If you have ever driven northbound into Dallas, Texas, you probably noticed an imposing giraffe monument. The iconic landmark is the largest sculpture in Texas, measuring 67.5 feet from hoof to tongue. Its surroundings are even more impressive: 106 acres of land, including over 200 facilities housing animal exhibits and 135 vehicles and heavy equipment.
Welcome to the Jungle
The Dallas Zoo is the largest and oldest zoo in Texas. Maintaining the buildings, exhibits, and assets in the park is no easy task. Sheilah Spencir, who has served as the zoo’s Facilities Administrative Assistant for 13 years, described some of the challenges the Dallas destination faced prior to implementing MicroMain software.
“Maintenance was tracked on individual hand written work requests,” Spencir said. “Often they would get lost or misplaced, and there was no way to track the original submission. Assets were tracked on a spreadsheet by several individuals with varying amounts of information. Labor hours were not tracked or recorded.”
MicroMain Swings Into Action
Spencir needed a CMMS, or computerized maintenance management system. A fully-featured CMMS lets users schedule preventive maintenance tasks, generate demand work orders, track inventory, monitor labor hours, report on operations, and much more. After doing research on the various maintenance management solutions available, the Dallas Zoo chose MicroMain Maintenance.
“MicroMain was selected over other CMMS companies because it was cost-effective and provided the type of tracking and features that we needed in a CMMS system,” Spencir said.
The flexible nature of MicroMain Maintenance allows Spencir and her team to schedule preventive maintenance on different type of assets, including items unique to zoos. The assets Spencir tracks with MicroMain include automatic gates, zoo vehicles, compost, environmental storm drains, environmental surface drains & trench drains, public and animal buildings, fences, carousels, overhead cranes, animal scales, draw bridges, restraint devices, misting systems, irrigation systems, perimeter locks, and water features.
The typical demand work orders the Dallas Zoo generates include tasks related to safety and security, communications, vehicles, equipment, environmental, horticulture, HVAC, carpentry, welding, electrical, plumbing, roofing, painting, graphics, mechanical, water features/pools, irrigation, building maintenance/repair, grounds maintenance and repairs, contractors, pests, projects, and special requests.
Spencir estimates that using MicroMain Maintenance to schedule and track work orders and preventive maintenance saves her team of 270 full-time employees at least 30 hours per week in time spent on maintenance—that’s almost an additional full-time employee. “Labor hours are saved by being able to submit work requests electronically, track work requests, generate reports, and track details or specifications of an asset. Prior to MicroMain, work requests were documented in handwriting and had to be hand delivered. Supervisors had no reliable way of tracking or locating a specific work request. Asset details or specifications were filed in a number of locations depending on the asset, and reports were not utilized as a whole. It was a time-consuming process.”
Insights & Accountability
MicroMain’s CMMS not only saves the Dallas Zoo time, but the reporting capabilities give management insight into facility operations, greatly improving accountability.
“MicroMain enables the managers and supervisors to view completed work requests versus open work requests and labor hours to assess the technician’s performance. It also allows managers and supervisors to prioritize pending work and follow up with the technician’s progress. The Vice President, Director, and Managers know the quantity and type of services performed by our shops. End users of Web Request are able to view our services from a pick list and view the status of their work request.”
As a result of MicroMain’s transformative software and services, Spencir recommends MicroMain’s maintenance management software to other zoos or similar facilities, and is interested in expanding the Dallas Zoo’s usage of MicroMain with our Mobile add-on.