Frank Pierpoint-Allen

Frank Pierpoint-Allen Director of Environment Services

For Frank Pierpoint-Allen, Director of Environmental Services, this is just one more reason to make sure that everything in the facility is shipshape and in good working order at all times.For years, he has been making the business case to his Executive Director for investing in good equipment and maintaining it carefully so that it serves its purpose well for residents and staff, and lives a long and useful life.

But he was finding it very time-consuming to keep track of everything through a combination of paper lists and Excel spreadsheets, and went in search of an easier system for managing preventative maintenance.

Deciding on PM Worx

"It took an incredible number of man-hours to keep up the manual system," explains Frank, "so it wasn't difficult to make the business case to my Executive Director for purchasing software.He's a very proactive type of leader, and he sees the long-term benefits of a well-planned and managed maintenance program."

Frank and his staff started searching the Internet, downloading trial copies of all the preventative maintenance programs they could find, and experimenting with the options.None of them felt quite right, until he stumbled upon PM Worx."We knew instantly that it was going to work," Frank recalls."It's tailored specifically to seniors care, and that's a big plus."He goes on to explain that the way the program is designed reflects how they think about and manage their facility.It allows him to attach fixed assets to specific rooms, and rooms to different "blocks" - in their case, the four "houses" that make up Buchanan Lodge.It then allows him to cut and report all this data in different ways - so that he can look at what's happening in each of the houses, and in each of the rooms."It's so flexible!"reports Frank.

Getting Started

From long experience, Frank knew that purchasing the program was the easy part.Getting it up and running was going to be more difficult.He was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to do business remotely with the PM Worx staff.The entire implementation was managed over phone and Internet."I think they do excellent customer support," asserts Frank."They walk you through everything step by step, and they're very good at it."The experience of installing an upgrade that recently arrived on a CD also went smoothly and easily.According to Frank: "They understand the importance of customer service."

At the same time, Frank recognized that it was up to him and his staff to make sure the right information got into the system.He stresses the importance of investing in the effort that must be made to reap the benefits of having PM Worx: "I had stacks of paper from my old system, and I needed to sort through them to figure out what I wanted to enter into Worx."It's a big but necessary task, according to Frank: "My maintenance guys look to the future and know they're going to benefit from this work for a long time."

Investing in some overtime for the receptionist to get this going, Frank started with HVAC and building maintenance, then went on with nursing-related tasks, kitchen and so on until they'd completed the facility.They made sure they put details in the Notes section of what exactly needs to be done and how long it's going to take.This is already helping them do better work planning.

Reaping the Benefits

For Frank, an immediate benefit is the added insight he has into how they're spending money, and what changes they might make to save on costs."The graphics in the recent upgrade are great," says Frank."We created a graph to look at what we were spending on outside vendors.It just blew our minds when we saw 1% other, 7% plumbing and the rest HVAC.That told us we really need to get a handle on the HVAC spending and whether there are more cost-effective ways of dealing with this."

He can also look at the history of each piece of equipment and see what's being spent to maintain it.Frank appreciates Worx's ability to help him track when large capital equipment is expected to reach the end of its useful life, and estimate how much it will cost to replace it when it does."That's the beauty of it," according to Frank."We can do printouts on actual costs and expected costs and budget accordingly.Our Executive Director has a background in finance, and he appreciates us bringing him real numbers."

As an accredited facility, Buchanan Lodge also needs to be able to prove to accreditors that it has a sound maintenance plan in place."I show them what we have on PM Worx, and they're happy," says Frank.

Continuing to Build

While Frank initially purchased PM Worx for its preventative maintenance capability, he's coming to appreciate the other features of the software.He's enjoying having all his vendor/supplier information on-line and easily accessed.He's intrigued by the potential of electronic work requests to cut down the time they spend updating people on the status of individual requests, and plans to implement this feature next.He likes the idea that others could go into the system and see for themselves that he is waiting for parts to get a job done.

Further down the road, he plans to implement inventory control.Step by step, Frank and his staff are learning as they go how PM Worx software can help them do their work more effectively, and sustain Buchanan Lodge's reputation for excellence.

"At the time, The Salvation Army had 20 homes in Canada and he wanted this one to be the best," said Frank Pierpoint-Allen, director of environmental services at Buchanan Lodge.
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"That would have been a lot of money in 1944," said Pierpoint-Allen.