Optimize Your Multifamily Maintenance Team for Efficiency

How to Optimize Your Multifamily Maintenance Team for Increased Efficiency

As a property manager or maintenance supervisor, keeping your multifamily maintenance team operating optimally is crucial, especially when short-staffed. Fortunately, there are several strategies you can employ to help you do more with fewer people and work faster without sacrificing quality. This post will discuss the benefits of optimizing your maintenance team and provide tips for achieving this goal.

Benefits of Optimizing Your Maintenance Team

Optimizing your maintenance team can yield several benefits, including:

Improved efficiency: By optimizing your maintenance team, you can ensure that tasks are assigned efficiently and work orders are completed promptly. This approach can reduce the time your team spends traveling and help you complete more work orders with fewer people.
Increased productivity: When you optimize your maintenance team, you can ensure that everyone is working at their highest level of productivity. This approach can help you complete more work orders with the same number of people, which can be particularly beneficial when short-staffed.
Reduced labor costs: Optimizing your maintenance team can help you reduce labor costs. You can reduce your team's work hours by completing more work orders with fewer people. This approach can help you save on labor costs while maintaining high-quality work.
Improved resident satisfaction: When you optimize your maintenance team, you can complete work orders more quickly, leading to happier residents. Residents are more likely to be satisfied with your maintenance services when you can complete work orders promptly and efficiently.
Improved team morale: When your maintenance team is optimized, team members can see their progress and feel accomplished. This approach can boost team morale, particularly when you are short-staffed.

Tips for Optimizing Your Maintenance Team

Here are some tips for optimizing your maintenance team:

Assign work orders to one tech at a time: When a work order is opened for a unit, simultaneously assign all the open work orders for that unit to one technician. This way, the tech can complete all the work in one visit without going back and forth several times.
Assign work orders in order of proximity: When assigning work orders, prioritize those closest to each other. This way, your maintenance team can save time and travel efficiently between jobs. This method can also reduce the time it takes to complete work orders.
Provide detailed work order information: Provide as much information as possible in each work order, including photos and videos. This approach can help your techs prepare for the job and avoid unnecessary trips back to the shop to gather supplies or equipment. Detailed information can help your team complete work orders faster, leading to happier residents.
Communicate with residents: Ensure to communicate with residents before sending a tech to their unit. This way, your techs won't waste time visiting a unit if the resident is not home or denies entry. Communicating with residents can also minimize disruptions and ensure the work is completed efficiently.
Use technology to streamline operations: Invest in software that can help streamline maintenance operations, such as work order management software, scheduling tools, and mobile apps. These tools can help your team stay organized, track progress, and stay on top of deadlines. This can reduce the time it takes to complete work orders and improve efficiency.

Conclusion

Optimizing your maintenance team is critical to keeping your residents happy and satisfied, especially when short-staffed. You can create a more effective and efficient maintenance team by improving efficiency, increasing productivity, reducing labor costs, improving resident satisfaction, and boosting team morale.