Planned Preventative Maintenance Software

Plan and Prevent Before You React

Engineers and operatives in a facilities team feel obliged to fix issues raised on a day to day basis. Understandably they give today’s problems the priority even if some jobs could be scheduled for later attention. This reactive way of working is understandable but isn’t conducive to freeing up time to put together and properly manage a planned preventative maintenance schedule.

Planned Preventative Maintenance Schedules

Drawing up a planned preventative maintenance (PPM) schedule is a lovely idea but making time to create one is hard. However, the benefits of creating a PPM schedule will pay back many times. How?

Ideally maintenance work should be preventative; as much as 33%. Regular inspections generate pro-active work orders to comprise the majority of all work orders required. In other words genuine reactive maintenance – that is responding to issues to raised in the estate – will form a minority of actual work.

So how do we change the mindset of the the estates or facilities team and persuade them to move from a reactive to a planning mode? The best approach is to do it in small steps. Start with one system, such as HVAC, and set up schedules on manufacturer guidelines or warranty agreements. Once the first system is set up move on to another. Start accruing benefits! Minimise downtime of equipment, reduce costs, maintain a better estate and longer lasting assets. All achievable!

So bit by bit roll out other PPM system schedules around the organisation. Reduce the inefficiency (and stress) that goes with a reactive operation. Naturally strong and easy to use facilities management and planned preventative maintenance software can help.

First steps are to set up your sites, locations and assets in your system. Then think about how you want to set up your planned maintenance schedules. You can do them by site, by location or for each asset. If by asset, you can set up a planned maintenance schedule by an asset class, and then attach relevant assets from the class to this schedule. See more on asset management software here.

Follow the simple steps below to set up a planned maintenance schedule across your sites for HVAC servicing using Trackplan’s CAFM software:

Step 1 – You can find the Planned Job List in the Planned Maintenance menu on the left

Step 2 – From the planned schedules area click on New Schedule

Step 3 – Set the parameters for your first schedule. It will create planned jobs by site as established. Then click Save.

Step 4 – See, add or remove sites for the new schedule

Once the planned Schedule is created, if you go to the Planned Schedules grid, you can expand the schedule on the small arrow on the left, it will then show all sites, where your can see the ones attached to it, and you can also remove or attach others to the schedule.

Step 5 – Jobs are then automatically created in the system at regular intervals, or you can can click Generate Jobs

If you have added more sites to the schedule, jobs will be automatically created by the system, it will take a few minutes. If you want to accelerate this process you can press “Generate Jobs”.

Step 6 – See job details and complete job

Go to the planned jobs grid and click on the job number to access the job details.  When ready you can then complete the job (or the contractor can do this from their mobile).

Step 7 – Complete Job on the job details page. Next job automatically created.

The job is now marked as “Complete” on the job details page.  And the next job is automatically created in the time established in the Planned Schedule details.

The planned schedule screen shows the job number just completed and also the number and date for the next booked job, which is created as soon as the last job is complete.

Step 8 – At any time see your maintenance schedule represented in excel style format in the annual schedule view.

Watch the Planned Preventive Maintenance Video