Creating a Preventative Maintenance Program for Your School

When you’re a facility manager for a school or education facility, you know that there’s always ongoing maintenance that needs to happen. You probably also know how important and necessary it is to ensure that the facilities are maintained to ensure long-term functionality.

In order to stay ahead of mechanical failures, repairs or lengthy maintenance projects, you should come up with a preventative maintenance program to keep up on everything.

We’ve compiled a few tips and tricks that will help you put your preventative maintenance plan together. We’ve also created a sample preventive maintenance plan for you, which can be accessed at the end of this post.

Get Your Team Onboard

One of the first steps to building your preventative maintenance program is to get your team on board. If you don’t have their buy-in, you won’t be successful.

As the facility manager, it’s important that you review the preventative maintenance program thoroughly with your team to ensure they understand what it’s used for and how it will benefit the facility. Minor facility issues can lead to a major problem. So when your team is dedicated to preventative maintenance, your plan will produce great results. When your team is aligned and properly coordinated, maintenance issues will be handled much easier and quicker; saving your company time, money and resources!

[School is in session! Download our Education Facility Management Checklist for Back to School to make sure you have a preventative maintenance plan for the new school year.]

Determine Current Issues

Staying on top of maintenance issues with preventative maintenance is key. But this means that you need to figure out the areas that need attention first. A good place to start is with the larger, more expensive systems within your facility.

Start by checking your HVAC system to ensure it’s running efficiently. Are there any issues that you know of or assume will become an issue in the near future? Be sure to add those items to your preventative maintenance program. You should also get a mechanical service provider to assess your HVAC efficiency to ensure you are covered.

It’s also important to ensure your bathrooms are up to code and are able to handle high-volume use. Also, since this area is susceptible to mold and bacteria, it’s important to look at potential issues and add that to your preventative maintenance plan to ensure you don’t have long periods of downtime.

Plan Your Preventative Maintenance Schedule

When you are building out your preventative maintenance schedule, it’s important that you coordinate your maintenance plan with the school’s schedule. This way, you can determine the best times to complete projects. If you need to upgrade a highly-trafficked bathroom, it might make sense to get that done while school is on a break.

If your HVAC system needs an upgrade, it might make sense to do that when school is out for the summer. Throughout the school year, getting major projects completed can be difficult because the school is at its highest occupancy. Also, heavy-duty maintenance can be a major distraction during lessons.

Save any major maintenance projects for summer. Given that there are fewer people in the building, getting the project completed will be a lot easier during the summer months. Winter break is another window for projects. Make sure you can determine what can be done given the amount of time you have to complete it.

By planning out your preventative maintenance program, you’ll be able to keep your school in great condition with all of its systems functioning properly.

If you’re ready to build out your preventative maintenance program, download our simple checklist to get started.

If you’re looking for a mechanical service provider to help you complete your maintenance tasks, contact Rasmussen Mechanical Services to get a personalized quote today!