4 Key Facilities Maintenance Tasks for the Holiday Shutdown

The end of the year is here and for a lot of businesses that can mean a shutdown for the Holidays. If your organization is going to shut down for a period of time over the Holidays, make sure to put a facilities maintenance plan in place to ensure the safety of your premises and equipment. This way you can avoid any mishaps during shutdown as well as unexpected downtimes when you get back.

Let’s discuss three key strategies to implement a successful maintenance schedule:

Early start for test runs: With a busy end of the year season, the best idea is to start on your maintenance schedule as early as possible. As soon as you have finalized your holiday sale strategies, the next step is to get your facilities in the best shape possible. Start by examining equipment to seek out any flaws that could cause hindrance later. Timely inspection ensures all tools are functional and will last the end of year shutdown.

Revisit your maintenance schedules: There are countless bottlenecks that could halt business operations at the last minute. When you start to plan holiday maintenance at the right time you can revisit maintenance schedules to ensure nothing gets delayed.

Develop an emergency maintenance plan: Despite everything being planned on time, there is still a chance for last minute facility breakdowns. Always be prepared for this. Set aside a list of high risk facilities that are likely to be checked in for last minute maintenance. Moreover, arrange for emergency service sessions in case of unpredictable circumstances.

How to prepare facilities maintenance for the closing season?

Automated maintenance is the best way to ensure your facility and equipment remain in good shape during the shutdown. A cloud-based tracking software will enable you to record all details about office facilities and easily schedule maintenance events.

Here are 4 essential facility maintenance tasks you can perform with a tracking software.

1. Announce your maintenance schedule

Announce the maintenance schedule well ahead of time. Once the dates are finalized you can add them to your dashboard calendar. A tracking software enables you to schedule events on a live calendar so that all relevant parties can be informed.

By adding your maintenance schedule on the tracking app, you can inform the concerned vendors on time. Early notifications save you from the hassle of making last minute appointments. In addition to this, an online schedule can be shared with the staff members in the company so that backups can be arranged to avoid any disruptions.

2. Check in facilities for maintenance

Well maintenanced office facilities and equipment are key to a productive work environment. To ensure efficient workflows after the holiday season, it is important to schedule facilities services on time. After you have announced your maintenance dates, schedule your service events. This can be done with a help of a tracking software that lets you check in individual assets for repair.

Usually facilities services can include:

Cleaning of general office equipment due to weather conditions.
Setting up HVAC maintenance through professional services
Taking backups and replacing batteries of control systems
Scheduling control panel and electric cabinet service sessions

3. Review safety control systems

Every company has a safety control system installed in the building to reduce risk of hazards. It usually operates with a combination of risk reduction methods to maintain a safe state for all office equipment. Being an integral part of the company workflows, safety control systems need to be supervised and audited before closing down for the holidays.

In order to ensure streamlined safety operations, it is important to schedule maintenance and testing of the control systems. A tracking software lets you set up the correct installation and maintenance procedures through automating the whole process. You can order a backup of spare parts for protection against random failures due to fluctuations in operations due to shutdown.

4. Deploy equipment facilities upgrade

The end of the year is a good time to schedule any upgrades that have been pending. These can include any spare parts that have to be installed or broken pieces that have to be replaced. As a part of your facilities maintenance program, get together a team to oversee equipment upgrades. Start off with the very basics: the infrastructure including ventilation, emergency generators and elevators. If any of these facilities requires an upgrade, request a service session with tracking software. The relevant vendor will be informed and your maintenance event will be scheduled.

In addition to this, the administration could also look into building maintenance. Any leakages that need to be repaired or furniture that needs to be fixed. Most importantly, don’t forget to service the security surveillance systems before the holiday shutdown. Thinking ahead for key facilities maintenance tasks enables you to lower downtime caused by upgrade installation. Once you are back to work, everything is in order with a lower chance of breakdowns.

Best practices to automate facilities maintenance with tracking software

Amidst other business targets, one of the key end-of-year tasks is facilities maintenance. The best way to get started is to centralize facility management through tracking software. Doing so enables you to collect real time information about facilities utilization all year round. This data can then be used to develop your maintenance program that will lead to lowered downtimes.

Moreover, with the help of automated management, it becomes easier to stay within budget. This is useful because it is difficult to stretch finances at the end of the year for maintenance expenses. When everything is managed according to the business capacity, there is a greater possibility of customized management for your facilities. Tailored maintenance practices designed according to your needs streamline workflows with improved efficiency.