Blog
Running facilities well
110 short pieces about the parts of this job that software usually gets wrong. Nothing here asks for an email address first.
CMMS
What a CMMS is, in plain words
What maintenance software is, what it costs, and how to choose one that people use.
- CMMS
CMMS or EAM: which one you actually need
A CMMS is built around the work. An EAM is built around the asset over its whole life. Four questions that tell you which side of that line you are on.
Read 6 min - CMMS
Why the maintenance module in your ERP keeps getting abandoned
The ERP already has a maintenance module and nobody uses it. The reason is not training. It is that the module was designed for the finance team.
Read 6 min - CMMS
Cloud or on your own server: what actually changes
The hosting question is mostly settled, but for reasons people get wrong. What cloud actually changes for a maintenance team, and the four questions worth asking.
Read 6 min - CMMS
What a CMMS really costs, and what moves the number
Per user per month is the headline. Implementation, data import, mobile seats and building count are where the total is actually decided.
Read 7 min - CMMS
How to compare maintenance software without a feature grid
Feature grids make every product look the same, because every vendor ticks every box. Five tests that separate them, all of which you can run during a demo.
Read 7 min - CMMS
What a plant needs from maintenance software that a building does not
Running hours, changeover windows, critical spares and downtime coded to a line. Five requirements that separate plant software from building software.
Read 7 min - CMMS
Maintenance software for a team of five
Small teams fail with big software for one reason: nobody has a spare half day. What a five-person team should insist on, and what to leave switched off.
Read 6 min - CMMS
A CMMS rollout that finishes: the first ninety days
Most rollouts stall in the data phase and never reach a technician. A plan that puts real work on a phone in week two and builds outward from there.
Read 8 min - CMMS
Six ways a maintenance system dies quietly
Nobody announces that the system failed. It just gets slower, then optional, then ignored. The six patterns, and the early sign of each.
Read 6 min - CMMS
What to bring from the old system, and what to leave
Migrating everything is how rollouts stall. Four things worth moving, three worth archiving, and the import order that keeps the list clean.
Read 6 min - CMMS
What the phone has to do, or none of it works
The mobile app is not a companion to the maintenance system. For the people doing the work it is the whole system. Seven things it has to get right.
Read 6 min - CMMS
The four integrations worth building, and the rest
Integration lists are long because they are cheap to write. Four connections change how work runs. The rest are usually a spreadsheet once a month.
Read 6 min
Preventive maintenance
Preventive maintenance, from a schedule to a habit
Setting intervals, keeping the schedule achievable, and the checks worth doing.
- Preventive maintenance
Preventive, predictive, condition based: which to use where
Not a ladder to climb. Four strategies, and a short test for choosing the right one for each piece of equipment you own.
Read 6 min - Preventive maintenance
How to set a maintenance interval you can defend
Manufacturer manuals are written for the worst case. Your own failure history is better. A method for tuning intervals with the data you already have.
Read 7 min - Preventive maintenance
When doing more maintenance makes things worse
PM compliance is high and machines still fail. Usually the checks are looking at the wrong thing, or the maintenance itself is introducing the faults.
Read 6 min - Preventive maintenance
What belongs on a preventive maintenance checklist
Most PM checklists are a list of nouns. A checklist that produces a usable record asks for readings, names the pass range, and says what happens on a fail.
Read 6 min - Preventive maintenance
HVAC preventive maintenance, by equipment type
One HVAC schedule for a whole building is why filters get missed. What a rooftop unit, a chiller, a cooling tower and a fan coil each actually need.
Read 8 min - Preventive maintenance
Standby generator maintenance that survives a real outage
A generator that starts every month and has never carried load is not proven. What weekly, monthly and annual checks should cover, and why load banks matter.
Read 7 min - Preventive maintenance
Boiler maintenance before the season, not during it
Boiler failures cluster in the first cold week because the annual service happened too late. What to do in summer, what to check monthly, and what water treatment prevents.
Read 7 min - Preventive maintenance
The seasonal work that gets remembered too late
Four times a year a building needs work it does not need the rest of the time. The list, and why putting it on a date in the past tense never works.
Read 6 min - Preventive maintenance
What preventive maintenance software has to do
Any product can store a schedule. Six behaviours separate software that keeps a programme on track from software that produces a list of late jobs.
Read 6 min - Preventive maintenance
Total productive maintenance, without the poster campaign
TPM asks operators to own the basic care of their machines. The parts that produce results, and the parts that turn into a wall chart nobody reads.
Read 7 min - Preventive maintenance
The maintenance jobs that quietly change the energy bill
Energy spend rises for maintenance reasons long before anybody links the two. Six jobs that move the bill, and the readings that prove it.
Read 6 min - Preventive maintenance
Getting what one person knows out of their head
One person knows which breaker feeds what and why the pump trips in summer. Four ways to capture it that do not depend on anybody writing a manual.
Read 6 min
Work orders
Work order management, from the report to the record
The path from somebody noticing a problem to a record that is still true a year later.
- Work orders
What belongs on a work order, and what does not
Every field on a work order is a tax on the person you most need to keep. The nine that earn their place, and the ones to delete.
Read 6 min - Work orders
The maintenance request form, done properly
The form a tenant, teacher or shop manager fills in decides how much work you hear about. Four questions, and everything else moved to triage.
Read 5 min - Work orders
Priority levels that people actually use correctly
When everything is urgent, nothing is. How to define priority by consequence, keep the list to four, and stop the top level being the default.
Read 5 min - Work orders
Work order statuses: six is plenty
Long status lists get used inconsistently within a month. Six states, what each one means, and the one that most systems are missing.
Read 5 min - Work orders
A maintenance backlog is not a failure, unless it is invisible
Every team has a backlog. Measured in jobs it means nothing. Measured in crew-weeks it becomes a resourcing argument you can win.
Read 6 min - Work orders
Getting out of the reactive trap
Reactive work crowds out the planned work that would have prevented it. How the loop starts, and the two changes that break it.
Read 6 min - Work orders
Planning and scheduling are two different jobs
Planning decides what a job needs. Scheduling decides when it happens. Combining them into one role is why the week falls apart on Wednesday.
Read 6 min - Work orders
After-hours calls, without burning out the team
Most out-of-hours calls are not emergencies. A triage rule, a rota that is fair, and a record that survives the morning.
Read 6 min - Work orders
Telling people their problem is fixed
The cheapest improvement in facilities management is a message when the job is closed. Why duplicates fall, complaints fall, and nobody sends it by hand.
Read 5 min - Work orders
Why your maintenance history cannot answer questions
Three years of work orders and still no answer to "what keeps failing". Four habits that make history answerable, none of which add fields.
Read 6 min - Work orders
Getting contractor work into your record
Most of a facility budget goes to people who do not work for you, and their work is invisible until the invoice. A link beats a portal.
Read 6 min
Metrics
The maintenance metrics that change what you do on Monday
The measures that change a decision, with the arithmetic worked through.
- Metrics
MTTR: what it measures, and what it hides
MTTR is total repair time divided by the number of repairs. The formula, a worked example, and the four things a single MTTR number hides.
Read 6 min - Metrics
MTBF: the formula, and the assumption inside it
MTBF is operating hours divided by failures. The worked example, why it is not a lifespan, and where the assumption behind it breaks.
Read 6 min - Metrics
MTTR, MTBF, MTTF and availability, sorted out
Four measures that sound alike and answer different questions. Which to use when, how they combine into availability, and a worked example of all four.
Read 6 min - Metrics
How to calculate OEE, with a worked example
OEE is availability times performance times quality. The full arithmetic from a real shift, why 85 percent is not a target, and the losses it hides.
Read 8 min - Metrics
Available is not the same as reliable
A machine can be 99 percent available and deeply unreliable. Why the two measures diverge, and which one to put in front of whom.
Read 5 min - Metrics
PM compliance, and how to stop it being gamed
PM compliance without a window is not a measure. How to define the window, why 100 percent is a warning sign, and what to pair it with.
Read 6 min - Metrics
Planned maintenance percentage, counted properly
Count hours, not jobs. What counts as planned, why the number matters more as a direction than a level, and the target worth aiming at.
Read 5 min - Metrics
Schedule compliance: the number nobody wants to publish
The share of scheduled work actually done in the week it was scheduled. Usually the lowest number on the board, and the most useful.
Read 5 min - Metrics
Measuring wrench time without a stopwatch study
Wrench time is the share of paid time spent working on equipment. It is always lower than people expect. How to estimate it without a consultant.
Read 6 min - Metrics
Maintenance cost as a share of replacement value
The most comparable long-run maintenance number there is. How to calculate it, typical ranges, and why a low figure is not always good news.
Read 6 min - Metrics
FMEA without the forty-page spreadsheet
Failure modes, effects and analysis, done in a morning on the equipment that matters. How RPN works, and why the number is the least useful part.
Read 7 min - Metrics
Reliability centred maintenance, the useful parts
RCM asks what each asset must do and what to do about each way it stops. The decision logic, and how to get most of the value in a fraction of the time.
Read 7 min - Metrics
Ranking equipment by what its failure costs
Everything cannot be critical. A scoring method with four factors, run in a morning, that produces a defensible order for maintenance effort.
Read 6 min - Metrics
Finding the equipment that is eating your year
A small number of assets cause most of the callouts. How to find them from the data you already have, and what to do once you have.
Read 6 min - Metrics
Asset health scores, and when they are worth having
A single health score per asset is easy to build and easy to make meaningless. What to put in it, what to leave out, and when not to bother.
Read 6 min
Assets
Knowing what you own: asset management that holds up
Knowing what you own, where it is, and when it needs replacing.
- Assets
Building an asset register from nothing
A survey of a whole estate never finishes. How to build a register one building at a time, in the order that makes it useful fastest.
Read 6 min - Assets
Designing an asset hierarchy that survives a reorganisation
Structure by place and system, never by who currently looks after it. Why departmental hierarchies break, and the five levels that work.
Read 6 min - Assets
The five stages of an asset, and where money leaks
Purchase, commissioning, operation, maintenance, disposal. The leak is nearly always at handover, and it costs for the next twenty years.
Read 6 min - Assets
QR, barcode or RFID: what to put on the equipment
Three ways to label equipment, with different costs and different failure modes. Which suits a plant room, a hospital corridor and a tool store.
Read 6 min - Assets
What equipment maintenance software has to do
Six behaviours that separate software that keeps equipment history usable from software that stores a list of machines.
Read 6 min - Assets
Condition assessment that produces a budget, not a report
A five-point scale, a consistent method and a cost attached to each finding. How to run an assessment that survives being questioned.
Read 7 min - Assets
Repair or replace: making the call defensible
Four tests that between them settle almost every replacement argument, and the two numbers you need before the conversation starts.
Read 6 min - Assets
Maintaining on running hours instead of dates
Calendar schedules over-service quiet equipment and under-service busy equipment. How to move to running hours without a sensor on everything.
Read 6 min - Assets
The warranty money almost everybody leaves behind
Warranty claims fail because nobody knew there was cover, or could not produce the maintenance record. Both are fixable in an afternoon.
Read 5 min - Assets
Nine fields, not sixty
Big asset templates ask for sixty fields and get thirty filled in badly. The nine that do work, and how to add more without wrecking the list.
Read 5 min - Assets
Asset tracking, and what people usually mean by it
Three different problems share the name: finding things, maintaining things, and accounting for things. Buying for the wrong one is expensive.
Read 6 min
Facilities
The facility condition index, and how to use it to get money
Condition, deferred maintenance and the numbers that win a budget argument.
- Facilities
Putting a defensible number on deferred maintenance
Everybody knows the backlog is large. Getting a number that survives a finance conversation takes a method. Here is one that fits on a page.
Read 7 min - Facilities
Forecasting what you will have to replace, and when
Age plus expected life gives a first forecast in an afternoon. How to build it, why it spikes, and how to smooth it without lying.
Read 7 min - Facilities
FCI, FCA and condition survey: what each one is
One is a number, one is the exercise that produces it. Mixing them up is why organisations pay for a survey and get no number they can use.
Read 5 min - Facilities
What facility management actually covers
Hard services, soft services, space and compliance. What sits in each, where the boundaries usually go wrong, and what a good week looks like.
Read 7 min - Facilities
CAFM, IWMS or CMMS: which one fits
Three overlapping categories with moving boundaries. What each is centred on, and the two questions that decide which you need.
Read 6 min - Facilities
Tenant requests: the four hours that decide the relationship
Tenants judge you on the first response, not the repair time. How to route requests, set expectations and stop the same fault arriving five times.
Read 6 min - Facilities
Unit turns that hit the ready date
Turns overrun because the inspection happens after move-out. A checklist, a timeline that works backwards, and the four steps that always block.
Read 7 min - Facilities
Running maintenance across a hundred sites
The problem at scale is not doing the work. It is that every site does it differently, so nothing can be compared and nothing can be improved.
Read 7 min - Facilities
Never being surprised by an expiring certificate
Fire, water, lifting, electrical and gas all expire on their own schedule. A compliance calendar that fails safe, and what to track on it.
Read 6 min - Facilities
Cleaning schedules, and the faults cleaners see first
Cleaners walk every room every day. In most buildings they have no way to report what they find, which wastes the best fault detection you have.
Read 6 min - Facilities
What property managers need that a plant CMMS does not do
Residents, access, contractors and cost recovery. Five requirements that separate property maintenance from industrial maintenance.
Read 6 min - Facilities
When the building changes and nobody tells maintenance
A floor becomes a data room, a store room becomes a lab, and the maintenance plan is now wrong. How to catch changes of use before they bite.
Read 5 min
Fleet
Fleet maintenance that keeps vehicles on the road
Keeping vehicles safe, legal and available, and proving it.
- Fleet
Driver vehicle inspections that are actually done
Paper DVIRs get lost or filled in from the cab. What the walk round should cover, and the two changes that stop it being a formality.
Read 7 min - Fleet
The maintenance file an inspector asks for
Records are usually complete and unfindable. What has to be in the file per vehicle, how long to keep it, and how to produce it in minutes.
Read 6 min - Fleet
Service intervals for a fleet that does different work
One interval across a mixed fleet is wrong for most of it. How to set intervals by duty cycle, and why engine hours matter for urban work.
Read 6 min - Fleet
What a vehicle maintenance log needs to contain
Eight columns cover everything an inspector, a warranty claim and a resale valuation need. What each one is for, and the mistakes that lose value.
Read 5 min - Fleet
Cost per mile, and what it tells you
The number that answers most fleet questions. What goes in it, why per vehicle beats per fleet, and how to use it for the in-house or outsource call.
Read 6 min - Fleet
The warranty money fleets leave on the table
Claims are missed because the technician did not know cover existed. Three changes that recover money without a claims department.
Read 5 min - Fleet
Turning fault codes into work, without drowning
A telematics feed produces thousands of alerts and almost no action. How to pick the few that always mean work, and ignore the rest on purpose.
Read 6 min - Fleet
Cutting roadside breakdowns
Most roadside failures are a small number of causes, and most were visible beforehand. How to find yours and close the gap.
Read 6 min - Fleet
Getting more out of the technicians you have
Hiring is hard everywhere. Six changes that recover shop capacity without adding people, starting with what wastes their day.
Read 6 min - Fleet
What fleet maintenance software has to do
Seven requirements that separate fleet software from general maintenance software, and the two questions to ask in every demo.
Read 6 min
Compliance
Inspections, and the evidence that has to survive them
What inspectors ask for, which intervals are not yours to choose, and the evidence that holds up.
- Compliance
Lockout tagout, and the part that gets missed
Most programmes have locks and training. The gaps are equipment-specific procedures and the annual inspection. What 1910.147 actually asks for.
Read 7 min - Compliance
Fire door inspections, and what fails them
Fire doors are inspected annually under NFPA 80 in the US. The eleven checks, the defects that come up constantly, and why gaps matter.
Read 7 min - Compliance
Sprinkler and standpipe inspections, by interval
NFPA 25 sets weekly to five-yearly tasks on water-based fire protection. What the owner does, what the contractor does, and the gap between them.
Read 7 min - Compliance
Emergency lighting tests that actually prove something
A monthly function test and an annual duration test. Why the annual one is the one that finds failures, and how to run it without a night shift.
Read 6 min 
ComplianceForklift inspections before every shift
OSHA requires powered industrial trucks to be examined before use, at least daily. What the check covers, and how to stop it being a signature.
Read 7 min- Compliance
Racking inspections, and the damage that gets ignored
Rack damage is reported late because nobody wants to unload a bay. What to look for, how to grade it, and why the beam is not the main risk.
Read 6 min - Compliance
Permit to work, and what has to be tracked
Permits are usually issued well and closed badly. What has to be on a permit, what has to be tracked, and where programmes fall down.
Read 6 min - Compliance
Environment of care rounds that find things
EOC rounds become a walk with a clipboard producing the same findings forever. How to make them find real problems and close them.
Read 7 min - Compliance
Documenting an alternative equipment maintenance programme
An AEM programme lets you set intervals other than the manufacturer’s, if you can justify it. What the justification has to contain.
Read 7 min - Compliance
Being ready for the audit you did not know about
Most teams can assemble evidence in a week. The ones that pass can do it in minutes. Four structural changes that close that gap.
Read 6 min - Compliance
Joining the sanitation schedule to the maintenance schedule
Sanitation, maintenance and quality records live in three systems, and audits find the seam. How to run them as one schedule.
Read 6 min - Compliance
What inspection software has to do
Seven behaviours that separate software producing usable evidence from software producing digital versions of the same unusable forms.
Read 6 min - Compliance
Checking that a contractor is still allowed on site
Insurance lapses and qualifications expire quietly. How to track them so work cannot be issued to somebody whose cover ended last month.
Read 5 min - Compliance
The maintenance records safety asks for
Maintenance holds evidence that safety and legal need after an incident. What to keep, how long, and the four records that decide an investigation.
Read 6 min
Parts
Spare parts, and the storeroom that decides your repair times
The storeroom decisions that quietly set how long every repair takes.
- Parts
Deciding which spares are genuinely critical
A method that fits on one page: consequence, lead time and shared use. How to build the list, and how to defend it to finance.
Read 6 min - Parts
Setting min and max levels that stop being wrong
Most min and max levels were set once and never reviewed. How to calculate them from usage and lead time, and when to ignore the formula.
Read 6 min - Parts
A storeroom people can find things in
Accuracy comes from a fixed location per part and a rule about who takes things. Six changes, in the order that makes each one possible.
Read 6 min - Parts
Kitting parts for scheduled work
Picking parts before the job turns several interruptions into one planned hour. How to start, what to kit, and what it needs from the schedule.
Read 5 min - Parts
Clearing out the parts nobody will ever fit
Dead stock is free until you look at the space and the cash. How to find it, how to decide, and how to stop it accumulating again.
Read 5 min - Parts
Getting parts spend under control without stockouts
Cutting stock is easy and expensive. Five ways to reduce parts cost that do not trade money for downtime.
Read 6 min - Parts
Attaching a parts list to a machine
The parts list on the asset is what makes a breakdown a ten second question. How to build one without documenting every machine at once.
Read 5 min - Parts
Letting a supplier run part of your storeroom
A supplier stocking and replenishing your consumables can work well or hide a growing bill. What to hand over, and what to keep.
Read 5 min
From the team
What we have learned building this
Pieces about adoption, vendors and rollout, from watching teams move.
- Adoption
Why technicians abandon facility software
The adoption problem is not training. It is that most facility software is designed for the person reading the reports.
Read 5 min - Practice
What QR codes are actually good for in a building
QR stickers on rooms and equipment solve three real problems: the wrong record, proof of presence, and reporting by people who are not technicians.
Read 5 min - Vendors
How to measure vendor performance without a fight
Most contractor conversations are opinion against opinion because nobody has a record. Four measures that are hard to argue with.
Read 6 min - Analytics
Six facility metrics worth tracking, and four that are not
A short, opinionated list of the measures that change decisions, and the popular ones that mostly change how good the report looks.
Read 6 min - Rollout
Moving off paper rounds without losing the team
A rollout plan that works: one round, one month, the people who like it least, and no big bang.
Read 5 min
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