There is no facility manager who prefers a chaotic approach to facility maintenance versus an organized one, but the reality is that FM staffs often find themselves scrambling to handle emergencies. The complexity of the FM role doesn’t always leave time for planning ahead. However, successful FM organizations have preventive maintenance programs in place to minimize air conditioning failures in the middle of the summer, or other similar emergencies, including well-designed reactive programs for unpredictable emergencies.
Tom Buiocchi, Executive Director and CEO of ServiceChannel, and Kevin Smith, Chief Operating Officer of Ferrandino & Son, were asked to describe some of the trends and best practices they’ve observed.
Q: How does a retail FM balance proactive and reactive plans?
Buiocchi: “Our customers run both proactive programs, such as planned, scheduled maintenance, as well as more reactive programs to handle emergency programs. Our more forward-thinking customers make sure to emphasize planned maintenance as much as possible across their locations.”
Smith: “The best programs offer an element of both. Proactive allows for day-to-day brand maintenance and reduces the out-of-pocket spend. Structured reactive maintenance with a thought toward long-term budgetary goals provides balance on cost while tackling the larger projects that simply don’t fit into a preventative program.”
Q: How has technology improved an FM’s ability to be proactive?
Buiocchi: “By analyzing data across stores, they often are able to identify trends and see where there’s a pattern of reactive work. For example, they can see if it’s a particular equipment model that’s failing. With that information, they can proactively service those models ahead of time or even replace them to eliminate continued failure elsewhere. The Internet of Things (IoT) is also impacting maintenance. With more equipment internet-enabled or integrated with connected devices, FMs can get automated warnings of sub-optimal operating conditions and take proactive action before facing expensive equipment downtime.”
Q: What are the most important programs You’ve seen in recent years?
Smith: “We have seen a trend in building landscaping budgets in three-year terms, and identifying traditional out-of-scope spend like high tree trimming, retention pond maintenance or capital improvements. A rolling three-year budget is developed with this information. Clients have captured a larger share of capital spend for their facilities through better planning, strategic pricing and better developed project plans for their properties.”
Q: What are the most important reactive FM programs?
Smith: “For our company, it has to be snow removal. While snow removal is always categorized as a facility program, it truly is disaster recovery where service failure prevents stores from opening and can risk the safety of employees and customers. Other service programs, like HVAC, could argue that if a store is 110 degrees, nobody will shop there — and that is probably true. However, no one will be injured in this situation and they could still stay open. So from a safety and store operations perspective, snow removal is the most critical.”
Q: How can a reluctant store manager be convinced to spend proactive money now to prevent larger reactive expenses later?
Buiocchi: “Our FM customers can show reports to store managers that compare planned maintenance vs. emergency repair. By analyzing those locations that spend proactive money, it’s often apparent that they’re reducing the likelihood of larger reactive expenses in the future.”
Smith: “If I knew the answer to that, our company would be three times larger than we are now! The best way to approach it is to simply lay out in detail the value proposition of both scenarios. However, the challenge is typically in companies where enterprise decisions involve 10 to 15 decision makers. We typically don’t have access to that group, so our ability to turn the ship is often limited to educating those on the front lines — our facility partners that we work with every day.”
Q: Is there a typical range of how much of a maintenance budget should be used for proactive maintenance? Is it based on store size, volume, other?
Buiocchi: “It really varies based upon customer and store type. Similar sized stores can have varying traffic and different equipment levels, which leads to vastly different maintenance obligations. Once retailers are able to analyze their spend appropriately, most move more toward proactive, because it becomes easier to justify such spend quantitatively against greater and inconsistent reactive spend.”
By: Sheryl S. Jackson
