The construction industry is unique in that it requires some of the most expensive fleet assets to operate under some of the harshest conditions. Having a strategic preventive maintenance plan is a great way to help ensure assets stay healthy and operable—although this can prove challenging. Many fleets are finding value in using fleet technologies to help keep tabs on asset service and move toward more predictive maintenance practices.
Staying on top of asset maintenance can already prove a difficult feat. Add to that the harsh conditions construction assets work under and you’re likely to see repair spend outweigh maintenance costs—a good indication that your preventive maintenance (PM) practices may need a bit of beefing up. Then there’s newer concrete technology, like green concrete, which can affect assets in different ways than traditional concrete. A strategic PM plan can help keep assets running safely, while accounting for fleet growth and green concrete use.
When thinking about preventative maintenance, it’s good to consider not just the schedules and tasks to perform but also daily inspections.
Over the past few years, more and more fleets have gravitated toward using technologies like telematics and fleet maintenance and optimization platforms to improve their maintenance processes and service workflows. Let’s explore some of the best practices for improving maintenance management and a few tools fleets can use to take their operation to the next level.
Prioritizing Inspections
When thinking about PM, it’s good to consider not just the schedules and tasks to perform but also daily inspections. It’s often said that inspections are the first line of defense against unexpected downtime, and there's definitely truth to that. A pre-trip inspection on a mixer or a quick scan of a pump can shine a light on issues before they escalate and cause job delays. A poor inspection and missed issues, on the other hand, can mean risking seized gears, lost loads, and days chipping hardened concrete out of the drum.
There are a couple considerations to account for when it comes to inspections: pencil-whipping and blind inspections. While most fleet managers are likely quite familiar with pencil-whipping, blind inspections might be a unique phrase. Think of blind inspections as performing an inspection in earnest, but without the knowledge of how and what to inspect, as well as what a failure might look like. If your technicians are performing the inspections, this may not be as much of an issue as when drivers or operators perform the inspection. In short, inspection training can be a valuable tool to better ensure quality inspection data.
We’ll go more in-depth around tools for collecting inspection data in a bit, but first, let’s get into how to work inspections into your maintenance workflow so that you can act quickly on failed inspection items:
- Make a workflow plan: Whether you’re tracking fleet data manually or using a digital technology, having a consistent and manageable workflow for failed inspection items is important. Ideally, you’ll receive inspection results before the asset takes off to a jobsite, but the more inspections submitted, the harder it can be to keep up with failed items, which leads us to the next point.
- Improve failed inspection item visibility: When using a fleet solution, take advantage of digital inspections, which automatically alert you to failed inspection items once the inspection is submitted. For fleets using a more manual method of tracking, make sure that rather than having inspections simply handed to you, the person performing the inspection vocalizes that there is a failed item.
- Prioritize issue severity: When an inspection item fails, it’s important to determine whether that failure is critical or if it can be addressed at a more convenient time without compromising safety and operability. Prioritizing the severity of failed inspection items ensures you’re tackling issues at the appropriate time without adding unnecessary downtime to your operation.
Improving service workflows can reduce unexpected downtime and job delays.
Improving Service Workflows
While having a good inspection workflow is important, the buck doesn’t stop there. Improving service workflows, from the time an issue is raised to the time an asset leaves the shop, can reduce unexpected downtime and job delays. To really hone in on how and where you can make service workflow improvements, consider the following.
- Volume of scheduled versus unscheduled service: Breakdowns and critical repairs may be more attention-grabbing, but botched PM—like skipping a pump flush—can be just as bad. Comparing scheduled versus unscheduled metrics can provide insights into whether there is a broader issue and point to the source. If the amount of unscheduled service eclipses scheduled service, you may be looking at poor PM compliance and/or inspection compliance rates or inefficient PM schedules. High volumes of unscheduled service can negatively impact service workflows and even cause delays in scheduled service, but surfacing these issues can inform you around how and where to implement changes for improvement.
- Workload volume versus technician availability: If your shop’s workload outpaces technician availability or, heck, even the hours in a day, that’s a good indication there is a workflow problem. This can be due to a number of things, such as understaffing, poor PM compliance rates, increasing unscheduled service needs, and replacement parts delays. Many fleets opt to utilize third-party shops to handle overflow or tackle more specialized equipment issues, but without tackling the cause of increased service workload volumes, that may not be as cost effective as it could be.
- Communication woes: Miscommunication can be a heck of a productivity downer. Improving communication around scheduled maintenance, estimated service duration, and service completion should be clear and easily accessible to relevant parties, including operators, technicians, fleet managers, foremen, and contractors. After all, the last thing you need is five extra hours of unnecessary downtime just because no one knows an asset is ready to get back to work.
Choosing the Right Tools for Managing Maintenance
Now that we’ve covered a few best practices for improving maintenance processes, let’s dive into some tools available for improving data collection and moving toward more predictive maintenance.
- Spreadsheets: For smaller construction fleets or those not quite ready to jump ship from manual tracking, a robust maintenance spreadsheet is a good option—they’re cheap, range from simple to more complex, and can help you keep track of PM schedules, costs, and service histories. While you can tweak them to fit the needs of your fleet, they’re often a bit harder to scale. They also require a bit more time and attention, as manually updating logs can prove error-prone. Basically, spreadsheets are a good start, but perhaps not a long-term solution.
- Telematics: Telematics, which is already required for many fleets, delivers real-time data, such as sensor data around mixer drum speed, pump pressure, and true versus operational idle time for assets running power take-offs, allowing you to address issues quickly.
- Fleet optimization platform: Fleet optimization platforms afford fleets a measure of scalability, customization, automation, and improved communication with the added benefit of integrating with other fleet and business technologies for a more well-rounded view of your fleet's health with high-level insights into inspections, workflows, PM compliance, service costs and histories per asset, and inventory movement trends—all on a single platform. Digital inspections alert relevant parties in real time about failures while creating an issue in the system that can quickly be prioritized and assigned to work orders. DTC faults from integrated telematics systems work the same way, also allowing you to take sensor data snapshots and attach them to work orders for improved issue resolution times. Technicians can use the digital work order feature to clock in and out of tasks, see estimated service durations, and add notes. Employees can even communicate in the system within relevant tasks to ensure everyone stays in the loop.
Running a construction fleet can be a Herculean endeavor. Skimp on your maintenance, and repair costs can soar, pours can come to a standstill, and ROI is likely to suffer, but from spreadsheets to full optimization, fleets have choices. In the end, it’s up to you to choose the tool that best fits your fleet’s needs and makes the most sense from both a high-level and practical standpoint.
