SUNY Fredonia Makes the Grade
Situation
A 266-acre campus with 28 buildings, comprising 1.9 million square feet of building space. More than 2,000 pieces of equipment. Approximately 450 full- and part-time instructors, 1,000 staff members, and 4,900 undergraduate students (and their parents). Those are the concerns of the Facilities Management Department at the State University of New York at Fredonia. The Department’s mission is clear: “to provide a clean, safe, and well-maintained facility” for the SUNY Fredonia community.
Maintaining a complex campus environment and satisfying the maintenance needs of thousands is never easy, but imagine trying to do so without any system for managing maintenance tasks. That was the situation at SUNY Fredonia prior to 1995, when administration decided they needed a better solution – a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that would coordinate maintenance functions for the entire campus.
The SUNY Fredonia team agreed that any system selected must meet three criteria: it must be cost-effective; it must be easy to use, even for staff members without computer skills; and it must have strong tracking and reporting capabilities. One system and one company met all those requirements: the MaintiMizer™ from Ashcom Technologies of Ann Arbor, MI.
Solution
Today, the MaintiMizer™ system is used to issue, track, and report on the more than 600 work orders the Facilities Management Department handles each month. These work orders include scheduled preventive maintenance as well as maintenance requests and trouble calls from faculty and staff, who enter their requests through the Facilities Management office into the system. (Students place requests through the Residence Hall Director or building custodial staff.)
Each work order is printed, prioritized and then assigned to the appropriate maintenance person. If parts are needed, the maintenance person takes the work order to the storehouse, where a bar code is scanned into the computerized inventory system. The inventory system charges the part to the work order and updates inventory levels. When the repair is made, the maintenance person signs the work order, noting the hours required and the completion date. A supervisor approves the work and the work order form is entered and closed out.
At any time, the progress made on each work order is known and available, eliminating confusion over whether or not a repair has been made – and satisfying the person who requested the repair that the request is being handled. MaintiMizer™ also stores all related maintenance management information, including facility maps, equipment locations, preventive maintenance schedules, vehicle fleet records, and staffing records.
Mike Jackino, SUNY Fredonia’s Facilities Coordinator, is enthusiastic about the results his department has seen from installing MaintiMizer™.
He says, “Having regular preventive maintenance schedules has eliminated staff downtime and reduced trouble calls. Customer service and satisfaction has improved, especially since we can show that we’re responding to requests in a timely fashion. In addition, we’ve saved time and money since maintenance personnel know exactly where to go and what to do.”
Mike concludes, “The bottom line is that MaintiMizer™ helps me maintain the campus more smoothly than in previous years, freeing our staff to do what they do best and providing a high-quality environment for learning.”
Want to learn more about how MaintiMizer™ can help your university? Call us today at 800-366-0793. We look forward to hearing from you!