Facilities As Assets - Effective Building Maintenance: Protection of Capital Assets - page 16

the “seven deadly diseases” common to U.S. management: (1) “Lack of
constancy of purpose” and (2) “Mobility of top management.” Typically,
the first phenomenon leads to the other. New managers are called in for
fast and, unfortunately, often temporary results. They often change the
organization, perhaps only because they want to bring in their buddies,
make some cut backs, and then move on to another place before the long-
term effects are noticed. The front line of the organization, where the ac-
tual actions of new directives have to take place, sees this as a constant
change of direction. They start talking about the program of the month
and, consequently, they do not change anything and the results of man-
agement efforts will be absent. If this goes on for some time, no sustain-
able results will be achieved.
In this situation, a long-term maintenance contract offers a possible
solution. The contract has to be founded on the right principles and work
processes, because, when these are not changed for a long period of time,
your contractor can help eliminate the “lack-of-constancy-of-purpose
phenomenon.” With good leadership, the work processes and your re-
sults should continuously improve. It could be done without a contrac-
tor, but not in a system where each new facility manager or maintenance
manager means a new program.
Finally, rather than outsourcing, consider “in-sourcing.” Smaller or-
ganizations obviously have a greater difficulty allocating the needed to
resources to building maintenance, finding and retaining skilled staff, etc.
But, by combining several organizations' maintenance departments and
implementing an adequate maintenance management program, mainte-
nance can be improved and costs can be lowered. For example a small lo-
cal school system may combine its maintenance operations with the local
community college. In some communities, a larger university with a good
maintenance program may be neighbors with one or more small colleges
with less-effective maintenance programs.
COMPUTERIZED MAINTENANCE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (CMMS)
A CMMS software package maintains a computer database of infor-
mation about an organization's maintenance operations and, today, is the
heart of an effective preventative maintenance program.
CMMS information is intended to help maintenance workers do