Maintenance Planning Essentials – Contingency Planning

Discussion within your team is essential to help you consider many different scenarios to improve contingency plans.  This will allow you to be more responsive when issues arise, but also demonstrate the capabilities of your staff to respond to those issues in a consistent manner.  Your goal is to think through the scenarios that will protect you from failure.

Here are some common scenarios to consider:

Fiscal – Running out of funding is not fun.  Estimate your “burn rate” for normal services, but include likely scenarios where you may need additional funds.  In particular, if additional funding is needed, how will the extra funds be secured?  If there is a high probability of exceeding your budgets, you should clearly define the circumstances that need to be managed to minimize the potential budget threats.

Emergency Response – What will be done in case of a flood?  How about a power outage?  What if the sewage is not flowing?  Emergencies don’t have to be disasters if they are thought through and you have a plan to overcome them.

Personnel – Do you have coverage for key personnel if they were unavailable to work?  Understanding your human resources and what can be done to cover for key staff is an important part of your plan.  Considering today’s budget shrinkage at many facilities, even if you only have to cover for vacations and sick days, you could be too light staffed to perform adequately.

Budgeting, Work Notifications, and Scheduling are fundamental needs of your facility.  Using tools such as Facility Maintenance Software will help you control day to day activities more efficiently, which leads to better organization when dealing with the unexpected.