The Concerns
A fast-growing suburb of Kansas City, Blue Springs, Mo., had a relatively small Parks & Recreation staff responsible for managing all its parks, grounds and municipal buildings. The team was constantly playing catch-up, needing to be reminded about work orders and spending much of their time “putting out fires,” says Derek Mayden, Superintendent of Parks, Buildings and Grounds. The department needed a solution that would allow it to consolidate all its tasks, work orders and work history in one shared environment to keep workers on task and provide leaders with the ability to track and visualize progress and make more informed decisions.
The Solution
Blue Springs had started using Asset Essentials before Mayden, who was a former employee, returned to take a leadership role in 2021. Originally, the team was using Asset Essentials only as a work order system.
By mid-2022, when he wanted to understand how much time and resources a daily trash route was costing the city, Mayden realized the software had much more potential than just work orders. He brought in a Brightly representative to provide two days of training on Asset Essentials and “the light bulbs just started clicking on,” he says. “Today, we use Asset Essentials in every single part of our day, whether it’s buildings, parks, or scheduling volunteers for community service. It’s a huge part of what we do and how we do it.”
The Results
With Asset Essentials, Blue Springs’ Parks & Recreation Department has a single source of truth to access work order and maintenance data. The software tracks labor costs, parts and materials for every work order, alerts team members about work that needs to be done, and makes it easy for decision makers to get visibility of various needs.
For example, Mayden uses data from Asset Essentials to set departmental goals. Each day, workers get a work plan that includes charts showing completed tasks and open tasks. He can keep track of the time and the labor costs associated with completing each task. “It’s almost like an addiction, watching all the data come in,” he says. “Not using Asset Essentials costs us time and manpower.”
Today, we use Asset Essentials in every single part of our day, whether it’s buildings, parks, or scheduling volunteers for community service. It’s a huge part of what we do and how we do it.
Derek Mayden
Superintendent of Parks, Buildings and Grounds
In the past, the Blue Springs maintenance team regularly struggled to keep up with maintenance requests, but using Asset Essentials has transformed the culture towards preventive, rather than reactive, maintenance. For example, each municipal building has a requester who handles all the building’s needs. When the requester puts a work order into Asset Essentials, team members are automatically notified by email and the request is added to the work schedule.
“We’re so much quicker at responding than we used to be,” Mayden says. “There’s no more forgetting items, putting out fires and chasing our tails. Now, we’re in preventive maintenance mode. Everybody knows what they’re doing and if there is a fire, we can manage it appropriately.”
For example, when the Director of the Senior Community Center left right before the center was set to apply for reaccreditation, the supervisor needed to quickly assemble all the necessary information before accreditation materials were due. “She was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to find all the information she needed about the building, facility maintenance, HVAC, square footage, and everything else,” Mayden says. “But I had all the information she needed in Asset Essentials, and within three minutes, I sent her a spreadsheet with everything in the building and every single preventive maintenance detail.”
Moving forward, Mayden plans to continue collecting data, especially labor hours and labor cost data, to justify requests for additional employees. “I don’t know what we’d do without Asset Essentials now,” he says.
We’re so much quicker at responding than we used to be. here’s no more forgetting items, putting out fires and chasing our tails. Now, we’re in preventive maintenance mode. Everybody knows what they’re doing and if there is a fire, we can manage it appropriately.
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