Scheduling: The Key to Improving Labor Utilization, Backlog Management, and Effective Management of Maintenance Workforce Capacity

Every facility manager aims to be effective and productive, which requires efficient utilization of their maintenance team. Facility managers are expected to manage their teams to achieve key performance results. Despite desires and expectations, many organizations face challenges in workforce management and are left to justify the structure or need of their team. Facility managers often get caught between the workload that cannot be completed and costs that continue to rise. This causes one to ask many difficult questions: Is your team staffed appropriately? Do team members have the right skill set to complete the work? What are ways to maximize productivity within a team?

Scheduling can be a powerful tool to help facility managers understand effective methods for achieving an efficient workforce. Effective scheduling can also identify other workforce components to improve the productivity of your team. By implementing a sound scheduling program, other areas can be better observed, and performance will be calibrated for more efficient and effective service delivery.

What is scheduling?

Scheduling, a recurring activity at various time intervals (annual, monthly, weekly, and daily), captures alignment between identified work in the system of record, operational demands, and labor capacity, to be completed within a designated work period. Scheduling is a balancing act between operational needs and available labor capacity. The day-to-day schedule is a refinement of yearly, monthly, and weekly demands and requirements. That said, an effective schedule can only be built by understanding those demands. This should increase the awareness that some coordination and preparations are needed to achieve a solid scheduling regime. This regime will incorporate both operational demand and the longer-term strategic objectives.