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I have a very specific skill I’m looking to develop/master in the coming year. My organization has a water treatment system that requires multiple State certifications that I’ll need to obtain. The certifications are Class D water treatment operator and Type 2 water distribution operator.

MaintainX has been really helpful in managing the requirements for the water treatment plant. The weekly Operations Log, regular softener regeneration, filter changes, chlorine injection cleaning, and other aspects are being programmed in for automated work order generation. Through Procedures, I can leverage my team to perform the tasks and serve as oversight in line with State requirements.

The certification and continued use of MaintainX are going to get us locked in with these procedures, and there are many more similar processes to develop in this manner.

Predictive maintenance techniques and project management skills are two professional skills that I’d really like to polish in the upcoming year. Honestly, working with Maintain X has encouraged and inspired me to further excel these skills. I think that proper time management would greatly help me with touching up these two skills. 

Creating daily and preventative tasks to be completed to help aid in repair budgets and equipment maintenance. Also create a daily pool chemical reading checklist to view patterns and chemical usage 

Create new procedures and also improve what we have on the system already.

Create and implement a program to order parts when they are dropping under a specific level.

Update the assets on the system already, with detailed information for each one.

Building a maintenance team from the ground up at a facility that has had little oversite with inventory, preventative maintenance, communication, or work order tracking. 

The end goal utilizing maintainX is to build a system that is easy to learn for new technicians, provides instruction through procedures including PDF’s pulled from oem manuals when step by step instruction is needed.  Providing standard procedure instructions for new machine installation or relocation, auxiliary equipment installation based in company standards. 

Building a modern system of machine maintenance tracking, cost, part replacement frequency. 

Basically building a system that makes my position as a maintenance manager nigh irrelevant. 

Since the implementation of MaintainX in our operations, the transformation has been nothing short of remarkable. The platform has significantly streamlined our maintenance processes, resulting in enhanced efficiency, greater productivity and smoother operations across all departments and satisfying all our peaky clients. As we continue to implement more sophisticated maintenance practices, I would like to deepen my expertise in predictive maintenance and condition-based monitoring. Mastering these techniques will allow me to move beyond reactive and preventive maintenance towards more accurate, data-driven maintenance strategies that minimize downtime and maximize asset life, which seems to be used over the limits. I also aim to further develop my leadership skills in fostering collaboration between maintenance and other departments, improving team engagement and driving a culture of continuous improvement. Additionally, I want to enhance my ability to lead cross-functional teams in optimizing maintenance processes and reducing inefficiencies across operations.
I am particularly interested in exploring AI-based systems that analyze data from machines and sensors to predict failures before they occur. Learning to leverage these technologies will help us optimize our maintenance schedules and significantly reduce the risk of unplanned downtime.
As a leader in our sector, our company is dedicated to advancing sustainability within every aspect of our operations. In this journey, MaintainX has played a crucial role in improving the efficiency, accountability, and sustainability of our maintenance operations. By leveraging MaintainX’s powerful digital tools, we have been able to integrate green practices and optimize our processes to reduce environmental impact while enhancing performance.
Last, but not least, I envision a feature where maintenance tasks could be categorized based on whether they fall under regular working hours or extra time, with the respective costs calculated automatically and integrated into our reporting. This would provide a more detailed view of the financial impact of our maintenance operations, which could aid in making more informed decisions about labor, project scheduling, and overall cost management. The ability to track these costs directly in the MaintainX dashboard would significantly streamline our financial planning and help us further optimize the sustainability of our operations.

This coming year I am working to leverage MaintainX to improve team communication and visibility. We currently have a plethora of issues centered around minimal change logging and technician accountability. I believe that the primary change we need to make is to go from under communicating to borderline over communicating about every job we perform in the plant. By starting to seriously engage in frequent, detailed conversations and keeping logs as we perform maintenance tasks, we will begin to build a database of historical knowledge, both for predictive maintenance and faster resolution time.

2025 Goals: Mastering Predictive Maintenance and Leadership Skills

As I transition into a more administrative role overseeing MaintainX, I’m focusing on two key areas for personal and professional growth: mastering predictive maintenance techniques and enhancing leadership and people skills. Here’s why these goals matter and how I plan to achieve them.

Predictive Maintenance: Staying Ahead of the Curve

Predictive maintenance has the potential to revolutionize equipment reliability and operational efficiency. Unlike reactive or preventive strategies, predictive maintenance uses advanced analytics and real-time data to anticipate potential equipment failures. By mastering this technique, I aim to:

• Reduce Downtime: Predict issues before they occur, ensuring equipment runs smoothly.

• Optimize Resources: Allocate maintenance efforts more efficiently, avoiding unnecessary repairs.

• Improve Cost-Effectiveness: Minimize expenses associated with emergency fixes and equipment downtime.

To achieve this, I plan to:

• Dive into tools like vibration analysis, thermal imaging, and ultrasonic testing.

• Collaborate with maintenance teams to integrate predictive maintenance into our workflow effectively.

Leadership and People Skills: Building Stronger Teams

Stepping into an administrative role requires a shift in focus—from technical expertise to people management. Strong leadership and interpersonal skills will enable me to:

• Motivate Teams: Foster a positive environment where team members feel valued and driven to excel.

• Enhance Communication: Clearly articulate goals, provide constructive feedback, and listen actively to team concerns.

• Navigate Challenges: Make informed decisions under pressure and resolve conflicts effectively.

My development plan includes:

• Attending workshops on leadership and emotional intelligence.

• Actively mentoring team members to share knowledge and inspire growth.

• Seeking feedback from colleagues to continuously improve my leadership style.

Balancing the Two Goals

While predictive maintenance focuses on technical innovation, leadership development emphasizes people and processes. Balancing these priorities is crucial, as they both contribute to the overall success of MaintainX. By combining technical expertise with strong leadership, I can:

• Lead teams effectively in adopting advanced maintenance practices.

• Build a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Predictive Maintenance is a goal for me in 2025, I’m inspired to reach this goal to help minimize machine downtime, I believe this skill can be developed with studying historical data like past break downs, repairs and performance issues. Utilizing MaintainX will be a strong in tracking performance and PM.

My personal goal is to become proficient enough with our new system so we can be ahead of our multiple state inspections which should help lighten the load of our maintenance crew.

I am admin of a large rescue mission with close to 15 buildings to maintain consisting of respite care, outpatient, intensive out patient, halfway housing, long term housing, behavioral health housing, a homeless shelter with multiple floors serving both the homeless and gentlemen who are starting a new life after being incarcerated, a food pantry and a store that helps our clients as well as the community as well as having a mobile unit to  We’re continuing to grow which has helped us change how maintenance both preventative and reactive maintenance are managed.

My goal for our organization in 2025 is to continue to help us grow and be in the position to help even more people.  Our launch date for MaintainX organization wide is 1/1/25.  I can’t think of anything better than starting off 2025 with a system that's going to help us reach those goals.  My personal goal is to become proficient enough with our new system so we can be ahead of our multiple state inspections which should help lighten the load of our maintenance crew.

Looking for ways to update my company’s organizational practices around our facilities assets, focusing on short term repairs to extend longevity of equipment. Being new to our smallish (just under 100,000 sq ft) operation of production spaces, office, and storage, I’ve inherited a system that relied upon “Steve knowing to do a thing” to run our buildlings.

I’m looking for ways to leverage technology to help lift the burden of single employees knowledge and provide a way for the company to sustain through turnover.  

In our world, we have a lot of older yet very specialized equipment.  There are singular critical machines we designed from the ground up many years ago, which now are extremely hard to support from a parts standpoint.  Often times we end up having to completely redesign and update equipment as it breaks.  This costs us significant downtime, money, overtime, and a lot of angst.  In addition to the significant rise in costs post-Covid, we have also seen a drop in quality and a substantial increase in lead times for critical parts.

It is absolutely vital we grow as a company to become a Predictive Maintenance Department, instead of our current state of Reactive.  Since most of our machines are a one-off, it is critical we see issues before they begin to rear their ugly heads.  That will give us time to change/improve designs and work with vendors and distributors to get the necessary tools and parts here and kitted for planned downtime.  

As we have grown with the successful implementation of MaintainX, we have guided ourselves into much better practices.  Our resources are pooled instead of scattered, and we are maintaining razor sharp focus on critical functions - such as PM’s.  They were getting done before, but not consistently or in a timely manner.  Sadly, PM’s were often sacrificed due to emergency repairs, which as we all know, simply leads to further emergency repairs in the near future.  We have already seen an uptick in Production, and we are no longer running around like crazed chickens from one fire to another.  Issues are being noted during our PM’s and our Technicians are putting in Work Orders for repair on the spot.  Parts are getting ordered without having to be overnighted, and we can schedule the downtime for installations.  

Next year it will be time for us to take the next step.  We must adapt to early fault and failure detection.  Since we have significantly reduced downtime, we will begin to integrate vibration, temp, humidity, safety sensors and more.  We will run the facility, it will no longer run us.  I will happily pay my team to stand around, because that means we have done our job before we had to.

MaintainX makes us hold ourselves accountable for the care of vital equipment which puts the food on our tables.  Next year we look to the future!

Off topic, but how long have you been on site and what solutions have you been working with already? What city & state is this facility located?

My primary goal for 2025 is to improve upon the already robust maintenance schedule we have, I have spent the best part of a year setting up MaintainX after realising our previous CMMS was inadequate for the businesses needs.

Everything from Machinery to inventory needed a complete overhaul and thankfully the major work is finished, Now looking into the future the procedure library that has been developed can use some updating and a bit of polish, standardising procedures across both of the site we have will ensure that all of the engineering staff are working to the same standard and therefore we should see a the equipment at both sites have a extended period of service before needing to me overhauled or decommissioned.

My other objective is to get all staff on board with the maintenance request portal, this will help keep on top of infrastructural issues and keep the site as safe as possible.