Property management company helps ensure tenant comfort and safety with eMaint
Customer since: 2017 | Industry: Services
EP2 Investment Holdings, LLC, a property development and management company based in Ann Arbor, MI, needed Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software to enable enhanced visibility of maintenance activities and costs. In addition, the company required that the software replacing its inactive WO system integrate with the company’s purchase order, invoicing, and general accounting processes and advance the maintenance management of its fifteen healthcare facilities spread across Ann Arbor.
Since implementing eMaint, the company and its customers benefit from straightforward maintenance workflows, simpler invoicing, and customer WO request processes. They also quickly create insightful reports using the stored CMMS data to improve yearly budget estimates and accuracy.
BACKGROUND
EP2 contracts with and oversees the maintenance of 15 buildings that house a variety of healthcare business practices. These facilities range from 4,000 square feet to 82,000 square feet and contain more than 3,600 assets.
The organization manages various required maintenance activities based on leasing agreements made with its medical facility tenants. Their work order requests include everything from minor common area repairs like unclogging toilets and changing light bulbs to critical preventive maintenance tasks on HVAC systems and safety-related assets.
Four years ago, EP2 decided to replace its idle WO system with a computer maintenance management system. Stephanie Moore, property development project manager for EP2, headed up the search. After considering each vendor’s CMMS functions, she selected eMaint CMMS software for its overall capabilities and scalability. Moore is also the system software administrator.
CHALLENGES
The organization’s staff includes a manager, three maintenance technicians, an accountant, and numerous contractors, including electricians and plumbers.
EP2 wanted to achieve several goals using the eMaint CMMS software:
- Streamline maintenance work invoicing and payment processes to meet deadlines
- Assign and track WOs and work completed
- Improve the accuracy of short- and long-term budgeting using stored CMMS data
- Elevate tenant facility planned and unplanned maintenance service, purchase order, and invoicing processes
IMPLEMENTATION
Moore made the most of the training offered by eMaint by attending all of the boot camp sessions. She then trained her manager and visited each location to train other essential users. Her first task was to enter all assets into the system.
EP2 harnessed many of the eMaint system’s key features and other vital functions, including customizing form fields, dashboards and integrating purchase orders and invoicing with the CMMS.
Because the organization manages 15 facilities, the eMaint interactive maps feature was especially beneficial. Moore wanted to make it easier for technicians to identify where maintenance work needed to be performed. Using an asset ID, technicians can pull up a WO on a smartphone or via an onsite monitor. Based on the asset ID, the interactive map shows which facility and the room where they need to perform the work.
Moore also used the system to develop a workflow that would designate and auto-populate priority WO levels. Maintenance leaders and technicians can use the eMaint dashboard to view the priorities and other work orders on one screen and see the number of days they have to complete the work.
EP2 even optimized the custom fields function by adding a field that informs the hiring person if a contractors’ certification is up-to-date or expired.
RESULTS
Some maintenance workers are still reluctant to use the system consistently. To help with that, EP2 can create a report that helps the organization’s stakeholders identify where usage gaps exist and decide how to close them. Also, before eMaint, a report showing expenditures over $500 was produced manually each month. Now Moore saves time by using the CMMS to pull the figures instantly.
The CMMS is also helping the organization accumulate more reliable data. For instance, Moore recognized that the time it took to explain the job to a contractor wasn’t accounted for on WOs. With eMaint, errors like these can be caught and resolved, making invoicing based on time and labor more accurate.
She also recently used the system’s stored historical data to quickly pull reports showing facility townships that EP2 met its wastewater treatment plant maintenance agreements.
BENEFITS
“We have had some newer things added on where we have to do reports to townships to document stormwater maintenance agreements. So, it’s very easy for me just to go into eMaint, look, make sure the work was done, check all the boxes, and then just send the documentation into the township, so that way we’re not violating our agreements.”
– Stephanie Moore, property development project manager and eMaint administrator for EP2