May 11, 2022
8 Traits of Top National Facility Maintenance Companies
Maintenance is one of the many tasks you have to oversee as a facility manager. Hiring a facility maintenance company will save you time and effort. They will have the tools to do the job well, reducing your costs and the risk of mistakes.
With these benefits, hiring one of the national facility maintenance companies enables you to focus on your other responsibilities associated with managing a property. It also saves you money thanks to improved efficiency, lower costs since you don’t have to buy as many tools, and potentially less mistakes.
Not all facility maintenance providers offer the same level of service. As you decide which one to hire, pay attention to the following characteristics that you should expect from the top national facility maintenance companies.
Strong National Coverage
The ideal national facility maintenance companies has strong national coverage. This includes physical coverage across the country and a range of services offered by each location.
Look at Distance and Consider the Importance of Proximity
When considering locations, think about service areas and where the company is based. For most maintenance tasks and cleaning, it is fine if the company is a bit further, as long as they are in your service area.
Make sure that they have someone who will be close enough to get to the property quickly in case of an emergency. This is especially important for specific services like plumbing.
Why National Coverage Matters
National coverage makes it much easier for you to coordinate your maintenance needs, especially if you manage multiple properties across the country. You only have to deal with a single company instead of several. This streamlines everything from communications to scheduling to billing.
You may even be eligible for discounts depending on how many facilities you hire the company to work on. Some facility maintenance services will offer lower rates if you have more properties.
National coverage also makes it easier if you expand your property management in the future. You won’t have to go through the process of choosing among the national facility maintenance companies as you will already have one to work with.
Offering All the Services You Need Now
The other aspect of strong national coverage is that they offer the services you need across locations. Those services will vary based on the type of facility you manage and other factors but can include things such as:
And the Services You May Need in the Future
Remember that your needs may change in the future. As such, it is wise to choose a facility maintenance service that can increase its services as your needs change. Start by confirming that they offer the services you may want in the future. Then ensure that they can scale up if the facility expands.
Clear Communication With Your Team
The best national facility maintenance companies will be easy to communicate with. They will make it a point to keep you informed and ensure that you and your team can reach them whenever necessary. This includes the ability to contact them in an emergency and a few other specific areas of communication including:
Reporting
Top companies will give you regular and comprehensive reports on tasks completed, particularly preventative maintenance and service reports. The intervals at which they give you the reports and the amount of detail will vary. Just make sure that you are comfortable with the level of detail provided. This way, you can use the reports to ensure that the maintenance service provider completes everything you need them to do.
Remote Problem Solving
While you typically want the maintenance service company to handle tasks themselves, you also want to be able to handle some minor issues yourself. If your team can these independently, this can prevent the need to wait for the company to get to your location.
As such, the best companies are willing to do at least some remote problem-solving or troubleshooting. For example, if they offer plumbing services, they could give you instructions for a temporary leak solution over the phone. This would stay in place until they could arrive at the facility. This type of remote problem-solving and instruction is particularly helpful for emergencies.
During the Transition
The ability of top national facility maintenance companies to communicate with your team isn’t just for normal operations. It is especially important when you are first starting to use their services during the transitional period. This will be a significant adjustment for you and your team. As such, you want to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
The communication during the transitional period should include clear expectations and scheduling. It should also include open lines of communication for you or your team to reach out with questions. Maybe you will want to confirm what is covered within a given service. Or perhaps your team will need to know how to follow a recently implemented maintenance policy.
Feedback
Another important aspect of good communication with your team is feedback. You want to make sure that your chosen facility service company welcomes feedback and provides opportunities to give it. There should be a good way of reaching them with complaints, concerns, or recommendations.
Consistent Work From Vendors
The best national facility maintenance companies will already have a network of vendors that they subcontract to or work with to complete your tasks. This allows them to scale up their services to meet your needs, no matter what they are.
The key here is to make sure that these vendors deliver consistent results. The best maintenance companies will understand that the work done by their vendors is a reflection of their services. Thus, the companies will ensure that their vendors deliver consistent quality work.
Check Their History
A good indicator that a maintenance company delivers consistent work from its vendors is longevity. After all, if it has been in business for a long time, it must be doing something right.
As a bonus, having a long history also means that the company likely has connections with more vendors. They are likely to have backup options if an emergency occurs or you don’t like the service from one vendor.
Resourceful and Creative
You should also confirm that your chosen facility maintenance company is resourceful and creative. This can come through in several different ways, from problem-solving skills to their use of technology.
Evaluating Your Needs
Part of being resourceful is the capability to evaluate the needs of your facility accurately. One of your first interactions with the company should be an evaluation of the properties you manage. They should be able to determine what work is urgent or backlogged, in addition to creating a schedule for preventative maintenance and inspections.
Reputable companies will be resourceful and experienced enough to look at your property and maintenance logs to see what is overdue so that they can prioritize it. They will also be able to look at your current processes and make changes based on their expertise.
Incorporating Tech and Tools
The best national facility maintenance companies will know when to use technology to their advantage. Most will use it for scheduling or tracking work orders and maintenance.
By using technology, companies can ensure that they never forget to perform a crucial preventative maintenance task. They can also use technology to assign vendors or team members to various tasks, prioritize, and confirm everything is completed on schedule.
Simply put, savvy facility maintenance providers use technology to maximize their efficiency and ensure that they provide the quality of service you need and expect.
The best providers will even use technology to track key performance indicators. This lets them improve their services by spotting areas in need of improvement. It also gives you metrics to evaluate them and ensure that they meet your facility’s needs.
Always Up-to-date With Practices and Innovations
Your maintenance company’s creativity and resourcefulness should also include a commitment to innovation. They should stay up-to-date on the latest products and news in all of their service areas allowing them to continuously provide you with the highest level of service.
This is a very important trait to look for, as it helps ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of their service. These characteristics help your bottom line and reflect well on your ability to manage the facility.
Adaptability
Another aspect of resourcefulness and creativity is the ability to adapt. Your facility may change over time, or its needs may change. The best maintenance providers will have enough resources and experience to adapt their offerings to fit these changing needs.
Competitive National Pricing
As with hiring any other company, you will want to pay attention to pricing when choosing a national facility maintenance provider. Remember that you may not want to choose the most affordable company. They will likely offer fewer services or lower-quality services.
Instead, you want to strike a balance between services and cost. Figure out what services you need and compare the pricing of a few companies. The goal here is to get a feel for how much you should be spending on facility maintenance services. Then you can ensure that your chosen company has competitive pricing.
Pay Attention to Nationwide Prices
If you are specifically looking for a national maintenance company, you want to pay attention to prices in different parts of the country. You want to focus on pricing in the areas you currently manage properties.
But it is also smart to look at prices in other areas. After all, you never know if you will find yourself managing more facilities and needing their services somewhere else. If you can hire the same company that you already use for another facility in a different city, you will save yourself the struggle of searching for another company.
Accurate Estimates
You may also want to look at reviews to see if the estimates that the company gives tend to be accurate. This will help you avoid a company enticing you with a lowballed estimate only to increase the price once you are already using them.
Projects Completed on Time and Within Budget
You want to look for a company that consistently completes its projects on time and within budget. Some of the benefits of this are obvious. It helps you stick to your budget and lets you accurately plan. After all, you need to know how long a part of a building will be inaccessible or when important updates are made.
The best companies will have structures and policies in place to help them stay on budget. They will stand by their initial quotes. They will only make adjustments if the project ends up being different than anticipated. Moreover, they will do their best to ensure they deliver high-quality service, even if it hurts their bottom line. These companies will never cut corners to keep costs low.
Regular Maintenance
The capability to complete projects on time and within budget is not just for special one-off projects. It should also apply to preventative maintenance. You want your chosen company to handle everything related to regular maintenance, so you don’t have to do more than confirm that it was taken care of.
They should schedule the maintenance ahead of time and create the ideal schedule for each type of preventative maintenance. From there, the service provider should complete the maintenance on time every time.
This is especially important for preventative maintenance, given its ability to prevent future issues and extend the lifespan of your systems.
Variety of Name Brand Clients
The best maintenance services will have a variety of clients with names that you recognize. If they have high-profile clients, you can assume that their services are high-quality, as those companies would only want the best.
Of course, not every facility maintenance company will have a long list of clients that you recognize. They should at least provide you with a list of clients, so you can confirm with a quick online search that these are established, large companies.
Clients With Your Type of Property
As you look at the list of clients, be sure to confirm that at least several of them have the same type of property that you manage. This will ensure that your chosen maintenance company has experience with the unique issues that affect your particular type of property. After all, a residential property will have different concerns than a warehouse or production facility.
Clients With Your Size Property
In addition to looking for experience with the type of property you manage, confirm that the national facility maintenance company has worked with properties of your size. This is important regardless of the size of your property, as different sizes take different approaches and require varying levels of planning.
Clients With Good Reviews
It should also go without saying that these brand-name clients must be happy with the services provided. Look for client reviews and testimonials to confirm the level of service and the overall client experience.
Read both positive and negative reviews. See what the negative feedback is about and evaluate them as part of the whole. If there are a handful of negative nitpicky reviews among a sea of positive ones, this is a good sign.
Don’t forget to look for mentions of how the service provider was able to resolve any issues that arose. Even the best companies won’t be perfect 100% of the time. What’s important is to ensure that problems are rare and that they are resolved quickly in a way that clients are happy with.
Services That Are Guaranteed
The best facility maintenance companies will offer high-quality services, and they will guarantee them. This will give you a great deal of additional confidence in their service. It also saves you money, as you will not have to pay for repeat services that should not be necessary.
To check this point, pay attention to their guarantee, certifications, and licensing.
Reliable, Well-trained Staff
Part of the ability to guarantee services comes from having reliable, well-trained staff. Look for a maintenance provider who hires experienced team members and provides them with any additional training they need.
The staff’s reliability is particularly important as the company can only be as reliable as its staff. You want to ensure that the company you hire will show up when you need them, whether for scheduled maintenance or an emergency.
You never know when a maintenance emergency will occur, and a prompt, reliable response can be critical to limiting damage and costs.
Conclusion
The right national facility maintenance companies will significantly make your job as the facility manager easier. The best companies are available nationwide and can scale up with your needs. They will offer a range of services, have good communication, happy clients, and guaranteed results. With the above tips in mind, you should be on your way to finding the right maintenance provider for your facility.
