How to Start a Preventative Maintenance Plan for Your School
When you’re the building manager for a school, you know that there’s no escaping routine maintenance. It’s a necessary ingredient to running a functional building. However, as a facility manager, it’s imperative to stay ahead of any mechanical failures, repairs, and otherwise lengthy maintenance projects. What you need to do is come up with a preventative maintenance plan for your school to help you stay on top of everything.
Here’s a few helpful tips and tricks on getting the right preventative maintenance plan together.
Rally the Team
The first step towards executing the proper preventative maintenance plan is having a team of professionals to rely on to help you see your plans through. As the facility manager, you can’t be everywhere at once to spot any minor issues that could develop into a major problem. However, when you have members of your staff that are just as dedicated to staying on top of maintenance, your plan can proceed with great results. Through coordination and communication, tackling any major issues will be a lot easier.
Determine Your School’s Weaknesses
In order to stay on top of issues with preventative maintenance, you need to figure out the areas that are most likely to result in problems. This includes checking your HVAC system to ensure that it’s operating at capacity, your water system to find any impurities, and, of course, the bathrooms. Your school’s bathrooms and locker rooms are susceptible to mold growth, specifically with the partitions, which can reduce the air quality and result in an unpleasant odor.
Luckily, materials like HDPE plastic partitions are durable, solid, and impenetrable to mold and mildew, so you can passively keep your bathroom from sprouting mold by utilizing this solid plastic. This material can even be used for lockers to replace the metal ones that are in your school. Metal can dent, get rusty, chip its paint, and even get covered in graffiti. HDPE plastic lockers are impact-resistant, and when it comes to graffiti, all it takes is a simple wipe to remove it. You don’t have to add a fresh coat of paint to this material because it will keep its aesthetics intact while cutting down on your maintenance costs and time.
Plan the Schedule
It’s important that you coordinate your maintenance plan with the school schedule to determine the best time to complete certain projects. Throughout the school year, getting major projects completed can be difficult because the school is at its highest occupancy. Also, heavy-duty maintenance can be a major distraction during lessons.
Save any major maintenance projects for summer. Given that there are many fewer occupants in the building, getting the projected completed will be a lot easier during the summer. Winter break is another window for projects, but make sure you can determine what can be done given the amount of time you have to complete it.
By planning out your preventative maintenance, you’ll be able to keep your school in great condition with all of its systems functioning properly.
Want to learn more about preventative facility maintenance? Download this free eBook, The Ultimate Guide or Facility Maintenance & Property Solutions, from your friends at Scranton Products.
