Maintenance costs are the second highest component of operating expenses (after utilities), and nearly every FM is working to control these expenses for at least a couple of reasons. First, the rising costs of electricity, gas, and even water and sewer charges are pulling funding away from maintenance activities. Second, economic times are difficult right now, and most FMs have been requested to make budget reductions.
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Everyone understands that one has to keep paying the electric bill, but there is a perception that you one cut the maintenance costs at least for a while. Even a recent FMLink Question-of-the-Month found that nearly one-quarter of those surveyed have reduced the replacement frequency of their HVAC filters, in order to save money.
Many FMs are doing the same types of maintenance with lower funding levels. With lower maintenance funding, the facility conditions deteriorate and the productivity of the workforce suffers. Also, poorly maintained equipment will use more energy and overall expenses will rise even faster. This can be a difficult cost spiral from which it is nearly impossible to recover.
A better strategy in these difficult budget times is to increase the productivity of your maintenance workforce. Nearly every organization with whom we have worked either supplements its staff with contracted resources or utilizes overtime by its regular staff to complete their maintenance activities. By getting more work done with one’s own staff, one will be able to reduce the need for contractors, reduce the need for overtime, or both.
How can one increase the productivity of a maintenance workforce with a very short return-on-investment? Consider implementing handheld devices for the maintenance workforce. It is one of the maintenance “Best Practices” identified by the FM BENCHMARKING Cost Survey.
In the sample output listed above, for example, 70 percent of the participants in the fourth quartile of cost performance had implemented handhelds for their workforce. Percentages continue to rise to over 95% of organizations in the first quartile of cost performance.
After numerous site visits and personal observation to verify the implementation success and economics of handhelds, we are convinced the data is accurate. Here are some basic background notes
- No organization that we have benchmarked has experienced less than a 10 percent improvement in workforce productivity due to implementation of handhelds.
- The longest reported payback was three months.
- We have been unable to identify an unsuccessful implementation.
- The greatest obstacle to implementation is labor or workforce resistance.
If you haven’t implemented handhelds in your organization, you should ask yourself “WHY NOT?” When we surveyed companies, the most common excuse we heard was, “Labor doesn’t want to do it.” But is this a performance enhancement that management or labor should control? The real issue most labor unions have with handheld implementation is that they can be used to track wrench time. Wrench time is the amount of time a maintenance worker actually spends working on a job with tools, parts, etc—not the time getting the parts, or talking to the customer, etc. With handhelds, one will see how much time a maintenance worker is actually working. As soon one starts measuring wrench time, the work force starts paying more attention to it, and productivity goes up.
The other often stated reason for not implementing handhelds is that these are difficult financial times and the organization does not want to spend money on anything that is not essential. That is a really weak reason, even in these days. The most financially strapped organization should be able to come up with the funds needed for something with just a three-month payback. If one can’t get any funding from the finance group, hopefully, the FM should be able to self-fund this type of investment from the maintenance budget. With a three-month payback, one can’t afford not to do it.
More information about FM BENCHMARKING may be found at www.FMBENCHMARKING.com, including a free demonstration tool where you can input your facility data and see some benchmarking results.
