Like many school districts with enrollment spikes and reduced resources, the Santa Ana Unified School District faces many challenges, including maintenance. With MicroMain, the district is getting results, including all of the reports it needs.
Staying on top of maintenance is part of the daily challenge for the Building Services Department at the Santa Ana Unified School District in Santa Ana, California. One of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, Santa Ana serves more than 62,800 students in Orange County.
“We have 60 school sites sending in service calls,” says Dennis Ziegler, Assistant Director of Building Services for the district. “We needed a computerized maintenance management system to help us keep track of requests, labor time, and work completion.
“We chose MicroMain’s CMMS because it’s very easy to use,” he says. “MicroMain XM helps me see exactly what’s going on at every school and with each maintenance shop. The reports alone are worth their weight in gold.”
Ziegler runs more than 20 reports weekly for daily operations, which are divided among four shops—Maintenance, Electrical, Plumbing and HVAC, and Carpentry. About 150 maintenance technicians serve all of the district’s school sites. Electricians, plumbers, and carpenters float from school to school, depending on need.
“Once we receive requests from our schools, we use MicroMain XM to create work orders that are broken down by shop,” Ziegler says. “We keep tabs on the work at all times. Then weekly, I review the reports and check in with the shop supervisor regarding pending work.
“We use our CMMS to track labor hours, too,” he added. “Because our jobs vary so much, it’s very helpful for me to see exactly where our labor is over the course of a month. For example, a routine call regarding a missing sprinkler head can be completed in an hour. However, a crew of carpenters may need a month to replace a T-bar ceiling since they can work on it only a few hours at a time before the students arrive at school.”
Using MicroMain XM to schedule preventive maintenance is also a plus, Ziegler says. He saves time by entering PM tasks only once—such as changing air conditioning filters, checking fencing and play equipment, and using fleet management to service the district’s extensive fleet, including police vehicles—and having the work orders automatically generated.
In addition to preventive maintenance and service requests, the Santa Ana School District uses MicroMain XM for deferred maintenance. Building Services generally contracts out this work, which may include asphalt maintenance, HVAC and electrical upgrades, or major building repair.
“For deferred maintenance, we produce a work order with contractors as the labor,” Ziegler says. “We track work accomplished and costs, just as we do for our daily operations. Since deferred maintenance is audited once a year, we just run our reports and the auditors have everything they need.”
Ziegler says he appreciates how quickly and easily he can get all of the reports he needs.
“If a principal calls up and wants to know something about her school site, I can immediately run a report that shows all work that was done over the past year,” Ziegler says. “If a Board member has a question, we can run a report to answer the question. For OSHA, we also keep a permanent record of service calls, including the date, the labor, the specific work performed, the hours, and the technician’s signature.”
Ziegler learned how to save time generating reports during his training with MicroMain. One strategy that worked for him was organizing his shops into categories, such as “Bells” and “Clocks” under Electrical, to isolate data for the specific reports he needs.
MicroMain has been responsive to the district’s needs, Ziegler says.
Interested in our industry leading maintenance management software? Check out all the great features and pricing available with our CMMS solutions!