The problem facing Bullitt County Public Schools was all too familiar to many maintenance and engineering managers. A stock of aging buildings was creating a growing crisis for a department with limited funds and a staff often stretched too thin to handle backlogged repairs. Beyond that, the buildings also were creating energy-efficiency issues for the district, and department staff lacked up-to-date software and reliable data on the buildings’ condition and performance to effectively plan for more efficient maintenance and repair activities.
“Our old system was just outdated,” says Thomas Stokes, director of facilities for the district in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, adding that the outdated technology hampered staff effectiveness. “At the time, instead of being proactive, we were more reactive. This new system helped us with a (preventive maintenance) schedule. We are able to fix things before they get bad, and that’s what we try to do every day.”
The situation prompted the district to purchase a new computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), which came online in January 2024. As a result, Stokes and his team have more data on the buildings’ maintenance and repair needs, which is a critical element in developing a program to improve the schools’ condition, performance and energy efficiency.
Bullitt County Public Schools hosts 14,000 students in its 29 buildings, which have a total of 23 million square feet, and more square feet are coming.
“We’re building some physical science buildings that are approximately 55,000 square feet, and there’s three of them,” Stokes says. “All three high schools are getting those.” Stokes’ department has 18 technicians, 30 plant managers and 70 secondary custodial staff members who work evenings.
The process of finding a new CMMS to help the department meet the district’s maintenance and repair demands required an assessment of the people who would be using the system.
“The big thing was the ease of use for all the employees that were using it,” Stokes says. “We want the plant managers and the principals to know how to use it. We wanted it to be user friendly.”
Perhaps the most important group in these discussions was the technicians who would use the CMMS, Incident IQ, in the facilities daily.
“We also wanted our maintenance guys to be able to be out in the field and get on their iPad or get on their phone and access work orders so they didn't have to go to a desktop,” he says. “They didn't have to do anything extra. That way they could get things done.
“The automated scheduling for preventive maintenance was key, as well. We wanted to be able to integrate it with the district’s systems and to have everything operate smoothly.”
An essential element of the new CMMS in the Bullitt County Public Schools was the ability to get a broader picture of the way the department was deploying its resources, especially front-line technicians.
“We can see what’s going on,” Stokes says, adding that the software enables him to track technicians’ activities more closely. “It’s not a Big Brother thing. It's just making sure that these students and this staff are being taken care of as they should be. It makes things flow. If (a technician) is having trouble, we find a way to give them support, and we can do that through the work order system.”
This efficiency benefit has translated into bottom-line benefits for the district.
“What’s great about this system is we’re not wasting money,” Stokes says. “We are able to save money by using this system just because stuff doesn’t get backlogged. People are getting updated every single day so they see what needs to be done.”
Using the CMMS, the department’s workers can more effectively track the status of a work order in progress, though the process of using the new system has involved a learning curve.
“As busy as the workflow in a day is — I may get 40, 50, 100 calls a day — if I don’t tell them to put a work order in, I’m going to forget those things,” Stokes says. “Then everybody’s going to be frustrated with me.”
The system also enables all parties affected by a needed repair to track the status of work orders — a benefit for individual school principals who inevitably field complaints on classroom conditions from teachers.
Without adequate tracking, Stokes says, “Principals are going to be frustrated because the teachers are frustrated with the principals. Then the board office is getting calls. Having the work order system makes everybody accountable.”
More specifically, the CMMS has enabled Stokes and his team to more effectively communicate with principals and technicians about the status of work order requests — a true benefit when the department has to balance a host of competing requests.
“Every school you go to, every problem they have is the biggest problem,” Stokes says. “But we have 29 schools that think that way.
“The great thing about this system is we can respond to those work orders, and if we need to get parts for something, we can write in there, ‘We are working on getting parts for this system, but it’s going to be a week from now. Is there anything else we can do to help you in this situation? Can we put a temporary air conditioning unit in your classroom to keep you cool until we get the part?’ That open line of communication is paramount.”
The CMMS also has enabled Stokes and his staff to build stronger bonds with principals and teachers — crucial elements in the schools’ core mission.
“If you don’t have (open communication), they think you forgot them, and that’s the worst thing you can do in education is forget a teacher because they have high standards,” Stokes says. “They want their kids to learn high standards. So, we have to be able to give them an environment that is conducive to that.”
The new CMMS in the Bullitt County Public Schools also has delivered maintenance benefits that are directly tied to the schools’ energy efficiency.
“When our plant managers are going through the units and changing the filters, if they hear any weird sound, anything that seems unusual, they put a work order in on that unit,” Stokes says. “Doing that has saved us a lot of money because it could be something as simple as a bearing going out that needs to be greased. If that bearing goes out, it could destroy the motor. It could destroy anything.
“By using this work order system, even just to hear something that was bad or going out, it saves us a lot of money up front. It’s the pulse of the system for all the schools. It’s a game changer."
How much of a game changer?
“We have saved enough money over the year that we could pay multiple teachers,” Stokes says. “It has actually saved us so much money that we can use toward other things. We’re trying to be as efficient as possible, and we also want to leave enough money back there for those surprises that happen.
“We constantly have random things that happen and stuff that may have been kicked down the road from previous years. This gives us an option with the shutdowns of the units and having those work orders so they are shut down on those fall and spring breaks. It saves us a ton of money. We’re always looking for different ways and doing stuff in-house and trying not to go outside as much as we can.”
Improvements in efficiency also have enabled Stokes to keep maintenance and repair work in house instead of allocating funds to higher-priced contractors.
“Contractors are going to charge a lot more in labor, and we don’t know exactly what their work is going to be like,” he says. “We know what our guys are capable of, so it gives us more accountability with our guys doing the work versus contractors.
“We like to be able to solve problems ourselves. It makes our team stronger, and it makes them feel better too when they stand back and they can say, ‘I did that.’ It’s a pride thing. The next time there is an event, they’re confident going into it because they did this or they did that. At the end of the day, it saves us a lot of money, and we don’t have to wait on that vendor. We can address it that day or that weekend to get it done before school starts back up.”
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
