The last few years of the global pandemic have stretched public resources to the breaking point. So, it’s never been more important for maintenance teams to make the most of their public assets.
Managing these increasing demands with shrinking budgets poses an ongoing challenge. That’s where CMMS for public works can help. Moving from reactive to proactive maintenance can make better use of your maintenance team’s time and resources.
Preventive maintenance is cost-effective and beneficial for public works departments of all sizes—lowering costs, improving reliability, and extending equipment life cycles. CMMS can help your team gather the data you need about your assets, as well as help your organization get the most out of its investments. Let’s talk about how it can help you.
Preventive Maintenance Planning in Public Works
By establishing and regularly performing preventive maintenance, public works departments may be able to sidestep serious problems that arise as a result of neglect as well as delay more expensive maintenance.
For example, automated PM schedules and inspections help spot issues before they occur. Maintenance intervals can be scheduled based on asset or part condition, which triggers a work order just before the point when system inefficiencies or failures begin to occur.
Preventive maintenance supports public works departments in multiple ways.
Asset Management
Asset management tools in CMMS software track your assets over their entire life cycle to maximize value. Preventive maintenance can impact the uptime and total life of key assets. Assets can easily cost more than they’re worth, particularly as they age. Your oldest equipment might be costing you the least amount of money in repairs—or the most—but you’ll only know if the data is there.
CMMS can capture a wealth of data with every work order or scheduled preventive maintenance task. It can not only track the age of the equipment, but the miles, hours, life-to-date repair dollars, and many other metrics—helping you decide when it becomes cheaper to replace an asset instead of repairing it. You can keep tabs on all asset types, including equipment, buildings, grounds, rooms, and vehicles.
Equipment Maintenance Scheduling
Preventive maintenance planning in public works can extend equipment service life and help control costs. CMMS software will generate a schedule of PM tasks, making it simpler to follow the manufacturer’s guidelines. Maintenance intervals can be scheduled based on asset or part condition, which triggers a work order just before the point when system inefficiencies or failures begin to occur.
CMMS software can automate the tedious stuff (data entry, email, request approval), so you can focus on more important things. Also, you won’t waste time looking for stuff because your CMMS database keeps the things your team needs (historical records, part information, vendor contact details, manuals, etc.) in easy-to-find places.
Control Costs
Government agencies are always accountable to the public. So, controlling the cost of maintenance is always a major goal for maintenance teams. CMMS helps you capture key data and turns it into reliable information to help make cost-effective choices. You can use that data to budget appropriately for repairs and maintenance, as well as create replacement plans. The ability to provide detailed reports also can make maintenance costs more transparent to stakeholders.
When you use CMMS to schedule and track PMs, you’ll reduce emergency maintenance issues and unexpected production stoppages. This, in turn, cuts overtime costs for emergency repairs and reduces production losses. If you know when and why an asset tends to break down, you can take steps to improve uptime. You can also schedule maintenance for off hours by tracking equipment use time.
Documentation and Compliance
Public works departments need to follow all related laws, policies, and regulations. CMMS helps your team follow the rules. It could be documentation about safety protocols for OHSA, compliance regulations, or simply paperwork to support any liability issues. This type of documentation lies near and dear to your agency’s legal and compliance departments.
Maintaining compliance requires increasingly complex recordkeeping. That’s where CMMS shines. Your software can keep the necessary audit trail for inspectors. Plus, a huge benefit of CMMS is the ability to drastically reduce that prep time. Rather than your team taking extra time to assemble all necessary documents, the software can generate detailed information in seconds.
Parts and Inventory Management
For most public agencies, a lot of capital sits in the stockroom. With its maintenance inventory control and parts management features, CMMS helps you prevent time- and money-wasting problems like running out of parts, searching for lost parts, or duplicating inventory you didn’t know you had.
CMMS can help quickly identify what you need for which piece of equipment. When an emergency arises, this information provides critical data for making cost-efficient decisions. CMMS tracks stocking levels, reorder points, storage locations, and supplier information. You can also track various units of measure for a single inventory item. For example, you might purchase oil by the barrel, but use it by the quart.
Find out how MPulse CMMS software can help your public works department. Contact us.
