From the Experts, UG2 in Action

How CMMS Helps Alleviate Stress

By Nicolas Leighton

It helps you work smarter and build stronger relationships.

A thoughtfully integrated computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) will not complicate your work routine but will simplify it. The key is having a facility services partner who brings expertise in CMMS who also takes the time to understand your facility’s composition, needs, strengths, and deficits, and applies them to a plan that will work for you. When it’s done right, the outcome will streamline your operations, lighten your load, increase equipment lifespan, limit unscheduled downtime, and make life easier for the people on your team.

At UG2, we embrace technology and innovations and tools like CMMS acts as a bridge between people.

The integration and refinement processes are opportunities for relationship-building. UG2 approaches the process of identifying which components of a CMMS will most benefit you as another opportunity for relationship-building. When we help you with a CMMS integration, we tailor the system’s capabilities to your exact needs. Thus, by avoiding a cookie-cutter approach, you will improve the connection and communications that inform planning and honing the system over time.

A CMMS keeps people connected. Beyond helping you manage assets and people, and formalizing how you plan, schedule, and report on maintenance tasks, a CMMS allows everyone to operate from a common understanding of what needs doing, by who, and when. That eliminates uncertainty and second-guessing, allowing your people to home in on their jobs without the confusion, miscommunication, and misunderstandings that can delay work and undermine relationships.

Your own end-users have the assurance that you are attending to problems. For tenants, a well-orchestrated CMMS means the moment they are without heat, A/C, hot water, or power, someone on the maintenance team is aware of the problem and on the case. This goes a long way to ensuring that the people who rely on you have confidence in you and your operation.

CMMS also offers a transparent, accurate, and realistic measure of how engineers are spending their time. You can capture hours, track work, and run reports that provide important context for why they are on site. You see, in real time, what kind of progress is being made and, when there is an interruption or a delay, you know it is happening and understand the reason why. At the same time, the person managing the system can spot opportunities to combine overlapping tasks.

A CMMS preventative maintenance plan helps eliminate surprises. When that plan is informed by real data, from equipment lists to square footage of a facility, the resulting ability to predict labor utilization is an enormous benefit to everyone. In that sense, preventative maintenance plans not only keep your equipment operating smoothly, but they also allow you to plan and budget for that maintenance.

With a people-first approach, technology doesn’t have to be complicated. When we help a customer with a transition– whether they are new to working with CMMS or brand new to UG2 — we prioritize getting to know the customer and their needs. That allows us to tailor a CMMS program to their specific operation, eliminating bells and whistles that would complicate rather than simplify their working lives. We train and support key personnel on the ins and outs of the system and stay in continuous contact to be sure that evolving needs are met quickly and consistently.

Do you have questions about how a CMMS can work – or work better – for your facility, and reduce stress and uncertainty? Get in touch and we’ll talk it through together.

Nicolas Leighton
National Director, Technical Solutions & Transitions