Step-by-step guide to set up preventive maintenance schedule
In property management, maintaining your properties appropriately, can be a lot of work. Therefore a good organized system can help you out a lot. A well thought-out preventive maintenance schedule, not only helps to keep your objects and devices in good condition, but helps to avoid expensive repairs and unexpected breakdowns.
Preventive maintenance involves regular check-ups and tasks to prevent potential issues before they become major problems.
In this step-by-step guide, we walk you through the essential steps to create a preventive maintenance calendar from scratch.
Step 1. List all your objects and rooms.
List all the objects you have and see how thorough you want to be with listing the rooms. There are three options:
- List objects only,
- List the objects, but break it down to floors or sections,
- List all the rentable rooms and commonly used rooms.
Now that you have set up all your objects, it’s time to go through what kind of devices, that need regular maintenance, are in your buildings. They can be:
- heating devices,
- ventilation,
- electrical systems,
- elevators,
- some kind of sensors etc.
Once the devices are listed under correct buildings, think about their maintenance frequencies, that usually range from weekly to yearly checkups. You can look it up in their manuals, but sometimes you know from your own experience, that some older devices need more frequent checkups.
Depends on the system you are using, but it’s good to link the manuals to the devices. So, when you need them, they are all in the right place. Makes your life easier and reduces stress from searching things from different channels.
Now that you have determined the maintenance frequencies. Set up the activities that need to be done, for each device. For example, a ventilation system probably needs a filter change, clean up and visual check-up.
Step 3. What else needs to be done?
If you think outside of the devices. What are the activities you do, to keep your properties well maintained? Here is a list of ideas, that you probably do already, but what may not come to mind right away:
- Mowing the lawn,
- Cleaning the rain gutters,
- Plants watering/upkeep,
- Washing the windows,
- Fire extinguisher check-ups,
- Spring cleaning
Usually there are two options:
- Your own employees/colleagues, who work with you in the same company,
- Those who work in separate companies and you need to outsource the service.
| Company | Main contact | Contact persons | Their area of service | In what buildings they work? |
Of course, if you add more data, then you can make better decisions. For example, you have two companies working for you, that repair electrical devices and are equally good at what they do, but one of them charges more than the other. If you have this information stored in one place, it’s good to compare different contractors.
You can add data like:
- Prices – do they charge hourly or have fixed price?
- Do you have a contract with them or is it not needed?
- Contract dates – starting and end date.
- Previous repairs and their quality.
Now, when you have listed all the important data, it’s time to make a system, calendar, schedule - however you like to call it. Assign every task you have listed, to a correct person and put all the actions into organised view, for example a calendar view.
The pros of using a property management software to create a preventive maintenance schedule:
- Hassle-free calendar creation – all is done automatically, no need to search for templates or start to invent a system yourself.
- You can put all your objects, rooms, devices, contacts in one place, so all your colleagues have the same real-time information.
- You can have comprehensive overview if the tasks are done, contractors can use the same system and don’t need to report to you separately in a different mediums.
- You can assign tasks with ease. No need to write hundreds of emails.
Step 6. Enjoy the hard work
Enjoy the work you have put into making a smooth and working system. :)
In conclusion
Listing all your data to create a system can be time consuming, but without a proper system in place, these actions in total take up even more of your valuable time. Having a proper maintenance calendar is very useful and can be even money-saving in the long run. No maintenance check-up is missed and devices are well maintained, therefore not so prone to breakdowns.
Oftentimes there is no point in inventing a system yourself and it’s more effective to use an existing program created. Book a virtual tour with Hausing’s team and we walk you through our preventive maintenance possibilities.
Latest blog articles
Hausing Technologies OÜ
+372 56 222 099info@hausing.ee