Background
The maintenance department at Redlands Unified had been using Maintenance Direct, a legacy product, for several years. “We knew we needed something more,” says Loren Parck, Maintenance Technician. “I knew the district was going out for a bond soon. We needed a tool to extract data for more detailed reporting capabilities.”
Parck tried out Asset Essentials in 2019, but due to the pandemic, the district waited until 2022 to “pull the trigger,” she says. Representatives from Brightly (which was later acquired by Siemens) helped Redlands Unified implement the software, and the district quickly got up to speed.
“It was like going from a Corolla to a Ferrari,” Parck says. “Buy-in from the team was effortless. There are fewer clicks and more capabilities. The system makes it easier to access needed information.”
Streamlining work orders
The ease of using Asset Essentials has helped Redlands Unified improve work order completion rates. “The efficiency of the new system creates less calls from sites due to the fact that the requester can get immediate status updates from the work order that was created,” Parck says. “The requestors know where to find the work order and check on its status. There is less confusion when they have access to real time updates.”
Redlands Unified technicians use the mobile app to access work order details and update their progress from the field, and the streamlined nature of Asset Essentials has helped shorten work order completion times. In the past, the team struggled to meet a 30-day turnaround for reactive work orders. “Our district is now averaging a 7-day turnaround time,” Parck says.
Accessing custom reports
Asset Essentials’ analytics and reporting capabilities are Parck’s favorite features. She has created her own subcategories within work orders, such as “vandalism” and “regulatory,” to simplify her reporting.
“When the fire marshal performs an inspection, I use our regulatory subcategory to create a report showing all of the locations and dates of work scheduled and completed,” Parck says. “That shows the fire marshal that all these items were fixed and the dates they were fixed.”
On a monthly basis, Parck runs reports on all vandalism to get reimbursement from the district’s Risk Management department or the perpetrators themselves. She also runs monthly reports to get reimbursement from cafeteria-related work, as the district’s central kitchen operates as a separate entity and pays for all its own repairs. When individual school sites undertake their own capital projects, Parck must also report materials and labor from her department so the school site assumes those costs.
Each week, she provides technicians with reports detailing any work orders that are 30 days past due. Moving forward, her goal is to retrain the technicians “to make sure all the data is super clean going in, so that our reporting is accurate.”
Making informed decisions
With all the data and reporting capabilities available through Asset Essentials, Redlands Unified has been able to use the information to make informed budget decisions. For example, Parck’s team was able to hire two new HVAC technicians by pulling data to show that they weren’t able to cover all the needs with current staff. “The number of reactionary HVAC calls has greatly decreased, because we now are able to keep up with preventative maintenance,” says Parck.
Parck is also using Asset Essentials data to justify replacement assets. “It is easy to prove, here are a couple of examples: We have done Band-Aid repairs on an HVAC unit five times. The data shows at some point it is costing the district more to repair the unit than replacing it,” she says. “We also have a historic building that needs a new roof. We were able to use the data to show our previous roof patch repairs are continuing to fail. It doesn’t make sense to keep trying when data shows it would be more cost effective to replace the entire roof.”
Using Asset Essentials has helped Redlands Unified maintenance department to run more smoothly and keep their facilities in better operating order. “When Brightly [Siemens] helps us to operate smoothly, it in turn allows our schools to be more successful,” Parck says.