In the parks and recreation field, a certain amount of reactive maintenance is absolutely required. For example, we must act quickly to repair damages after storms. However, preventive maintenance is also essential. Preventive maintenance is simply the performance of tasks designed to reduce later maintenance requirements and safety issues. But how exactly is preventive maintenance beneficial?
Public Safety
Perhaps the biggest reason to perform preventive maintenance on parks and recreation facilities is to help ensure public safety. For example, tree maintenance is essential. Removing dangling limbs or entire trees that are rotting away is a definite public safety issue. Left standing, such trees can easily be blown down by strong winds or collapse under the weight of ice and snow in parks in colder areas. Removing them when the first signs of problems become visible reduces injury potential.
Prevention of Chain Reactions
Another reason to prioritize preventive maintenance is to reduce the possibility of costly and time-consuming chain reactions. For example, if a structure has a roof beginning to show signs of rot, it is better to replace that roof quickly. Once it fails, the entire structure might incur damage from weather or invading animals, among other things. That creates the need for more materials and time to fully restore the structure later.
Maintenance Cost Reductions
Preventive maintenance can also save a lot of money. For example, regular inspections of plumbing pipes allows us to spot any potential problems early. Replacing minor parts now might prevent major floods later. The same is true of any facilities with electrical power. Frequent inspections are essential to reduce power failure or fire risks.
General Convenience and Morale
As parks and recreation workers, we have all encountered reactive maintenance situations. Some such situations are completely unavoidable, it's true. For example, you cannot possible fix storm damage before it happens. But other situations are within your control. There is nothing more frustrating than being paged on a day off or in the middle of the night to come fix an issue that you could have been prevented. That is why we need to place a strong emphasis on preventive facility maintenance.
Maintenance Time Management
In any maintenance field, whether it be parks and recreation or some other industry, maintenance workers are expected to wear many hats, so to speak. As parks and recreation workers, our shifts could entail anything from cleaning public restrooms to chopping down trees, and many things in between. With all of those tasks to perform, the last thing we need to deal with is cleaning up after preventable disasters. That is another reason preventive park maintenance is so essential. It allows us to make good use of time in the present while saving more time in the future.
In years past, creating preventive maintenance to-do lists and scheduling workers to perform those tasks might have been a logistical nightmare, especially in a large park or recreational facility. Everything had to be done on paper, and keeping track of even the smallest changes was problematic. However, modern technology now exists to help you with the creation and operation of your preventive maintenance program. In fact, we have exactly the solution you need.