Work orders
Work order statuses: six is plenty
March 5, 2026 · 5 minute read
Six statuses cover every piece of maintenance work: raised, assigned, in progress, waiting, done, and turned back. Longer lists get used inconsistently within a month, because two people will always disagree about the difference between "pending" and "on hold".
The six
- Raised: it exists, nobody owns it yet
- Assigned: somebody is responsible, with a name on it
- In progress: work has started, which is not the same as assigned
- Waiting: blocked by something outside the team, with the reason recorded
- Done: finished, with evidence
- Turned back: could not be done, with a reason and usually a photograph
The one most systems are missing
Turned back. Without it, a technician facing an impossible job has two dishonest options: mark it done, or leave it to go red. Both corrupt everything downstream. Adding an honest exit is the cheapest improvement available to most maintenance records.
Waiting has to say what for
"On hold" with no reason is where work goes to die. Make the reason a required part of moving into that state, keep the list short, and put a review date on it.
- Waiting for a part
- Waiting for access to the room or the equipment
- Waiting for a contractor
- Waiting for approval or money
- Waiting for a shutdown window
Once those reasons are recorded consistently, you can count them. In most teams one of the five is causing more delay than the other four together, and until it is counted nobody knows which.
Do not use status to mean priority
A common mess is statuses like "urgent" or "escalated" sitting alongside real states. Priority is how important it is. Status is where it has got to. Mixing them means you can never answer either question cleanly.
Stop the clock honestly
Time spent waiting for a part is not the maintenance team being slow, and time waiting for a tenant to give access is not either. Report both: the total time the requester experienced, and the time the work was actually with your team. The first is the honest number. The second is the one you can improve.