Commercial facilities require constant maintenance management to keep the grounds and workspaces as clean and functional as possible. Unfortunately, many business owners fail to properly maintain their facilities, either due to personal neglect or failure to acquire the right professionals to perform the necessary maintenance duties. 

You don’t need to let this happen at your facility. If you can learn all about the common facility maintenance mistakes that business owners make, then you will know which mistakes to avoid in the future. That way, you can end up with a thriving, well-maintained facility that is attractive and comfortable for employees and clients alike. 

Below are the most common facility maintenance mistakes and how to avoid them.   

1) Neglecting Preventive Maintenance

The number one most common facility maintenance mistake is neglecting basic preventive maintenance duties. A lack of preventative maintenance can lead to equipment breakdowns, unsanitary conditions, landscape overgrowth, and pest problems. 

Planned preventative maintenance is a proactive approach to managing a facility. It is where you conduct regular inspections and maintenance tasks to keep your equipment, machinery, and appliances working smoothly. Some examples of these maintenance duties include:

  • Cleaning or replacing air filters in an HVAC system
  • Inspecting plumbing systems for leaks, cracks, and blockages
  • Inspecting electrical systems for signs of failures or deterioration in performance
  • Cleaning and maintaining the roof, walls, and floors
  • Mowing the grass and trimming the bushes and vegetation on the outside
  • Emptying garbage containers
  • Safety and compliance inspections of all equipment and machinery
  • Replacing light bulbs whenever some stop working

These preventative maintenance duties can help prevent major equipment breakdowns and severe deterioration of your building and grounds. Otherwise, you could be forced to make expensive repairs if your facility’s infrastructure falls apart or your machinery, plumbing, or electrical systems stop functioning properly. 

2) Overlooking Minor Repairs

Another common facility maintenance mistake made is neglecting or overlooking minor repairs needed, whether for the building itself or the machinery inside of it. These repairs are usually for issues that are not causing too much trouble or disturbance in the workplace at the moment but could likely escalate into something worse if not taken care of soon. 

Here are several examples of minor repairs often overlooked in facilities:

technician working

  • Cracked water pipes
  • Leaky faucets
  • Dirty HVAC air filters
  • Deteriorated insulation around the windows and doors
  • Flickering lights
  • Small cracks or gaps in the floor, walls, or ceiling
  • Dirty air vents
  • Small roof damage or leaks
  • Misaligned doors
  • Faulty security system
  • Loose handrails
  • Abnormal noises from machinery and equipment
  • Clogged gutters
  • And many more!

This list of minor repairs should give you some perspective on how much could go wrong if the neglect continues. Ignoring these minor repairs for too long could result in much bigger and costlier repairs in the future.

The best thing to do is perform minor repairs as soon as you recognise issues that need fixing, regardless of how small they may be. The sooner the minor repairs are done, the less likely you will need to make costly repairs later.

3) Not Tracking Maintenance Costs

Some motivated business owners may have taken the necessary steps to conduct cleanings, inspections, and repairs where needed. These steps may have even involved hiring a professional facilities management team to perform these tasks for them. 

Unfortunately, a common mistake in these situations is not tracking maintenance costs. Business owners can become so preoccupied with hiring maintenance professionals to clean the floors, repair the machines, fix the plumbing, patch up the roof, and so on that they fail to track all the different expenses for completing these maintenance tasks. 

Here are the downsides to not tracking maintenance costs:

  • Going over budget by not predicting maintenance expenditures
  • No cost data for different repairs needed
  • Inability to conduct cost comparisons or identify the most important repairs
  • Inability to make cost-effective maintenance decisions
  • Inability to calculate the return on investment
  • Not managing spare parts inventory, forcing inability to make repairs

Consider incorporating some facility management software into your facility to track the various maintenance duties needed and their costs. That way, you can have all the vital facility maintenance information at your disposal so that you don’t overlook any more expenditures.

4) Not Adequately Training Employees

Employees operating machinery and equipment need the necessary skills and education to maintain them properly. Sadly, too many business owners fail to give their employees the proper training on how to operate and maintain company equipment correctly. The result of this common mistake is more equipment failures, costlier repairs, and a higher risk of workplace accidents.

The easy solution to this common mistake is to set up regular training sessions for new employees to teach them how to properly operate and maintain the equipment. You could also consider installing new technologies to simplify equipment maintenance and implementing new safety protocols to ensure compliance with machinery operational procedures. 

Hire a Professional Facility Maintenance Team

Many business owners care about maintenance, but they simply don’t have the time or energy to devote themselves to it. They are too busy worrying about managing their business operations to ensure customer satisfaction. 

For this reason, you should hire a professional facility maintenance team to avoid making any of these common facility maintenance mistakes. Tier1 Facilities Management provides an array of facility maintenance services to assist busy commercial business owners like yourself, including grounds maintenance, planned preventative maintenance, commercial cleaning services, security services, and facility maintenance consultancy services. 

Feel free to set up a routine schedule where facility management experts come to your facility on a regular basis to perform inspections, cleanings, repairs, and whatever else is needed to preserve and protect your facility. If you do that, you can have peace of mind knowing you have a fully functional facility with little chance of operational imperfections or setbacks.