What is Building Maintenance?
Building maintenance includes everything surrounding the general upkeep, landscaping, cleaning, and building repairs for commercial or residential buildings. It refers to the activities that restore the functions and improve conditions of private property for all occupants, whether they live or work in the building.
When the electric system goes down or there is a plumbing issue, the building maintenance team handles repairs. These team members often go unnoticed until there’s a problem, and usually work quietly in the background performing maintenance and the day-to-day work that keeps buildings functioning and looking beautiful. Changing HVAC filters, inspecting equipment, and troubleshooting a variety of issues throughout the building are all tasks included in building maintenance.
Building maintenance encompasses many skill sets and roles, which can make it challenging to organize roles and responsibilities and prioritize the most important tasks. However, computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software can simplify building maintenance management for both the maintenance supervisor and the entire maintenance team.
Types of Building Maintenance Jobs and Workers
There are many different roles in building maintenance. Some small buildings may have one person who handles all the responsibilities of building maintenance, but most facilities have at least a few individuals with varying roles and responsibilities. These roles include:
- Maintenance manager/supervisor – This person oversees all parts of facility maintenance and the staff responsible for performing maintenance tasks. They may prioritize work orders, examine completed tasks, and be responsible for hiring maintenance staff members.
- Maintenance technician – The details of these roles can vary, but often the personnel working as maintenance technicians complete work orders and perform plumbing, HVAC, electrical, or other types of building repairs as needed. They may also clean facilities in the building or do tasks such as preventive maintenance on assets.
- Janitor – People in this role often perform essential tasks like cleaning and ensuring the building is safe for visitors and occupants.
Larger buildings or facilities may have more specific maintenance roles, such as:
- Grounds maintenance – Responsible for landscaping, snow removal, mowing grass, and ensuring the parking lot is well maintained and clean, among other grounds-related tasks.
- Electrical maintenance – Responsible for electrical system troubleshooting such as repairing appliances and fixtures and installing new electrical appliances in the building.
Examples of Building Maintenance
Building maintenance services keep your infrastructure in good shape and take a proactive stance on maintenance. It’s better to prevent potential failures by performing routine maintenance tasks than to wait and deal with them if they occur.
The goal of building maintenance is always to make buildings comfortable and safe for everyone who uses them. Here are some examples of building maintenance in practice:
- Repairing essential technology: Maintaining elevators, testing and repairing the fire safety response system, and checking the backup generators fall under this category.
- Preventive maintenance: TLubricating equipment, replacing filters, testing the HVAC system during seasonal changes, and other tasks that prolong asset life and reduce costs can fall under building maintenance.
- Washing and cleaning: Regularly vacuuming, disinfecting surfaces and thoroughly cleaning floors, bathrooms, windows, tables, and workstations. This is included in building maintenance plans for offices, plants, research labs, lunch rooms, shared hallways and other communal areas.
- Renovating the interior: Refreshing decor by painting the walls, laying down new fitted carpet, sealing or replacing cracked windows, or even insulating the roof are considered building maintenance tasks.
- Groundskeeping: This usually covers outdoor tasks like landscaping, clearing sidewalks, and trash removal. Seasonal activities like mowing the lawn, watering plants and shoveling snow would fall into this category. Upkeep of signage outside the building could also be included.
If repairing a piece of infrastructure is beyond the skills of the maintenance staff, they may also be in charge of finding professional contractors to complete the repair or replacement as well.
Routine vs. Preventive Building Maintenance
Routine and preventive maintenance are both options to keep assets running optimally. However, the approaches differ.
Routine maintenance means cleaning, maintaining, or repairing assets at regular intervals. Some tasks may be done daily, while others are weekly, monthly, quarterly, or seasonal – it all depends on each asset and its specific needs. The hallmark of routine maintenance is that it is planned in advance so that maintenance teams can complete the work on a calendar-based schedule. Routine maintenance is a type of preventive maintenance that can be used in tandem with other strategies.
Preventive maintenance is an overarching strategy for preventing unplanned downtime and boosting operational efficiency. It can be as simple as regularly changing filters in an HVAC unit or as complex as responding to asset sensor data when the first signs of failure appear. Maintenance teams can use a variety of techniques such as calendar-based schedules, condition-based planning, and predictive technologies to build a preventive maintenance strategy that improves uptime and performance.
Both routine and preventive maintenance are key parts of building upkeep. Routine maintenance helps keep assets in top shape, but a more robust preventive maintenance approach offers flexibility for all asset types in your facility.
Building Maintenance Management Checklist
Even the most well-run building maintenance program will still need replacement parts, updates, and building repairs. That’s why you should document each work order event on a building maintenance checklist to know how often to perform preventive maintenance (PM) on running assets.
A building maintenance checklist lays out the order of tasks for the technician who will complete them. Using a checklist for each part of the building ensures that the tech completes a thorough job and doesn’t miss any areas that need to be maintained.
Performing visual inspections of each area of the building is the first step to planning maintenance checklists for the work that needs to be done. However, certain parts of the building or machinery may require more in-depth testing to confirm if they are working properly.
Every facility has unique assets and equipment, but here’s a list of common areas to assess when compiling a building maintenance checklist:
- HVAC system – Visibly inspect for wear on wires and loose connections while determining any regular preventive maintenance needs, such as filter replacement.
- Plumbing – Check for leaks or visible wear on pipes, seals, and fittings. Ensure all fixtures are running properly and have hot water where appropriate, and check for visible signs of leaks such as mold or wet flooring.
- Safety features – Ensure fire alarms, sprinklers, safety signage, and other safety features are functioning properly and comply with applicable local safety codes.
- Structural and cosmetic features – Check that the roof has no visible damage, that no areas of the building are experiencing leaks during rain, and that drainage systems such as gutters are free of debris and functioning properly. This type of maintenance includes checking for chipped paint, damaged siding or wall materials, and correcting other exterior wear on the building.
- Pest control – Check for signs of rodents and bugs. If you haven’t already, schedule regular inspections or preventive services from a pest control contractor.
- Equipment – Items like freezers, boilers, generators, and other assets need to be inspected and maintained to ensure they are operating within their correct temperature parameters and working as expected. This may include running tests with the equipment to observe that they can carry out tasks properly.
- Flooring – Make sure all flooring is in good shape with no tripping or fall hazards, thresholds are in good repair, and that all flooring is clean and safe.
How To Prioritize Building Maintenance Tasks
Once you have a list of all the necessary tasks to keep things running smoothly, the next step is to determine the order and frequency of each task. This means creating a maintenance strategy, a guide that can be stored centrally as a reference for all stakeholders. That way, all maintenance team members and outside contractors know when and how to complete each task.
What exactly is in your maintenance strategy will depend on the needs of the building and the specificity of the tasks at hand. However, there are some universal categories that organizations use to prioritize different types of building maintenance:
1. Scheduled Maintenance
Preventive maintenance tasks should be determined for each area of your operation and scheduled at regular intervals. Then you can assign tasks to certain team members to ensure they are completed at the necessary frequency. Completed tasks should be documented by the technicians performing the maintenance, and technicians should also make note of any concerns they have so that the technicians performing future maintenance know what trouble areas to look for.
2. Emergency Maintenance
In many organizations, maintenance tasks are assigned a priority ranking to determine which are most important. The highest ranking is given to emergency situations in which the building could sustain considerable damage or an entire floor’s utility services could be disrupted.
3. Non-Emergency Safety Concerns
Next in line are high-priority tasks, which are those that are still important for ensuring safety but aren’t emergencies. Medium and low-priority tasks are still necessary but don’t pose as much risk to property or people if they can’t receive immediate attention. However, if they aren’t addressed, they could escalate into a higher-rated category.
What Does Building Maintenance Software Accomplish?
Keeping all of your assets, schedules, inspections, and technicians organized can be challenging. That’s where building maintenance software comes in.
Building maintenance software, or facility management software, is key to increasing productivity while reducing costs in your building maintenance program.
Building maintenance software is designed to automate time-consuming processes in your organization by allowing work orders to be tracked and scheduled digitally. This eliminates the need for paper work orders or messy calendars. It also enables you to create reports showing what building maintenance tasks have been completed and which ones are outstanding.
Maintenance software allows you to prioritize work orders so the most important items get done first, and you can assign work orders to technicians with the specific skills required to complete the task. Technicians can look at previously completed tasks right from their mobile device, without needing to hunt down work orders from a file. They can note all of their observations right in the software for future technicians to review and building maintenance supervisors can sign off on completed work orders, all in the same system.
Building Maintenance Management with a CMMS
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a software solution that allows you to build and manage a maintenance plan for every aspect of your facility. Whenever you have to install equipment upgrades, perform regular inspections, test equipment, or complete preventive maintenance, a CMMS lets you track the progress of those work orders to completion.
A CMMS can help you manage several facilities, too. For each location, you can implement modern software features like interactive mapping and mobile app-based access to maximize your building maintenance program. Maintenance team members will be better equipped to manage the processes that provide a cleaner, better-functioning workplace.
Building maintenance supervisors can add workflows or required steps for each process to help ensure work orders are completed thoroughly and effectively. A CMMS can also manage spare parts inventory, ensuring your parts storeroom always has everything your techs need to quickly complete needed repairs.
Whether you’re maintaining multiple buildings or just one, building maintenance management is simplified by using building maintenance management software, such as a CMMS, for scheduling and record keeping. To see what a CMMS can do for you, click here for a free demo of eMaint, one of the top-rated CMMS software programs used by maintenance professionals.