Maintenance workers are often the superheroes of any team, regularly saving the day when something breaks. That’s because building occupants expect property owners and managers to provide comfortable living and working environments. However, most people have no clue about the behind-the-scenes work required to meet these expectations.
Beyond performing emergency fixes, property maintenance teams routinely inspect, repair, and replace equipment parts to keep assets running. On any given day, workers may clear snow from walkways, change HVAC filters, and conduct preventive maintenance (PM) activities to keep everything running smoothly. The best maintenance teams mostly go unnoticed because they do such a good job of preventing major breakdowns, inconveniences, and safety hazards from occurring with proactive maintenance. However, just because it goes unseen doesn’t mean it’s easy. Effective building maintenance requires a careful, deliberate approach to properly manage schedules and maximize resources.
In this article, we explore what that entails and share tips for ensuring that you can successfully implement and execute a productive building maintenance strategy.
What is building maintenance?
First, let’s get on the same page.
Building maintenance refers to the ongoing efforts and tasks that teams undertake to keep a building or facility in good condition. It includes both preventive and corrective measures to ensure the safety, comfort, and functionality of the structure. Building maintenance aims to preserve a safe, functional, and comfortable environment for tenants at all times and includes tasks such as cleaning, landscaping, and electrical system maintenance.
To put it more simply, building maintenance is all about taking care of a building to keep it safe, comfortable, and working properly through regular upkeep and repairs.
Of course, building maintenance isn’t only beneficial to tenants. Building owners can maximize the resale value of their properties by keeping all assets in good working condition. Depending on the type of property, it may require a “Jack or Jill of all trades” or several workers with varying technical specializations to keep things in order.
Examples of building maintenance
In practice, what does a maintenance worker’s day look like? Routine tasks and examples of maintenance activities they could do on any given day include:
- Landscaping, such as mowing lawns and trimming shrubs
- Inspecting outdoor lighting for damage
- Clearing gutters and drainages
- Cleaning outdoor spaces
- Sealing cracks in parking lots
- Inspecting ceilings and floors for water damage during winters
- Replacing HVAC air filters
- Servicing fire alarms and fire suppression systems
- Inspecting door and window alarm systems to ensure proper operation
- Performing emergency asset repairs
2 types of building maintenance
Although the work varies, most building maintenance falls into two categories.
Preventive Maintenance
As the name suggests, preventive maintenance tasks (PM) aim to prevent building damage and retain structural integrity. They are routine tasks that protect a building from decay, preserve its functionality, and enhance its durability. PM also includes sustainable preventive measures during the building’s design and construction to withstand storms, floods, and other calamities. Examples include inspecting roofs, clearing drains and gutters, and washing floors. Others include garbage removal, utility system inspections, and more.
Corrective Maintenance
These are activities intended to restore the functionality and comfort of a building. Managers need to have a corrective maintenance strategy in place, as it’s impossible to prevent damage or decay completely. Furthermore, corrective maintenance ensures everything is back in operation as soon as possible. Examples include replacing broken windows, repairing disconnected electrical fixtures, emergency plumbing repairs, etc.
Challenges & importance of building maintenance
Team members involved in building maintenance face a variety of challenges. Maintenance managers have to oversee numerous building systems or locations, while technicians need quick, mobile access to important information, including maintenance histories and work orders. What matters most to the property owners and tenants is that the work gets done efficiently and costs are controlled as much as possible.
Managing information, maintenance scheduling, and work histories can be a challenge if you’re using manual systems. You’ll need multiple files for these different functions, and after a while, you’ll simply accumulate too much paper to manage. The good thing is that software solutions exist today that can manage these multiple functions and centralize your data in one system. A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is one example of a software solution that can help maintenance professionals:
- Easily manage various building systems and locations
- Access standard operating procedures (SOPs) and other information via mobile
- See trends and gain greater efficiency with maintenance tasks
Adding a digital partner to your maintenance team lifts the burden felt by each position. You’ll be able to shift your team from reactive to proactive maintenance and unlock the ability to prevent asset failure before it happens.
Industries that practice building maintenance
By nature, building maintenance is a critical function across various industries. Whatever kind of business an organization is, as long as it involves working in a building, leaders must be prepared for some form of building maintenance. Examples of industries where building maintenance is a priority include:
- Manufacturing: Factories and plants must maintain both their assets and the buildings housing them to support operations and meet safety regulations.
- Housing: Residential facilities need maintenance for both indoor and outdoor areas. Landlords or housing companies must organize or conduct inspections, maintenance, and repairs to ensure everything is in good working condition.
- Retail: Businesses, malls, shopping centers, and more must ensure they can handle high volumes of traffic while remaining presentable and clean.
- Food services: Restaurants and fast-food spots must maintain their buildings similar to retail spaces, with the added difficulty of food safety and increased systems maintenance.
- Education: From preschool to universities, teachers and students rely on well-maintained buildings and working systems to enable comfortable learning environments.
- Healthcare: Hospitals, doctor’s offices, emergency rooms, and specialists all need comfortable, reliable spaces to look after patients.
- Industrial facilities: Warehouses, factories, processing plants, and other industrial facilities often must maintain both the buildings and the assets housed in them.
Building maintenance roles & positions
Different maintenance tasks require different areas of specialty. Here are a few different job titles and responsibilities:
Janitorial staff
They handle the general cleaning of a building. Janitors mop the floors, clean bathrooms, wash windows and doors, and vacuum carpets. In a residential building, they only clean the common areas.
Maintenance technicians
Maintenance technicians deal with tasks that require specialized skills. They inspect, maintain, and repair a building’s HVAC and utility systems. Maintenance technicians are usually assigned tasks through work orders on a CMMS.
Maintenance supervisors
They oversee maintenance planning and scheduling for a building. Supervisors manage maintenance workers and ensure that maintenance tasks are completed as required. In some cases, maintenance supervisors are also involved in hiring and training maintenance workers.
Certifications and training for building maintenance workers
Workers have several options to grow their skills and advance their careers. Training and certification programs worth considering include:
HVAC certification
HVAC certification is offered to maintenance workers who’ve demonstrated competence or are interested in handling HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) systems. The National Association of Home Builders and the Associated Builders and Contractors offer apprenticeships that help maintenance workers earn HVAC certifications.
Building systems maintenance certification
This is a wide-ranging certification that covers plumbing, HVAC systems, water treatment, and efficient energy management. BOMI International awards the certification to workers who deal with building systems.
Building operator certification
Approved institutions offer level one and level two maintenance training with candidates awarded the Building Operator Certification. To be clear, areas covered include HVAC, control point management, electrical distribution, and energy management.
Other institutions, such as the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA), offer several training programs for building maintenance workers.
How to improve your building maintenance management
As costs rise and experienced technicians retire, the landscape has changed, and many organizations are looking for ways to improve their building maintenance management for long-term success. Let’s explore a few ways you can position your maintenance team to better handle building maintenance tasks now and into the future.
Implement a preventive maintenance program
Perhaps the most important step you can take to improve building maintenance management is to create and execute a preventive maintenance program. By shifting from reactive to proactive maintenance, you can take control of your building’s maintenance instead of being at the mercy of unexpected breakdowns and asset failures.
Implement digital work order software
Effective preventive maintenance relies on regular, repeated tasks that keep a facility in good condition at all times. This can sometimes be easier said than done, as completing a maintenance task on time depends on teams knowing their schedules and understanding how to perform their functions. A robust work order software can streamline these processes, offering you a centralized way to assign and schedule maintenance tasks while providing SOPs to guide technicians. MaintainX, for example, provides functionality for preventive maintenance scheduling, both on a regular calendar and based on workload insights. You can also create digital SOPs and checklists from scratch, using templates, or with an AI-powered procedure generator. You’ll also be better equipped to handle reactive maintenance as you can create one-off emergency work orders to address any surprise issues.
Optimize your inventory management
In addition to work instructions and proper scheduling, your teams can only perform maintenance tasks properly if they have the right tools. Here, the right software can also make a big difference. For example, instead of manually keeping track of what parts and tools you have and where you can streamline this process by using a software solution. With MaintainX, you can create automated low-quantity alerts that notify you once your stock falls below certain thresholds. You can also automatically generate purchase orders and manage all your vendor data in one system. This way, you’ll never stock out of crucial parts.
Analyze and report on maintenance activities
Successful maintenance work requires more than just detailed planning at the start. Constant adjustments and modifications are necessary to ensure you’re learning from mistakes while continuing with what works. Tracking your key metrics is vital here, as it allows you to easily gain the necessary insights. MaintainX, for example, provides a powerful reporting module that can analyze your data and enable data-driven decision-making. You can create custom dashboards to generate at-a-glance insights into your most important metrics, so you can identify room for improvement and drive operational excellence.
Use MaintainX for your building maintenance
Property owners and managers can benefit from adding a CMMS like MaintainX to their maintenance strategy, whether they have internal maintenance teams or rely on outside vendors. From small teams and buildings to enterprise needs that cover multiple locations, MaintainX simplifies every step of building maintenance. Use MaintainX to:
- Automate and assign work to technicians
- Create and attach digital standard operating procedures
- Gain accurate reporting on your team’s maintenance work
All from one user-friendly app.
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Building maintenance FAQs
Running an effective program can streamline maintenance activities and save costs. In fact, the easiest way to manage building maintenance is to automate work order assignments using Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software.
A CMMS allows maintenance supervisors to effectively monitor inventory levels, track assets, and assign work orders to available technicians from one central database. While a preventive maintenance approach helps reduce the likelihood of emergencies, equipment breakdowns and downtime are inevitable. For this reason, managers should put corrective procedures in place for quick reference. By doing this, managers can ensure that technicians know exactly how to respond to emergency maintenance requests and restore operations to normal as quickly as possible.
A building maintenance checklist includes a list of tasks for technicians to complete. Operational managers, familiar with the care needed for the building’s specific assets, usually prepare the lists.
The difference between building maintenance and facility maintenance is the scope and focus of the work. Building maintenance is aimed at upholding the physical condition of the building and the systems required to keep people comfortable. Facility maintenance encompasses building maintenance and also includes the upkeep of materials and equipment inside the building, like desks and chairs.
Caroline Eisner
Caroline Eisner is a writer and editor with experience across the profit and nonprofit sectors, government, education, and financial organizations. She has held leadership positions in K16 institutions and has led large-scale digital projects, interactive websites, and a business writing consultancy.
