We have written about the various types of maintenance that we all deal with. I want to recap the three most prevalent in this blog and add a new one — predictive maintenance – to your toolbox.
Maintenance Type #1: Corrective Maintenance
This is probably the most prevalent in any facility maintenance plan. It is the “break/fix” work that we do daily. It is the clean-up on aisle four. The overflowed commode. The burned-out light bulb and the HVAC system are not cooling in August. Therefore, corrective maintenance is needed when something fails or is not working as intended. This type of maintenance is inevitable and inescapable. Things break and wear out. Life cycles are exceeded (more on this later), and items have reached their reasonable useful life.
Maintenance Type #2: Preventive Maintenance
In our opinion, preventative is a significant type of maintenance your church should be performing. Preventive maintenance is your proactive approach to facility management. It is looking into the future and making intentional plans for addressing maintenance that will extend the life of your equipment and facilities and reduce the potential of downtime and the need for corrective maintenance. Preventive maintenance is regularly performed on equipment to lessen the likelihood of failing. It is performed while the equipment is still working to prevent it from breaking unexpectedly.
If you would like assistance with developing an intentional Preventative Maintenance plan, please contact us or download our checklist below.
Maintenance Type #3: Deferred Maintenance
I like to refer to this as “none of the above” maintenance. Why? Because it is not maintenance at all. It is just a term we use to say we did not perform proper care on equipment or other asset. Deferred maintenance is when we neglect or postpone repairs. Typically, people fall into this trap to save money. But, the irony is that it ends up costing more in the end.
In a previous blog, “The “4 X” Reality of Deferred Maintenance,” we provided some very sobering realities from national research projects. This kind of maintenance (or lack thereof) should be avoided.
Maintenance Type #4: Predictive Maintenance
There is a 4th type of maintenance that we see being implemented. It is predictive maintenance (PdM).
Predictive maintenance may be foreign to many of you as it has not become a household term for most consumer properties. And it is definitely not in the vast majority of churches. We understand corrective maintenance because we all do it – most of us know we should be planning and conducting preventive maintenance.
Predictive maintenance, however, uses condition-monitoring equipment to evaluate an asset’s performance in real-time. A key element in this process is the Internet of Things. IoT allows different assets and systems to connect, work together, and share, analyze, and act on data. Some predictive maintenance and predictive maintenance sensors examples include vibration analysis, oil analysis, thermal imaging, and equipment observation.
For example, if you had a sensor inside your HVAC fan with a sensor that could detect fan wobble or some other abnormal operation, the sensor would send a warning. You could then check on the issue before the HVAC breaks and before your next scheduled preventative maintenance.
Take Action
Here is where we need your help. Smart Church Solutions is in the process of developing a predictive maintenance application that will incorporate several sensors for various systems. The current intent is to provide senors for:
- Detecting water leaks and moisture
- Detecting high humidity
- Air quality monitoring
- Vibration monitoring
- Heat/overheating sensors
Once these sensors are installed, if there is an alert created, the sensor would immediately send a notification to the eSPACE Work Order Module. In turn, you will be able to create a work order to notify the appropriate people and keep a historical record of the event.
Boom: Predictive maintenance through a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Software) that hundreds of churches and thousands of users use every day to be effective facility stewards.
Is this a system and feature that you believe your church could benefit from? If so, would you like to be placed on a list to be notified when this module is operational? Please click HERE and provide us with some information, and we will keep you updated.
This is going to be a game-changer!
