Build a Robust Airport Facilities Maintenance Plan: A Proven 6-Step Guide

Why Create an Airport Facilities Maintenance Plan?
6 Steps for Building an Airport Facilities Maintenance Plan
The Right Plan Needs the Right Tools
Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

Implementing an airport facilities maintenance plan will keep you proactive on compliance, prevent costly downtime, and extend the life of your airport’s biggest investments.Preventive maintenance starts with asset tracking and organization, labeling & documentation, and strong labels and CMMS software that connect your physical assets to digital data for easy processes.

Airports are complex operations with little margin for error. These facilities demand round-the-clock maintenance, from the terminal down to airside equipment and building structures. Maintenance workers maintain everything from cleaning services to your HVAC and plumbing. However, these assets can be impossible to keep up with if you don’t have an organized plan of attack.

That’s where an airport facilities maintenance plan comes in. This strategy covers everything from every lightbulb to your runways all in one easy-to-manage system. Read on to find out why preventative maintenance is so important and six tips for creating a strong plan.

Why sweat unexpected repairs when you can have a proactive plan to keep critical airport facilities up and running? An airport facilities maintenance plan will allow you to:

Maintain compliance: Airports need to adhere to strict safety regulations. Maintenance plans ensure required inspections and preventative maintenance are documented and happen on time. Maintenance plans also provide a record of all completed maintenance, which comes in handy during audits.
Limit expensive delays and downtime: A malfunctioning jet bridge, electrical issue, or HVAC problem in a busy airport terminal can lead to passenger delays and high-cost emergency repairs. Maintenance plans help prevent these unnecessary setbacks by allowing you to identify potential problems before they happen.
Maximize asset life: Airport infrastructure is a huge investment, so replacing major systems can wreak havoc on your budget. Preventive maintenance extends the life of your equipment by ensuring the small things are taken care of.

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6 Steps for Building an Airport Facilities Maintenance Plan

Photo by Sean Wang from Unsplash

Whether you have five facilities managers or fifty, successful maintenance relies on documented processes, not memory. Create a proactive maintenance plan that minimizes downtime and maximizes accountability with these 6 steps.

1. Set Goals and Make a Strategy

Jumping into a maintenance schedule without goals won’t get you far. Start by identifying all of the airport standards, regulations and operating requirements you need to maintain. Once those are laid out, build your maintenance goals around the outcomes that are most important to your operation, like:

Safety
Reduced downtime
Regulatory compliance
Cost control

Who’s responsible for what is also important to define. Determine which tasks should be managed by your in-house team and which ones you should hire out.

2. Inventory All Assets

Next, build your asset registry. Make sure you include all systems and infrastructure critical to airport operation. Your list should include, but not be limited to:

HVAC units
Plumbing
Electrical systems
Elevators
Lighting
Cleaning equipment
Runways

Airport drawings, facility logs, and maintenance history can help you identify anything you may have missed. When adding each asset to your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), be sure to include as much information as possible.

3. Label and Digitize Information

Photo by Ryuno from Unsplash

Airport maintenance goes beyond what can be tracked in spreadsheets. Industrial-grade asset tags and equipment labels allow technicians to have critical information at their fingertips while in the field. Whether it’s service information on an HVAC unit label, filter sizes, or important contact information, teams have what they need to react with less errors.

Identification solutions should be the foundation of your airport operation. That’s why Camcode’s Metalphoto® labels are printed on photosensitive anodized aluminum and designed to endure extreme temperatures, UV rays, chemicals, and abrasion without fading or deteriorating.

The issue with traditional labels is that they don’t last: they fade over time, start to peel up, or fall off completely exposing the data printed on them. Metalphoto® labels encapsulate all of the data underneath a layer of durable anodized aluminum.

Maintenance departments shouldn’t have to worry about losing identification on assets exposed to extreme outdoor elements, industrial chemicals from cleaning supplies, and general wear and tear over years of use. That’s why Camcode’s labeling process has the toughest standards for durability and reliability. You can be confident that your asset identification will last years, and often for the entire life of the asset.

Plus, when those labels link up to digital data in your CMMS, your team can work more efficiently and keep physical assets in sync with your system.

4. Build a Service Schedule

List out all of the maintenance tasks that need to be completed using manufacturer manuals, compliance requirements and condition data from your assets. From there you can create a schedule around your operations.

Preventive maintenance is ideal, but not every airport has the capabilities to achieve that standard. If you’re limited on maintenance personnel, consider ranking maintenance needs by risk first.

5. Document Work

All inspections, repairs, replacements and services should be routed through your CMMS so you have a paper trail of what was done, when it was done and who did it. This ensures your team is always on the same page, but it’s also crucial for audits.

Easy-to-read labels that scanners can pick up every time also help make this possible. By ensuring your technicians are looking at the correct asset every time with labels that won’t fade or fall off, you can guarantee your work orders are always tied to the correct piece of equipment.

6. Track Performance

Once your plan is established, continue to track its performance against your initial goals. Are you staying compliant? Are failures reducing? Are there systems that seem to have recurring issues? By tracking these metrics, you’ll know what aspects of your maintenance plan are working and what needs to be changed.

Every airport maintenance manager understands the importance of having a plan to keep your airport safe and compliant. A plan keeps your maintenance efforts structured and proactive, rather than reactive.

Of course, a plan is only as good as the tools that execute it. Asset tags and labels that can withstand the harsh conditions of your operation do more than provide asset identification. Durable labels and tags keep your data intact throughout your airport maintenance lifecycle.

Camcode’s durable labels and Metalphoto® anodized aluminum asset tags are engineered to meet your toughest durability and certification requirements. Keep runways, roads, and baggage carts marked for easy identification, creating a critical link between field assets and your IT systems. Improve workflow efficiency, eliminate mistakes, and enhance compliance from maintenance planning to execution.

Learn how asset tags can make airport maintenance easier: Request your free Camcode tag evaluation kit.