9 Important and Easy-to-Calculate Metrics for Facilities Managers

Q3 has come, which means that some of you are frantically preparing for Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) or other administrative meetings, and others of you are still reeling from the meetings. There’s nothing worse than when you’re arguing for additional resources or headcount, and your boss (or your boss’s boss) says “show me the numbers.”

Here are 9 important and easy-to-calculate metrics to measure your department’s performance and the availability of your equipment.

For work orders

1. Work order response times^[1]

After a while of tracking response times, you’ll be able to set goals for your maintenance department based on your organization’s maintenance goals. You may also find that you have one response time goal for work orders on critical pieces of equipment, and one goal for less critical pieces of equipment.

Response time refers to how soon after a work order was submitted, that it was responded to (not necessarily resolved).

On average, FMX customers reduce work order response time from 3-5 days to less than a day.

2. Backlog of deferred work orders

Your backlog should consist of non-critical work orders, only. If you have a backlog of critical work orders you may have other problems such as a need for additional headcount, lack of funds to make repairs, etc.

A good rule of thumb is to have a backlog of no more than 4 to 6 weeks.^[2]

For preventive maintenance

3. Ratio of preventive maintenance and reactive maintenance^[1]

Reactive maintenance can cost 3-6 times more than preventive maintenance.

50% or more of your total maintenance should be preventive.

4. Planned maintenance completion rates^[1]

You’ll have to figure out the right completion rate goal for your organization, but If you constantly have outstanding PMs and work orders to accomplish, then your department may be understaffed.

Completion rate = the number of tasks completed on time in a period ÷ total number of tasks in a given period

For equipment

5. Average repair time for all tasks

This metric determines your organization’s ability to repair equipment after a failure.

Average repair time = The amount of time from when the work order was reported and when the repair was completed ÷ Number of repairs and/or equipment replacements^[3]

6. Average time between failure

This metric gives you a good picture of a piece of equipment’s reliability. This metric enables you to compare average time to failure of different equipment models and determine which models are performing better than others.^[3]

Average time between failure = Total operating time of the piece of equipment ÷ the number of failures

7. Availability

Availability refers to the equipment’s ability to perform as intended when needed. Equipment’s availability will naturally decrease over time as it is used.

Availability = Average time between failures ÷ (Average time between failures + Average repair time for that piece of equipment)

In general, equipment should have a 95% availability (except for critical equipment, which should have an even higher level).^[3]

8. Which equipment/resources incur the greatest costs

You can determine this cost by tracking the maintenance cost of each task associated with a piece of equipment or resource (i.e. Gazebo).

Maintenance cost per task = (labor hours x labor rate) + inventory cost + misc. costs

For productivity

9. Average time to repair routine PMs^[1]

This information will help you know when to schedule PMs based on your technicians’ availability.

Average time to repair = PM task labor hours ÷ Number of occurrences

How FMX can help

FMX can help you streamline your metric calculations by keeping track of important data points and even calculating some of the metrics for you. For example, FMX can calculate:

• The number of work orders and PMs created
• Work order response times
• The total amount of time from when each work order was submitted to when it was resolved
• The total amount of time from when each PM was due to when it was resolved
• Your work order and PM backlog
• Ratio of planned maintenance to reactive maintenance
• Work order and PM completion rates
• The number of equipment/resource failures
• Maintenance cost per work order and PM task (as well as labor hours and inventory cost)
• Top 10 equipment items that incur the most cost
• And more

Check out the FMX’s reporting and analytics feature to learn how facilities management software can help you optimize your facilities management. See which other CMMS KPIs you should be tracking.

Sources

[1] Hodges, C., P.E., CFM, LEED AP, IFMA Fellow. (2016, July 21). Facility Management Reporting: The Value of Metrics & KPIs. Retrieved July 12, 2017.

[2] 5 KPIs Every Manager Should Use—Facility Management Maintenance & Operations Quick Read. (2014, April 17). Retrieved July 12, 2017.

[3] Gager, A. (2017, June). Predicting Equipment Failures—Facility Management Facilities Management Feature. Retrieved July 12, 2017.