With a new year approaching, it’s time to look at your company’s maintenance strategy for the upcoming year. Yes, it can be tempting to continue operations as usual, but your goals may have changed withinthe last year, and a proper maintenance plan can potentially help find savings and building efficiency opportunities.

Start by calculating your expenses. For this, your company’s historical data will come in handy. Look to repair receipts, work orders and spare parts purchases from previous years to help determine a ballpark figure of what your future repair costs could look like.

Once you have the cost of potential repairs added to your budget, turn your attention to preventive maintenance. Having a solid service agreement in place can offer peace of mind for your business and help make costs a little more predictable since they usually cover seasonal system tune-ups (and sometime offer discounts on any needed repairs). Plus, studies show that regularly maintained equipment has a longer operating life than equipment that runs on reactive maintenance.

Preparing for inevitable repairs will certainly benefit your bottom line, but what about a situation involving a full-fledged system failure or breakdown? It’s best to anticipate the worst before it happens. Your HVAC contractor can help by estimating the life left in your equipment based on a number of performance factors, like energy usage, which can give facility managers enough information to start an equipment replacement fund.

As you review your strategic plan for 2021, be sure to include HVAC maintenance and repair to avoid any unnecessary sticker shock throughout the year.