The importance of facility maintenance cannot be overstated. There’s an old saying that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Well, routine facility maintenance is no different.
Performing regular, routine maintenance ensures that larger, more expensive problems don’t arise in the future. Indeed, the tasks of routine maintenance are often mundane and easy to overlook or forget about, but they are what keep a facility running smoothly and efficiently in the long run.
If machines are breaking and floors need repairs, your business will be subject to long downtimes to alleviate these issues. However, many of these issues could be avoided with a little routine maintenance.
What is Facility Maintenance?
Facility maintenance is the process of performing routine inspections and maintenance that enable the entirety of a facility – all areas, machinery, structures, etc. – to continue operating at their optimal level of efficiency day in and day out.
How Do You Maintain a Routine Maintenance Program
Monitor Machinery and the Facility with Diligence
The first part of routine maintenance is simply performing routine inspections and checks of important equipment and areas. Running diagnostics on machines and inspecting factory floors allows you to identify problems early on, and then address them accordingly.
These routine checks are easy to let slip by since they seem time-consuming and distract from other priorities. However, they are what will allow you to identify small problems before they have the chance to grow into larger headaches.
Schedule Maintenance
Many aspects of your facility will require regular maintenance, so schedule it accordingly. Some maintenance should be done daily, some should be done weekly, some monthly, and even some annually.
Whatever the cadence is, make sure to keep a consistent schedule that enables you to make sure that maintenance is actually being performed on time and properly. Whether you need to allocate jobs to certain employees, make sure machines or facilities aren’t out of commission during a certain time of the day or month, or just need to keep track of what maintenance has been performed, having a detailed schedule for maintenance will allow you to keep your facility running efficiently and effectively.
Routine maintenance can also prolong the lifespan of all aspects of your facility. A little care goes a long way, and regular inspections and maintenance of your valued facility assets will keep them up and running for as long as possible.
Ensure You Have Metrics and Indicators for Assessing Your Facility
Setting out clear metrics and indicators to examine when assessing your facility is critical to performing maintenance properly. Having a checklist, for example, that your employees can run through at the end of each day to ensure everything is wound down properly helps keep you organized and efficient. Plus, in order to effectively analyze your facility, you have to know what you are looking for.
Be Prepared for Both Planned and Reactive Facility Maintenance
In order to maintain a facility properly, you have to expect the unexpected. This means that, in addition to the maintenance tasks you plan for, you should also be prepared to perform reactive maintenance at a moment’s notice. Being prepared for any sort of maintenance that might be required within your facility at all times will make sure that you aren’t caught off guard, and it will ensure that if something unexpected happens (such as you need to paint a machine suddenly and fix an epoxy coating) your facility won’t experience significant downtime. A facility that cannot operate for a prolonged period of time can be disastrous for a company, leading to lost revenues and profits. Being prepared and ready for reactive maintenance minimizes the chance of such issues.
The Impact on Employee Morale
One of the biggest benefits of routine facility maintenance is the impact it has on employee morale. Employees want to feel confident that their employers care about them. Conducting expeditious and detailed facility inspections and maintenance signals to your employees that you care about their safety and want to make sure they are working in optimal conditions. Machines that are constantly breaking down or having to be repaired, facility areas that are rundown and need painting, and floors that are becoming dangerous from a lack of care signal to employees that they are not a priority. Plus, it can open your business to unwanted liabilities.
Where Does LACOSTA Fit into the Equation?
At LACOSTA, we offer a wide array of facility support services that play a critical role in maintaining the safety, productivity, and aesthetics of our clients. Our clients include large manufacturing, industrial, healthcare, education, industrial and commercial customers, so we know how to work at scale. Plus, we have been in the industry for decades, so we’ve seen it all!As part of our facility support services, we have team members who are specially and specifically trained to handle tasks like painting, coating, and other site maintenance needs. This experience allows us to make expert recommendations and offer competitive pricing across industries to keep our clients’ facilities in top shape year-round without sacrificing efficiency or productivity.
What Sorts of Training Does LACOSTA Provide Employees With?
Our facility support services employees are trained and certified to handle the most important application methods for services like line stripping, machine painting, epoxy flooring, concrete polishing, and both interior and exterior painting. We value training and certification because it ensures the safety of both our and our client’s employees, while at the same guaranteeing the job is done correctly each and every time.
What Facility Support Services Does LACOSTA Offer?
At LACOSTA, our service offerings are wide-ranging in both breadth and depth. Plus, we have partnered with other companies in many of these service categories in order to provide our customers with quality solutions for almost any issues that may arise. This means we can respond to essentially any need our clients bring to us.
To learn more about the wide array of facility support services we offer at LACOSTA, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are happy to provide additional information and even audit your site to give you the most up-to-date information on how our services might be able to meet your business’ needs!
Why Choose LACOSTA and Contract Out for Facility Support Services?
Contracting out with LACOSTA for facility support services allows you to focus on what you do best – running your business. You can rest at ease knowing you don’t have to worry about all the little details that go into daily facility maintenance, and you can instead focus on the big picture operations and what you specialize in. You won’t have to train employees to do things like care for epoxy coatings, paint heavy machinery, or perform routine maintenance checks, all of which take time and additional HR support. By contracting out, you can realize significant cost savings while removing tasks from your plate that can distract you from the main goals of your business.
The Main Point
Facility maintenance is easy to overlook when you are busy worrying about the million other aspects of running a large facility. There’s so much that goes into running the core part of a business that there really isn’t time to focus on the small details of facility maintenance, and doing so only distracts from what is really important to your business. That’s why contracting out your facility maintenance can make a world of difference, because while it is integral to the operation and functioning of your business, it is typically not something you want to be spending your valuable time and energy on.
We are happy to answer any questions you may have about our facility support services, so please don’t hesitate to reach out!