals: to maximize asset longevity and efficiency while also ensuring the safety of people and assets. Facility managers and their teams can use preventive maintenance principles to produce a variety of benefits, including the following:
- Reduce the amount of extra wear on equipment
- Prevent unscheduled failures of mission-critical equipment.
- Reduce the number of inspections and maintenance jobs that are performed that are not necessary
- Saving money
- Preempting and preventing future problems from occurring
What is the difference between preventative and reactive maintenance?
Reactions to issues are inevitable in the field of facility management.
Things will always go wrong. But, on the other hand, facility managers can make efforts to improve safety and reduce the need for reactionary maintenance by adopting a proactive approach to repairs. Before everything else, facility managers should understand the advantages of proactive maintenance instead of a reactive approach.
Reactive maintenance involves identifying and repairing a problem after an asset has already experienced a breakdown or failed to function correctly. A maintenance technician determines the source of the problem and performs the necessary measures to return the asset to operating condition as needed.
Preventive maintenance is a type of maintenance that emphasizes operations that are planned periodically. To provide an asset with the care it requires while still operational, preventive maintenance must be performed. Taking a proactive approach reduces the likelihood of failure, costly maintenance, and unscheduled downtime.
