There are almost 3 million non-fatal workplace injuries a year in the United States. While a lot of things can cause those accidents to occur, one of the most common is improper facility maintenance.
Simply put, failure to avoid common facility maintenance mistakes can endanger your employees. This opens up the floodgates for potential litigation, insurance issues, reputational damages, and potential license loss. These are all things that businesses must avoid at all costs. It can also cause you to have to spend more on your building over time, which isn’t what you want, either.
In this article, we will break down five common facility mistakes all businesses should avoid. We will also give you some tips on how you can take your facility maintenance plan to the next level.
1. Not Having a Strong Maintenance Schedule
It goes without saying, but if you don’t have a set maintenance schedule in place for your facility, then you’re not set up for success. Trying to wing it, or maintain areas of your facility as you go, is a great way to forget something entirely.
On top of that, it introduces a very relaxed mentality about facility maintenance to your team, which will also derail your results.
2. Having a Poor Maintenance Plan in Place
While having a plan is a good place to start, it is important to note that the plan must be solid in order to work effectively. A lackluster plan will leave you with less-than-desirable results, causing your facility to age poorly and break down fast.
A pro tip? Spend some time crafting your plan. Have items on your maintenance plan that need to be done daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Also, make changes to that plan over time to improve it.
3. Not Training Your Team Members Properly
It takes an entire team to properly maintain a facility. And in order to keep your building up to par, you need to make sure that those team members are trained the right way.
Having routine maintenance training sessions will not only help you prepare your team better but will also stress the importance of maintenance to them. On top of that, it will give you an excuse to get some of the things on your maintenance plan completed.
4. Refusing to Get Help From Outside Services
For some maintenance tasks, you’re going to need to reach out for help from a professional who knows what they are doing. Trying to have someone inexperienced on your staff do something they don’t know how to is a recipe for disaster and should be avoided.
For example, if nobody on your staff understands mechanical integrity, bring in someone from the outside to handle that responsibility. At worst, bringing in someone who knows what they are doing to train your team is very much recommended.
5. A Lack of Investment From Upper Management
Upper management needs to be very involved in the facility maintenance process. Without a strong upper management presence, your staff won’t take the entire process as seriously as they need to.
Seeing upper management get involved in facility maintenance is good for team morale, too, which can help improve the overall working environment for everyone.
Facility Maintenance Mistakes to Avoid Completely
Well, there you have it facility managers! Those are five crucial facility maintenance mistakes that you need to make sure you and your company avoid at all costs to prevent injuries and costly fixes.
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