Month: May 2013

Spring HVAC Maintenance Tips: The Only Guide you Need.

Spring and summer temperatures have been on record-breaking upward trends in many regions for the past several years, making proper HVAC function a top priority for maintenance professionals. HVAC systems must already work harder to contend with rising temperatures, so it’s crucial to ensure that facilities professionals are observing best spring HVAC maintenance practices to reduce the strain on these systems.

A strong facility management software can streamline routine checks by simplifying workflow, making it easy to implement these practical, low-cost measures that can increase HVAC efficiency and lower power bills:

+Check seal gaps and cracks as they may be letting warm air into facilities. These openings can considerably increase the workload of HVAC systems, so a thorough inspection should be conducted to find these areas and fix them.

+Clear vents and HVAC units of debris and blockages. These systems need room to operate properly, so it’s important to clear obstructions that can build up over the winter months.

+Adjust AC output during hours when facilities are not in use. Many systems feature controls that can make these adjustments automatically. Lowering output by just a few degrees can translate into substantial cost savings over time. Continue reading “Spring HVAC Maintenance Tips: The Only Guide you Need.”

Spring Maintenance Tips: Foundations

Cracks, potholes, efflorescence, and mineral deposits are among the most common signs of deterioration in facility foundations. It is crucial to catch these problems early and have them addressed by maintenance professional. Problems like these often require specialized equipment and/or materials to properly resolve, and can disrupt normal facility function. It is therefore important to have a planned maintenance and inspection schedule and an organized maintenance workforce in place to minimize these disruptions and prevent them from consuming more resources than necessary.

Do You have a Foundation Drainage System?

Spring is a perfect time to run a cost/benefit analysis on a potential foundation drainage system upgrade or overhaul. These systems can take many forms, but they all achieve the same thing: diverting water from your foundation. Flooding around the foundation can cause serious problems over time that can require costly repairs. Continue reading “Spring Maintenance Tips: Foundations”

4 Reasons Every Contractor Should Use CMMS Software

In honor of a great review of ManagerPlus products by the contracting experts at CraftPro Home Improvements, we’ve asked our own experts to offer insights into the ways that Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) solutions can help contractors organize their equipment, inventory, and labor, in order to streamline overall operations, maximize ROI on assets, and keep projects on deadline.

Most importantly, our experts emphasized that, if utilized properly, CMMS software can be a powerful client relationship tool, as it can increase visibility into operations and bolster contractor accountability.

Here are our top four reasons why every contractor should be using CMMS:

1. Reduce Delays. Although not always deserved, the contracting industry is often associated with negative stigmas such as frequent delays, cost overruns, and sub-par work. These problems, when they do occur, leave clients upset, and can even lead to litigation in extreme circumstances. Consequently, many construction contracts contain some variation of the “no damages for delay” clause, which putatively shields contractors against delay-related damages. But according to a William and Mary Law Review paper, which comprehensively examines the risks associated with construction delays, these stipulations are only sporadically enforced and do not provide reliable protection for contractors. Given the severity of the problems that can arise from delays, it is vital that contractors streamline their workflow, improve scheduling, maintain sufficient levels of parts inventory, and keep equipment running. In an industry with a mixed reputation, an efficiently run company will have a distinct competitive advantage. Continue reading “4 Reasons Every Contractor Should Use CMMS Software”

Spring Maintenance Tips: Pipes

Months of cold temperatures and increased precipitation take a heavy toll on facilities’ piping. Here are a few items that your workforce should be watching for as they perform their spring maintenance inspections. It’s a good idea to make these checks a permanent part of your preventive maintenance schedule, as they could save you substantial costs down the road by identifying problems early.

Key Facility Maintenance Pipe Checks

Winter Wear

Frozen pipes are the facilities-equivalent of the seasonal flu. Unfortunately, there’s nothing as simple as a shot to prevent pipes from freezing, but there are some straightforward measures that can be taken to prevent the problem from occurring in the future. Spring is a good time to fit exposed pipes with insulating sleeves that can prevent their temperature from falling below freezing. Areas where pipes are directly exposed to cold air should be patched and sealed over. Continue reading “Spring Maintenance Tips: Pipes”

Maintenance Management Report: Understand its Basics

The first phase in any successful rollout of ManagerPlus is to run all work orders, maintenance logs, PM schedules, maintenance inspections, and other primary maintenance tasks through the maintenance management system.

Once the transition is complete and everyone is using the system to track, schedule and document their work, it’s usually not long before our clients start diving into our maintenance management Reports Module to gain detailed insight into their data.

Depending on the edition, ManagerPlus offers anywhere from 23 to 84 ready-made maintenance management reports that provide a wealth of insight into data on assets, work orders, inventory, logs, and much more. Each offer different filtering and configuration options to help you zero-in on the information you need (not to mention the full customization available through the add-on ReportingPlus Module).

With all of these options, it can be difficult to know where to start, so we’ve decided to launch a new blog series: Know Your maintenance management Reports. This first installment is designed to get you familiar with the basics, so let’s get started.

+ Printing the List View.  

Yes, I know I just got done talking up the benefits of our reporting options, but sometimes everything you need to see is right there in front of you in the module list view; all you need to do is print it.

Sorting your data in the list view is easy: you can rearrange columns by dragging and dropping the headers, and add additional columns by clicking the asterisk button (1). You can also right click and select “Show List Grouping” (2) which will create a blank area where column headers can be arranged for a variety of data views. If you want to see totals for any of your column headers, you can right click on the column header and select the footer type to show the count, average, min, max, or sum for the full list or individual groups within the list (3).

In the below example we are working in the Work Orders Module, and have dragged the “Status” header into the List Grouping area, followed by “Work Type.” Now we can see a count of all of the completed work orders for the work type “PREVENTIVE” because we have also added a footer that shows the count. In this case, I have also narrowed down what appears in the list by using search criteria (4), filtering the view based on the “Status” and “Work Type”.

Work-order-list-view-1

Continue reading “Maintenance Management Report: Understand its Basics”

How to Use ManagerPlus’ Custom Search Criteria

One of the key advantages of using ManagerPlus CMMS products is the ability to gain visibility into asset data quickly and easily. Because ManagerPlus’s maintenance management software uses a relational database, you have the power to organize your data in more precise and complex ways that will enable you to identify key trends, add clarity to your reports, and more.

The following walk-through will give you a basic grasp of how to perform more accurate searches by using custom criteria:

1. Open ManagerPlus and Click the Assets tab

2. Below the Assets tab, you will see the following binoculars icon, click here:

download-7 Continue reading “How to Use ManagerPlus’ Custom Search Criteria”

Preventive Maintenance Case Studies Illustrate the Benefits of it

Potholes, divots, cracks and disintegrating, crumbling roads rank with traffic and car failure as the biggest annoyances that drivers face on a daily basis. But for public transportation departments, these are more than mere problems: they jeopardize the safety of travelers and cost millions to fix.

Over the past several decades, studies of road and bridge maintenance have come to an important conclusion: a preventive maintenance regimen, implemented early in the life of a road or bridge, can be up to six-times more cost effective than reactive/emergency-based maintenance.

Some of the other key findings include:

+The Michigan Department of Transportation (DOT) saved an estimated $700 million in maintenance costs after implementing a preventive maintenance program for their roads. These results were analyzed and confirmed by an independent third-party consultant. Continue reading “Preventive Maintenance Case Studies Illustrate the Benefits of it”

School Maintenance – 6 Ways of Direct Impact on Education

Happy National Teacher Appreciation Week! To celebrate, the facility maintenance management experts at ManagerPlus have identified six aspects of our education system that are directly impacted by school maintenance and facility condition.

Continue reading “School Maintenance – 6 Ways of Direct Impact on Education”