How to Create a Facility Maintenance Plan

A facility maintenance plan is at the core of a facility’s operations. This organized strategy manages and conserves assets, ensuring that asset lifespans are extended and organizations maximize the use of their investments. A facility maintenance plan is a systematic strategy for maintaining a facility's assets, ensuring that equipment, infrastructure, and essential systems function at an optimal level. 

Preventive maintenance is a key component of a facility maintenance plan. It helps extend the life of facility equipment and assets by preventing breakdowns, failures, and costly unplanned repairs. Instead of reacting to failures, businesses can schedule maintenance proactively, improving efficiency, enhancing safety, and minimizing downtime.

A facility maintenance plan is critical for facility managers, maintenance teams, and business owners to keep maintenance operations running smoothly, prevent costly repairs, and ensure long-term sustainability. This article will help you create an effective maintenance plan and identify common mistakes to avoid when designing and implementing it.

Before exploring this further, we need to understand what a facility maintenance plan is and why it is important for organizations with large capital investments in facilities, fixed assets, and infrastructure.

What is a Facility Maintenance Plan?

A facility maintenance plan is a systematic strategy for maintaining a facility's assets, ensuring that equipment, infrastructure, and essential systems function optimally. It guides maintenance through planned inspections, servicing, and repairs, keeping businesses ahead of the curve rather than reacting after something breaks.

An effective facility maintenance plan is crucial for minimizing downtime, as unexpected breakdowns can be detrimental to operations. Rather than face overpriced emergency repairs, businesses can plan for maintenance to keep everything operating efficiently.

Benefits of Having a Facility Maintenance Plan

Knowing the benefits of a facility maintenance plan makes it clear why one is necessary. It's not just a list of things to check; it’s a way of life, a strategy to maintain all your assets in top condition, reduce costs, and keep the day-to-day running smoothly. Well-planned maintenance enables businesses to avoid unnecessary downtime, maximize efficiency, and create a safer workplace. The following is a list of benefits of a facility maintenance plan:

1. Prolongs Asset Life

All equipment has a lifespan, and neglecting regular preventive maintenance can significantly shorten it. Regular maintenance, including up-to-date inspections and servicing, prevents wear and tear, ensuring that machinery and infrastructure last longer. This allows businesses to maximize the value of their investments without repeatedly purchasing expensive assets.

2. Reduces Operational Costs

Unanticipated repairs can quickly chew through budgets. To prevent emergent, costly breakdowns, maintenance plans enable businesses to proactively address potential failures and repairs before they negatively impact the workplace.

3. Improves Safety & Compliance

While poorly maintained facilities are a safety hazard, a typical maintenance plan emphasizes routine examinations of the building's fire alarms, electrical systems, and structural features to ensure they comply with safety codes. As a result, it leads to fewer workplace hazards, protects employees, and helps businesses avoid paying fines or dealing with litigation associated with non-compliance.

4. Boosts Productivity

When equipment fails, it can halt or interrupt operations, frustrating workers and incurring costs. A maintenance plan prevents business interruptions and promotes the smooth operation of all systems. It allows workers to focus on their tasks without interruption from incessant tech upgrades.

5. Enhances Sustainability

Well-maintained equipment operates more efficiently, using less energy and producing less waste. Whether it’s ensuring HVAC systems run at peak performance, preventing water leaks, or ensuring machines run efficiently, a well-thought-out maintenance strategy allows businesses to prioritize their actions, improve their sustainability footprint, and reduce utility costs.

Key Components of a Facility Maintenance Plan

Several key components need to be in place for a successful facility maintenance plan to manage assets effectively. However, facility managers and maintenance teams often overlook some of these elements when creating a preventive maintenance plan. Before developing your maintenance plan, review the following elements to help you get back on track.

1. Asset Inventory & Assessment

Asset Identification and Condition Assessment: The first part of a facility maintenance plan is a thorough inventory of assets. A properly structured asset inventory makes maintenance scheduling and resource allocation significantly easier. Assets should be categorized by type and criticality, and important details, such as serial number, location, specifications, images, and more, should be collected. This article provides best practices for setting up an asset registry in your CMMS.

2. Preventive Maintenance Schedule

An effective facility maintenance plan is prepared with a preventive maintenance approach on schedule. Regular inspections and services can catch issues while they are still small, sparing the organization from incurring expensive repair bills.

3. Maintenance Procedures & SOPs 

Maintenance procedures help standardize the performance of maintenance tasks, thereby aiding efficiency and consistency. If you want maintenance teams to apply best practices and follow the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance schedules and tasks, documenting Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) helps them perform the right tasks the right way. SOPs should outline the steps required for day-to-day activities. Properly performed procedures minimize errors, create safety, and increase the lifespan of key resources. CMMS software, such as Click Maint, is instrumental in streamlining preventive maintenance tasks and ensuring that procedures are followed when completing each preventive maintenance (PM) or inspection.

4. Budgeting & Resource Allocation

Budgeting and resource allocation for a well-defined maintenance plan ensure smooth operations. When a budget follows planning, funds are available for maintenance, so it does not get postponed. Having the necessary financial resources to support the maintenance plan pays off in the long run. Organizations that neglect funding planned maintenance often find that the expected savings are lost as unexpected, costly repairs occur. 

5. Staffing & Roles

The success of a maintenance plan relies on matching people with tasks. Efficiency and Accountability require clearly defining who is responsible for what maintenance action. It helps businesses make important decisions related to using an in-house maintenance team or outsourcing to third-party vendors.

6. CMMS Software Integration

Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) is software that helps organizations manage and track maintenance activities, including work orders, preventive maintenance, assets, parts, labor, suppliers, inspections, and more. CMMS software streamlines maintenance operations by automating work orders, using preventive measures schedules, and monitoring asset performance. Real-time updates enable companies to monitor repairs, optimize resource allocation, and minimize downtime. Having a CMMS enables maintenance teams to be more efficient, reduce equipment downtime, and avoid costly equipment breakdowns..

Steps to Create A Facility Maintenance Plan

Step 1: Evaluate Your Facility’s Needs

A thorough assessment of the current facility conditions is crucial for creating an effective facility maintenance plan. This assessment should involve a detailed evaluation of all key facility systems, identification of potential risks and vulnerabilities, and a thorough assessment of existing maintenance requirements.

By understanding the current state of the facility and pinpointing areas that require urgent attention, you can proactively address maintenance issues before they escalate into major problems. This knowledge also allows you to allocate resources strategically, ensuring that maintenance efforts are focused on the most critical areas and that the available budget is utilized in the most efficient manner possible.

Step 2: Make an Inventory of Assets & Equipment

Create an asset registry that details all buildings, locations, conditions, and equipment, along with their respective maintenance history. Focus on the ones that are used most often and are at risk of breaking down; that way, you can ensure high-traffic systems are well-maintained.

Step 3: Declare Maintenance Strategies

Determine whether you want a preventive, predictive, or reactive maintenance approach. Preventive maintenance aims to prevent breakages, predictive maintenance utilizes CMMS or IoT data to forecast breakdowns, and reactive maintenance addresses problems when they occur. If you want your business to run smoothly, you need balance.

Step 4: Create a Maintenance Schedule

Implement a routine maintenance schedule that addresses daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly responsibilities. Follow manufacturer recommendations and ensure that high-priority assets with irregular usage patterns receive regular servicing to minimize the risk of unexpected failures.

Step 5: Budgeting and Resource Allocation

Estimate the costs of routine servicing, repairs, and equipment upgrades to plan for future maintenance expenses. Designate emergency funds to avoid costly disruptions and ensure that financial constraints don’t delay necessary maintenance.

Step 6: Adopt CMMS or Digital Tracking Tools

CMMS software automates maintenance tracking, manages work orders, and monitors asset performance in real-time. This enables teams to stay one step ahead of issues, increasing efficiency and minimizing downtime by streamlining workflows.

Step 7: Train Your Team and Set Up Your SOPs

Ensure that the maintenance team  is trained on best practices, safety protocols, and compliance. SOPs help standardize procedures, leading to uniformity, fewer errors, and an increased lifespan of critical assets.

Final Step: Measure, Analyze, & Enhance

Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as downtime, maintenance expenses, and the number of repairs closely. Based on these insights, make a habit of continuously improving your maintenance plan by adjusting it wherever you find inefficiencies and preventing them from happening in the future.

Key Facility Maintenance Planning Best Practices

Use Data & Analytics

Employing maintenance data and analytics enables you to forecast failures before they occur, allowing you to make repairs proactively and avoid costly downtime.

Perform Regular Inspections

Regular inspections uncover minor problems while they're still minor before they develop into significant failures that bring operations to a standstill.

Standardize Processes

Well-defined and repeatable maintenance processes ensure consistency, improve efficiency, and reduce the likelihood of errors.

Leverage CMMS & IoT

Integrating Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) with Internet of Things (IoT) devices enables the automation of maintenance tracking, enhances asset monitoring, and optimizes scheduling.

Make Sure You Have an Emergency Plan

Something can go wrong at any moment, which is why a thorough emergency response plan is crucial. It is designed to respond promptly to integrated failures, minimizing damage and downtime.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Lack of Documentation

When records are not kept, businesses miss important maintenance tasks, which can lead to unnecessary breakdowns and inefficiencies. Maintenance history allows seamless future prediction.

Neglecting Preventive Maintenance

It can be easy to neglect maintenance because everything currently seems to be running well, but nobody should ever wait until equipment fails to take action; this is a costly mistake. This is where preventive maintenance comes into play; it helps detect minor problems before they escalate, thereby avoiding costly repairs and downtime that can put businesses off track.

Not Using a CMMS or CAFM

Maintenance tracking done manually is time-consuming and prone to errors. However, technology like a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) automates processes such as scheduling, work orders, and asset monitoring, which increases efficiency.

Many organizations look to CAFM (Computer Aided Facility Management) software as an alternative to CMMS software. Organizations that don't leverage technology are often disorganized and lack real-time insights.

Poor Budgeting

When formulating budgets, it's common for businesses to underestimate the importance and costs of maintenance. This oversight can have a cascading effect, leading to unexpected higher costs due to breakdowns and the early retirement of valuable capital assets.

To avoid these risks, companies should implement robust budgeting policies. These policies should ensure that adequate financial resources are allocated to maintenance and repair plans. This holds true not only for routine, scheduled maintenance activities but also for those unexpected repairs that arise sporadically.

By proactively addressing maintenance requirements and incorporating them into the budgetary framework, businesses can safeguard their operational continuity, optimize the lifespan of their assets, and ultimately enhance their financial performance.

Conclusion

A facility maintenance plan ensures that buildings, equipment, and infrastructure remain in optimal condition. This proactive approach extends the lifespan of assets, reduces operational costs, and minimizes disruptions from unexpected breakdowns.

Preventive maintenance is key, involving regular inspections, cleaning, and servicing to identify and address potential problems before they escalate. This is more cost-effective than emergency repairs and downtime. Software applications, such as CMMS or CAFM software, can enhance efficiency by organizing and tracking maintenance activities and providing data for informed decision-making.

A well-structured plan includes routine inspections, preventive maintenance, emergency repairs, inventory management, contractor management, budgeting, regulatory compliance, and sustainability measures. This comprehensive approach extends asset lifespan, reduces costs, minimizes downtime, improves safety and compliance, and enhances asset value and performance.

In today's business environment, a well-executed facility maintenance plan is key for safeguarding investments, enhancing operational efficiency, and achieving sustained success.