Facilities As Assets - Effective Building Maintenance: Protection of Capital Assets - page 13

2002 indicated that, while contracting for unskilled/semi-skilled services
such as housekeeping and landscape services was very high (65-75% of
all businesses), the use of outsourcing for preventative maintenance was
much lower (50% or less). For public owners, hospitals, public schools,
colleges and universities, and other institutions the use of contracted pre-
ventative maintenance was below 20%.
So, when do you make the decision to switch from in-house mainte-
nance to contract maintenance?
As discussed previously, unprogrammed maintenance produces the
need to immediately respond to maintenance problems. This, in turn, cre-
ates wide fluctuations in the work load imposed on the maintenance staff.
So, the better job done reducing unprogrammed maintenance through
a good preventative maintenance program and well-established mainte-
nance priorities, the less variability there will be in staff workload from
week to week.
Large variations in maintenance workload due to unprogrammed
maintenance will lead to poor utilization of resources and, potentially,
overstaffing. When this happens, someone starts talking about outsourc-
ing. But, outsourcing maintenance resources under these conditions will
change nothing. The maintenance contractor, to be effective, must pro-
vide better maintenance management to reduce unprogrammed main-
tenance. Otherwise, they will not be able to perform any better than the
existing staff. Ifthisisthecase,youmustaskyourselfwhyyoucannotimprove
thingsifyourcontractorcan?
One answer may be that you have tried to make changes in the past,
but the changes were vetoed by management or, if implemented, died a
natural death due to staff resistance, organizational gridlock, or internal
politics. In this case, outsourcing may be an “act of desperation” used
to circumvent entrenched impediments to internal change and improve-
ment. But, that is no guarantee of success; too often the scope of mainte-
nance is limited by budgets and the contractor cost to implement a truly
effective maintenance program may be far more than management thinks
it can afford!
Abetteransweristhatthereisnoreasonyoucannotimplementaneffective
managementplan ! And, this better plan may include specific elements of
outsourced maintenance for the following:
1. Special Skills : Certain areas of maintenance require special skills,
tools, equipment, etc. that can be expensive to acquire and even