Small Maintenance Budget – Here’s How You Make the Best Use of It

Maintenance management is often seen as an expenditure, instead of a time and money-saving opportunity. With almost no room to play with the maintenance budget, it can be difficult to improve the efficiency of facilities management, but it isn’t impossible. Want to know how? Let’s discover four ways you can make the best use of your small facility maintenance budget.

Keep Track of Tools & Equipment

Accurately tracking tools, equipment, and spare parts can save you from spending money on supplies you may already have on hand and avoid an unnecessary inventory surplus.

• Establish a process to keep track of all tools and equipment.
• The money generated from eliminating unnecessary purchases can be used for other aspects of the maintenance plan.

In the long run, inventory tracking can save you hundreds to thousands of dollars, which you can then ask to be redirected to an increase in the maintenance budget.

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Keep a Log of Maintenance Activities

Keeping an accurate log of maintenance activities and analyzing it later can provide valuable insight into your operations and help you allocate your budget to where it’s needed the most.

• Track how of where your maintenance staff is spending their time.
• Keep a close eye on time spent on surface-level upgrades that improve the appearance of the facility rather than preventive maintenance and critical repairs.

A maintenance activity log also allows you to gather powerful data about your operations. This enables you to target inefficient processes that are a waste of time and money and identify work orders that are the most frequent and costly for your organization.

Preventive Maintenance Is the Key

Sometimes, due to a low maintenance budget or significant cut, preventive maintenance is one of the first things on the elimination list. Reactive maintenance becomes the primary practice, based on the philosophy that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But eventually, this can end up costing more in the long run.

• Establish a preventive maintenance program.
• Commit to performing this scheduled preventive maintenance.
• Assign each preventive maintenance task with a step-by-step checklist for your technicians, and issue reminder alerts to your staff or vendors to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Preventive maintenance can save 33- 50% of maintenance expenditures as well as reduce equipment downtime by 40-60% (in the first two years). Additionally, utility costs are reduced due to equipment operating more efficiently.

Get Facility Management Software

If you want to take advantage of the above three tips, facility management software or CMMS is a must for you. Facility management software or CMMS helps you to:

• Keep accurate track of your spare parts, tools, and equipment centrally.
• Automatically log and update all maintenance work orders.
• You can also schedule timely preventive maintenance and send reminders to technicians.

Facilities management software enables you to manage the entire maintenance program from a web or mobile dashboard, virtually and from anywhere. This software is designed to help businesses save time and money by properly managing their buildings, assets, and occupants more efficiently and effectively.

Even if you have already practiced the four strategies mentioned above, sometimes they still aren’t enough, and you may just need a bigger budget. In situations like that, make your case for a larger budget to upper management, and be specific with your requirements and the benefits it will bring. Make sure you have enough data and statistics from your facility management software to back up your argument for a larger budget. If you’re still denied, don’t lose hope. Budgets evolve over time, and if you’re persistent enough, you will surely succeed in increasing your maintenance budget soon enough.