A maintenance strategy helps maximise property value, minimise costs, and increase sustainability over time. It also creates better conditions for planning and working more efficiently and preventively. Here are 6 steps to help you develop your strategy.
Well-planned and organised maintenance is crucial for the lifespan of buildings, components, and assets, and thus also for the value development of your property. This applies to all types of properties, but is especially important for industrial properties, which have specific safety and operational requirements compared to residential or commercial properties.
Many organisations lack a clear and long-term strategy for maintenance and preventive maintenance of their properties. To lower the threshold and help more organisations realise the value of working strategically with maintenance, we share five steps towards a maintenance strategy in this article.
Step 1 – Analyse the specific needs of the property
Industrial properties have unique requirements compared to residential or commercial properties. It is therefore important to identify and document all critical areas within the property. This includes office spaces as well as production and warehouse facilities, loading docks, machine rooms, ventilation systems, and various components. Conditions also differ between older properties and new constructions, which affects the focus and priorities of your maintenance strategy.
To be able to prioritise and identify critical success factors, it is also important to carry out a risk assessment and impact analysis. This way, potential safety risks and problem areas that require extra preventive maintenance can be identified and addressed. Examples include managing environments with hazardous materials or particularly critical equipment. The risk analysis should also ensure that the organisation complies with all laws and regulations related to property management.
Step 2 – Goals and milestones
The analysis and risk assessment provide valuable input for the next step – clarifying what you want to achieve with the strategy in both the short and long term, and why it is important. Having a clear understanding of the property’s conditions is a good guide for setting the right financial and operational goals.
Some example questions to define the desired outcome could be:
- What level of performance and reliability is expected from the equipment and systems?
- How can maintenance costs be kept within budget?
- What safety standards and legal requirements need to be met?
- What is required to ensure or extend the lifespan of the equipment?*
- How can downtime be minimised?
- What is important to ensure and optimise operations?
Define reasonable, measurable goals and set appropriate milestones to be able to track progress along the way.
Step 3 – Align the preventive maintenance strategy with the planned maintenance plan
By aligning the preventive maintenance strategy with the planned maintenance plan, you can coordinate activities more effectively. This facilitates ongoing planning and contributes to better cost control and more efficient resource allocation. If you are responsible for multiple properties and different types of spaces, it also gives you better overview and control of all areas.
Ensure that the strategy is integrated into a broader perspective so that it covers preventive maintenance, planned maintenance, and repairs.
- Establish routines for preventive maintenance and planned maintenance to prevent major problems and ensure that the property is kept in good condition.
- Develop clear guidelines and standard protocols for preventive maintenance and planned maintenance.
- Create checklists for routine inspections and maintenance tasks.
- Prepare a process to quickly handle repairs, with clear protocols for managing and following up on urgent issues.
Establish a contingency plan to handle any emergencies, also linked to the risk analysis. How the work is to be carried out should also be described in the strategy; should preventive maintenance be performed through traditional inspections, do you want to use sensors to monitor your equipment and spaces, or are there other suitable methods?
Keep in mind that the more actions and inspections that are created, the more administration is required to follow up and maintain the plan. A well-developed strategy, along with systems and routines, helps you keep control of all spaces and components that need maintenance. It also helps the organisation to prioritise, and thereby work more efficiently, proactively, and with a long-term perspective.
Step 4 – Create a budget and financing plan
The next step is to set a budget based on the identified needs. The budget allocates resources (personnel, tools, materials) to cover preventive maintenance, planned maintenance, and unforeseen maintenance actions. The budget should include:
- Operating costs, including maintenance, repairs, insurance, as well as taxes and fees.
- Capital costs, such as major capital expenditures related to renovations, new constructions, or major upgrades.
Step 5 – Follow-up and measurement
To ensure that you are meeting your goals and that the strategy is leading to the desired results, processes and routines for continuous follow-up and monitoring are needed.
By using a property management system, it is possible to collect and make all property information accessible in one place and to track maintenance activities in real time. Today, there are also many digital tools, IoT systems, and sensors that can collect data on property performance, energy consumption, ventilation, and more. Access to relevant data is an important prerequisite for follow-up and measurement, both in the short and long term. It will also affect the level at which follow-up can be carried out, and which KPIs you can define.
Select the key performance indicators that are most relevant for your property management and your specific conditions. Some examples of KPIs are:
- maintenance costs per year and per square metre
- downtime for equipment and systems – time and cost/potential loss of revenue
- number of fault reports, type of faults
- average response time and resolution time per fault report
In addition to the quantitative data you can obtain from the property management system, or in other ways, there is also qualitative information to gather from within the organisation. Feedback from staff in operations, property managers and maintenance technicians, or other relevant stakeholders, can provide valuable insights.
Step 6 – Anchoring and continuous development
By following the steps above, you can lay the foundation for a strategy that helps you optimise property management. This, in turn, contributes to long-term sustainability and financial profitability for the entire property. For an industrial property, it also contributes to more efficient and reliable production.
Once the strategy work is in place, anchoring is crucial. Make sure that all involved parties understand their roles and areas of responsibility. Evaluate and adjust the strategy regularly, based on achieved results and changes over time.
How do you ensure effective planned maintenance for your properties? Pythagoras meets many property management organisations that need to create a more strategic and proactive maintenance process. Are you curious about how a digital property management system can support more efficient technical management? Read more here
