Measured Proactivity: How to Determine the Proactive Maintenance Plan for Your Building

You’ve definitely heard it in a career seminar before: be proactive. Seek out new tasks, and anticipate problems in the workplace before they occur. But this age-old career wisdom is equally applicable to maintenance and building management, as a proactive approach can both spare you headaches and save you from financial loss.

It is, however, much more work to adopt a proactive maintenance approach. One has to consider the root problem of equipment failure, rather than simply diagnosing the issue as it arises. So most proactive maintenance plans will result in scheduled, regular maintenance checks, and continuous monitoring based on the needs of each piece of equipment.

Of course, this is all rather idyllic. It’s typically not financially possible to exercise this amount of care for all systems and equipment in a building. But it’s still important to exercise proactive maintenance, weighing the financial ramifications of each particular system and piece of equipment if it does not end up working properly. And a proactive maintenance plan in one building may not work well for another, so it’s important to consider a building’s individual needs as well.

“What you’re really doing with a proactive maintenance program is managing risk,” explains Ken Stack, vice president of Solutions & Transitions at C&W Services in Auburndale, MA. “These unplanned maintenance items can crush a facility’s budget versus being proactive, budgeting, and spending a fraction of that breakdown cost.”

Reactive or Proactive?

The biggest threat equipment failure poses is, after all, downtime. Shutting down an operation, and your organization’s ability to handle it, is essential in determining a proactive maintenance plan. Proactive maintenance can save time and money by preventing downtime, creating fewer breakdowns, better energy efficiency, fewer service calls, and longer life expectancy of equipment.

“The best bang for the buck is where the maintenance activities are going to have a direct impact on either downtime or energy costs,” Stack explains. “In a lot of scenarios where there really isn’t an impact on downtime and energy, you’re trading dollars between either proactive maintenance or reactive maintenance. If you choose not to go with a proactive maintenance strategy, you’re going to have increased corrective maintenance from breakdowns. You might be saving in the short term by not performing proactive maintenance, but in the long term you end up paying the piper while experiencing increased equipment failures and degradation of equipment life.”

Essentially, the more moving pieces of equipment in a building, the more you need proactive maintenance. Smaller and simpler systems may not need as much proactive attention. For example, a large package unit, a built-up air handling unit, or a cooling tower will demand more maintenance than a simple boiler or pump.

Ultimately you will have to decide what’s more cost-effective: a reactive or proactive method of maintenance. Is it worth the downtime to wait for technicians to arrive and fix the issue?

The 4 Modes of Maintenance

Here are 4 different maintenance plans, each one fit for different pieces of equipment and different buildings. Determining which works best for you and your building is essential to cutting back on maintenance costs and preventing downtime.

1. A reactive maintenance plan takes care of issues as they arise with a “run-to-failure” approach. While this can keep scheduled maintenance costs to a minimum, it can prove to be costly when equipment actually does fail, as the fix may take longer and cause revenue loss.

For example, if a pipe is old and needs fixing, but rather than replacing it immediately, waiting until it breaks completely to fix it. It may save you revenue in the short-term, but in the long-term can cause more loss as you wait for maintenance to make the appropriate repairs.

2. A preventive maintenance plan works with time-based intervals determining maintenance and service to equipment. This mode is intended to perform service before equipment begins to wear, but it can be fairly inaccurate and more costly. If performed too often, equipment will be replaced while it’s still useful. Something like a scheduled replacement of an air-conditioning unit, for example, can prove costly if the unit is still in good shape and doesn’t actually need a replacement.
3. A predictive maintenance plan relies on determining when equipment will wear out, rather than using time intervals. This will typically be a more affordable route compared to the previous modes because it decreases downtime while optimizing the usefulness of equipment. For instance, predicting which of your plumbing, heating, or cooling systems are most likely to wear down and when, and acting accordingly.
4. A proactive maintenance plan combines components of the previous approaches by focusing on root causes that lead to equipment failure. This approach also prevents redundancy in repairs for things that don’t need it. However, it can also prove more costly than a reactive maintenance plan.

So, for example, finding out why it is that your plumbing keeps failing, and having maintenance replace the pipes completely. It may prove more costly at the time, but it will prevent the reactive replacement each time a pipe bursts and save you expense and downtime in the long-term.