Benefits for Construction Contractors
When you construct a building for a client, you want the client to be happy. One way to provide extra value is to set up a maintenance management system that can be turned over to the client when the building is completed. What are the benefits?
- An extra service to sell
-
One way or another, a large building will need a maintenance management system—without one,
keeping track of maintenance requirements is a nightmare.
If you offer your clients an easy-to-use CMMS with all the relevant information preloaded,
that's a very attractive extra.
It saves them the trouble of doing the work themselves, thereby reducing their overhead
when they move into the building.
If you develop expertise in setting up a CMMS, it will be faster, easier and cheaper for you
to do the set-up than for the client to do it.
Of course, you can also provide clients with appropriate training, showing them exactly
how to use the CMMS to maintain the building you've made for them.
A maintenance management system can be an attractive option to potential clients. They'll need one anyway; why not roll it into the purchase price?
- Information is preserved after the hand-off
-
No one knows a building as well as the construction contractor.
You know exactly which units have been installed—HVAC, electrical,
mechanical, plumbing—and you have manufacturers' specs for them all.
You have all the information that the client might need in order to
maintain the building well...but when you hand over control to the client,
there's always a chance that some information will go missing.
By setting up a maintenance management database containing all the maintenance specs a client needs, you ensure that the client knows everything necessary in order to keep the building in good repair.
- If something goes wrong, you're covered
-
If you give clients a well set-up CMMS, they're more likely to maintain the
building in the way you want.
Furthermore, the CMMS tracks what maintenance they do and don't do.
If some problem occurs several years down the road, you can say, "Did you
maintain everything properly? Let's see your records."
Clients won't be able to blame you if something goes wrong because of their own poor maintenance work.
- You can use the CMMS too
-
While maintenance management software is no substitute for a good
construction project management system, you can use the CMMS for
maintenance-like requirements that arise during the course of construction.
For example, once the HVAC and electrical systems become active,
they have to be maintained according to manufacturers' specs.
This is what CMMS packages are designed to do...and using the CMMS
for this purpose is a good shake-down test for the set-up that you will
eventually hand over to the client.
Why not make your own maintenance requirements easier too?
