What to Look for When Maintaining Inspected Facilities

Know­ing the ins and outs of a giv­en facil­i­ty is para­mount when it comes to ensur­ing ongo­ing safe­ty, opti­miz­ing pro­duc­tion process­es, min­i­miz­ing costs and down­time, pre­vent­ing major issues, and com­ply­ing with all rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions. But even if you know your facil­i­ty like the back of your hand, it’s easy to miss out on key details or bud­ding prob­lems. Addi­tion­al­ly, when it comes to part­ner­ing up with a facil­i­ty main­te­nance con­trac­tor, you want to make sure they’re on the same page with your pro­ce­dures and needs. At Kaloutas, we make a con­cert­ed effort to get to know each and every client and their facil­i­ties in order to enhance their oper­a­tions and resolve the prob­lems they can’t on their own.

Here are some ques­tions we ask and things we look for when main­tain­ing inspect­ed facilities.

How to Main­tain Inspect­ed Facilities

How Is the Facil­i­ty Being Used?

This broad ques­tion is emblem­at­ic of our approach to main­tain­ing inspect­ed facil­i­ties — ask­ing ques­tions allows us to bet­ter under­stand what makes a facil­i­ty tick and where its var­i­ous paint points might be. In this way, no detail gets left out of the equa­tion. We take into con­sid­er­a­tion mat­ters such as the types of wheels used in a facil­i­ty (cer­tain wheels are best used on cer­tain types of floor­ing), the inter­nal cli­mate of a facil­i­ty (i.e. heat­ed facil­i­ty, cooled envi­ron­ment, room tem­per­a­ture), whether there are chem­i­cals present in the facil­i­ty and how they might inter­act with sur­faces, and so on.

Pay­ing close atten­tion to these facil­i­ty idio­syn­crasies has allowed us to solve unique prob­lems for var­i­ous clients. For instance, a par­tic­u­lar lab­o­ra­to­ry under our purview was strug­gling to keep their met­al-framed win­dows free from con­den­sa­tion (and ice dur­ing the cold­er months) due to the dif­fer­ence in humid­i­ty lev­els between the inte­ri­or space and out­side envi­ron­ment. Kaloutas tech­ni­cians found a way for this client to apply a prod­uct that cre­at­ed a ther­mal break on those win­dows so they could main­tain their clean­room envi­ron­ment with­out obstruct­ing or dam­ag­ing their windows.

What Are the Cur­rent Clean­ing and Main­te­nance Methods?

When we come into a new facil­i­ty, our goal is to under­stand how it cur­rent­ly oper­ates and work with­in those para­me­ters, not to imme­di­ate­ly dic­tate what needs to hap­pen or change. This is why we pay close atten­tion to the estab­lished clean­ing and main­te­nance reg­i­men of a giv­en facil­i­ty. Once we under­stand what needs to hap­pen and why, we can accom­plish three key things: 1) ensure that we don’t inter­fere with those vital oper­a­tions, 2) point out any­thing lack­ing in said clean­ing and main­te­nance process­es, and 3) if pos­si­ble, opti­mize said clean­ing and main­te­nance pro­to­cols. In this way, we are con­stant­ly adapt­ing to cus­tomer needs while ensur­ing their facil­i­ties com­ply with all nec­es­sary require­ments. We make sure, for instance, that all food and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal facil­i­ties we over­see can eas­i­ly pass FDA inspec­tions.

What Is the Facility’s Process, Cycle, and/​or Schedule?

Solv­ing unique prob­lems and ensur­ing ongo­ing com­pli­ance aren’t the only things to con­sid­er when main­tain­ing inspect­ed facil­i­ties — pro­tect­ing a facility’s bot­tom line is also on the dock­et. The first step in ensur­ing and improv­ing a facility’s out­put is under­stand­ing its process, cycle, and/​or sched­ul­ing needs. This way, we can strate­gi­cal­ly approach when and how we per­form impor­tant main­te­nance tasks. For instance, the ques­tion of how to main­tain pro­duc­tion while doing floors comes up often. The answer: work dur­ing sched­uled down­time if pos­si­ble, and if not, work on floors in sec­tions, con­tain work areas, etc., to allow pro­duc­tion to con­tin­ue as much as pos­si­ble. Ulti­mate­ly, our goal is to pro­vide a facil­i­ty with the most uptime and min­i­mize downtime.

Keep­ing an Eye on Enhanc­ing Your Facility

In a way, it’s dif­fi­cult to describe pre­cise­ly what we look for when main­tain­ing inspect­ed facil­i­ties. After all, each facil­i­ty is unique, so rather than have a stan­dard­ized pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance check­list, we approach each facil­i­ty as an indi­vid­ual project, ask­ing cru­cial ques­tions that help us unlock its dis­tinc­tive needs and chal­lenges. Ini­tial­ly, we might ask the same broad ques­tions of each client, but this inquiry opens the door to gain a more gran­u­lar under­stand­ing which, in the end, helps us pro­tect, main­tain, and enhance each and every facil­i­ty we work with.

To learn more about us, our peo­ple, and all that we do, con­tact us online or give us a call at 978−532−1414.