Optimizing Facility Maintenance Schedules: Balancing Cost and Effectiveness

An essential component of facility management is optimizing the schedules for repairs and maintenance. Comprehensive facility maintenance is essential to maintaining the security, dependability, and effectiveness of facilities. Additionally, it is crucial to the facility's long-term ability to retain its value. However, facility upkeep might be expensive. Therefore, improving facility maintenance schedules requires balancing economic factors with maintenance efficacy. 



According to financesonline, the predicted market size for maintenance, renovation, and operations worldwide in 2020 was $616.01 billion. By 2026, it is anticipated to reach an amount of $701.3 billion, expanding at a CAGR of roughly 2.19%. 


With a market size of over $616 billion, it is necessary to cut unnecessary costs as much as possible in the affordable facility maintenance software business. This article will explain how to balance cost factors with maintenance effectiveness when improving facility maintenance schedules. 

Assessing Maintenance Needs and Priorities

Optimizing facility maintenance schedules requires first determining the needs and priorities for maintenance. This entails figuring out the facility's maintenance requirements and ranking them in order of importance. Examinations and evaluations of the facility on a regular basis might help identify maintenance requirements. 


Putting maintenance needs in order requires figuring out which jobs are most important for the facility's reliability, efficiency, and safety. This can be achieved by taking into account various key elements in maintenance. These elements include the chance of failure, the expense of repairs, and the effect of an error on operations. Facility managers may create a maintenance schedule that is both efficient and cost-effective by evaluating maintenance needs and priorities.

Developing a Preventive Maintenance Strategy

Another crucial step in improving facility maintenance schedules is creating a preventative maintenance(PM) strategy. Preventive maintenance entails conducting maintenance operations on a regular basis. This strategy is implemented in order to avoid equipment failure and increase the lifespan of the facility. At its core, a preventative maintenance program should have eight steps:


  • Set and order the company’s goals

  • Establish and track KPIs

  • Win over stakeholders

  • Utilize appropriate hardware and software

  • Configure PM triggers

  • Instruct maintenance personnel on the use of the preventive maintenance plan 

  • Create a maintenance schedule checklist

  • Adapt the strategy in light of the outcomes


Implementing Condition-Based Maintenance Practices

A crucial step in optimizing facility maintenance schedules is the adoption of condition-based maintenance techniques. Condition-based maintenance entails keeping an eye on the health of the machinery and carrying out repairs as necessary. This can be achieved by doing routine equipment inspections and evaluations. 


Facility managers can prevent equipment failure by keeping an eye on the state of their equipment and identifying possible issues before they arise. Condition-based maintenance procedures can also be employed in conjunction with preventative maintenance procedures. By doing this, businesses can maintain equipment in excellent condition and reduce equipment failures. 


Outsourcing Maintenance Services

Another choice for streamlining facility maintenance schedules is to outsource maintenance services. When maintenance work is outsourced, a third-party company is hired to handle it on the facility's behalf. For institutions that lack the resources or knowledge to handle maintenance duties internally, this can be advantageous. 


Third-party businesses can be able to carry out maintenance chores more effectively and at a cheaper cost than in-house workers. However, while outsourcing maintenance services, it is important to pay close attention to aspects like the dependability of the outside organization. Before selecting whether or not to outsource maintenance services, building managers should carefully consider these aspects.


Implementing Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)

The top benefits of facilities management software will surprise you a lot for sure. CMMS is software that can help you in facility maintenance schedules. Preventive maintenance jobs, condition-based repair assignments, and work orders can all be managed and tracked using CMMS software. Statistics on repair operations and the cost of those actions can both be produced using CMMS software. 


Facility managers may ensure that maintenance chores are completed on an ongoing basis and that breakdowns in equipment are reduced by deploying CMMS software. By seeing chances for improvement and monitoring the success of maintenance efforts, CMMS software may help facility managers in optimizing maintenance schedules.

Conducting Root Cause Analysis for Maintenance Issues

The practice of identifying the underlying causes of issues in order to find suitable remedies is known as root cause analysis. Fishbone diagrams, fault tree analysis, failure type and effects analysis, and other techniques can all be used to determine the root cause of an issue. 


Facility managers can find areas for improvement and create plans to stop equipment failures in the future by conducting root-cause analyses for maintenance problems.

Training and Empowering Facility Maintenance Staff

Maintenance employees should be appropriately taught and equipped with the skills they need to carry out their duties. Ongoing training and hands-on instruction are two ways to accomplish this. 


The effectiveness of maintenance activities can be increased by giving maintenance workers the authority to decide on maintenance chores. Facility managers may ensure that maintenance duties are carried out efficiently by training and empowering the maintenance team. Doing this also has the added benefit of keeping breakdowns in equipment to a minimum. 


Balancing Reactive and Proactive Maintenance

Striking a balance between reactive and proactive maintenance is very important for facility management. In contrast to proactive maintenance, which is done on an ongoing basis to avoid equipment failures, reactive maintenance entails carrying out repair operations in the event of equipment faults. 


Choosing the right ratio between these two forms of maintenance is necessary for balancing cost and effectiveness in facility maintenance. This can be accomplished by taking into account elements like the equipment's age, the expense of maintenance, and the chance of failure. 



In conclusion, the process of optimizing facility maintenance schedules is multi-step and complex. Facility managers can prevent equipment breakdowns and ensure that maintenance chores are carried out efficiently by following the guidelines mentioned in this article. They can also lower the cost of maintenance chores and increase the effectiveness of maintenance activities by doing this.


One valuable tool in achieving these objectives is FieldCircle, a leading software solution in facility management. Under the leadership of CEO Yogesh Choudhary, FieldCircle has revolutionized how facility managers streamline their maintenance processes. By leveraging FieldCircle's innovative technology and comprehensive features, facility managers can further enhance their maintenance scheduling, tracking, and reporting capabilities, ultimately improving the overall efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their maintenance operations.

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