Maintenance Management

6.1 Preventive and Corrective, Unified Under Work Orders

Two maintenance families are supported. Preventive maintenance is scheduled, recurring work designed to prevent failure — annual HVAC service, quarterly vehicle inspections, monthly generator tests.

Corrective maintenance is reactive work triggered by a failure, damage report, or user request. Both flow through the same work order object, which is what makes the maintenance history for any asset complete and searchable. In a district that separately tracks preventive service in a facilities spreadsheet and corrective service in a helpdesk ticket system, no one ever has a full picture of what an asset costs to keep running. The AMS puts both into the same history.

6.2 Scheduling Preventive Maintenance

Preventive schedules are configured once and generate work orders automatically. The user opens the Schedules screen, creates a new schedule, selects the asset or a class of assets (“All Diesel Generators,” “All Rooftop HVAC Units”), defines the cadence (every N days, weeks, or months, or by usage meter such as miles, hours, or cycles), chooses the responsible technician or vendor, and attaches a checklist template listing the tasks to perform, parts to inspect, and tools required.

A lead-time alert (for example, “notify fourteen days before due”) ensures the responsible party has time to plan. Once saved, the system generates work orders at the next due date and every recurrence thereafter, without manual intervention. The administrative time saved is significant: a district with several hundred assets on preventive schedules would otherwise spend hours per month manually generating and dispatching tickets.

6.3 Opening and Completing a Work Order

Whether generated by a schedule or opened manually by a user, a work order captures the asset, location, priority, and assigned technician. The technician can optionally pin the exact work location using geolocation, attach photos of the issue before starting, log labor time and parts consumed as work progresses, attach photos of the completed work, and mark the order complete.

On completion, the associated asset returns to Active status. Every field, photo, and cost line becomes part of the asset's permanent history and feeds the reporting layer immediately.

6.4 Maintenance History as Replacement Evidence

The Maintenance tab on the Asset Detail page rolls up the full history into decision-useful metrics: total lifetime maintenance cost, cumulative downtime days, average cost per intervention, and any visible failure pattern (for example, three battery replacements in eighteen months).

This is precisely the evidence a CBO needs to justify a replacement decision to the board — rather than arguing that “our vehicles are getting old,” the CBO can present that Vehicle #47 has accumulated $18,400 in maintenance in the past three years against a current book value of $6,000. The replacement conversation becomes analytical rather than intuitive.

6.5 Alerts That Prevent Wasted Spend

Three alert categories help prevent wasted spending on maintenance. Upcoming alerts flag preventive work orders about to become due, with a configurable lead time so parts can be ordered and technicians scheduled. Overdue alerts flag preventive work that has passed its due date, so the manager responsible knows before a preventable failure occurs.

In-Warranty alerts fire when a corrective repair is opened on an asset that is still under warranty, prompting the technician to seek vendor-covered service before the district pays out of pocket. Across a fleet of hundreds of assets, catching even a handful of in-warranty repairs each year prevents thousands of dollars in avoidable spending.

6.6 Example — A District HVAC Preventive Program