Villages Golf and Country Club Boosts Preventive Maintenance by 116% With MaintainX

Top Takeaways

• Reduced reactive work by 30% and increased preventive work by 116%
• Boosted maintenance team productivity by 27%
• Gained ability to track and efficiently report on maintenance performance

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When Ryan Bell joined Villages Golf and Country Club two years ago, he had one priority: overhauling inefficient maintenance processes that impacted thousands of residents. He serves as Assistant General Manager of Public Works for the 55+ active-living community, which spans 40 acres with 2,300 homes, an 18-hole golf course, a nine-hole short course, four aquatic centers, a clubhouse, and hiking trails. 

“Coming onboard here, it was my directive to make us more efficient,” Ryan says. “There hadn’t been a lot of changes at the club for 15 years, and they were using an antiquated system.” 

With a community this vast, Ryan’s maintenance team and vendors struggled to keep up with a high volume of requests without a modern and easily accessible work order platform. “Given that our department is responsible for managing a multi-million dollar club, it was crucial to have a system that really catered to how we were going to be successful for residents.”

Challenges

Lack of visibility into asset health

With about 900 different assets across 12 villages, it was an uphill battle for Ryan’s team to track and quickly communicate maintenance problems to leadership and residents. 

“Each village uses different construction materials for roofing, siding, and balcony decks. Not having that visibility or being able to easily report the number of leaks on a specific roof, for example, made it difficult for us to explain issues to the community.”

The work order black hole

The team’s paper-based workflow made it difficult for the team to deliver on their number one goal: providing exceptional service to residents. Requests often got lost in the shuffle.  

“Staff would print out work orders and hand them to technicians. Visibility into work order completion was not there. Residents would request a work order, and it would go into a black hole.”

Why MaintainX

Superior work order management

First and foremost, Ryan’s team needed a system that could help them respond to requests quickly.

“On average, we receive 220 to 260 work orders a day. As you can imagine, if we're printing that many work orders, things get lost and forgotten. Especially if you're sorting through 800 pieces of paper to try to figure out where a specific work order is,” Ryan says. “I began looking for a system that would provide more visibility. We were looking at a few other systems, but what MaintainX had to offer was far superior.”

Intuitive reporting capabilities

MaintainX’s intuitive, accessible reporting features were also a major selling point for Ryan. 

“The deciding factor for me was the visibility and how easy it was for me to create reports. Some of the systems we were looking at were spreadsheet-based, whereas MaintainX has a dashboard that’s easy for anybody to understand. When you’re providing reports, having that clean view is important.”

Results

From reactive to preventive

Since onboarding with MaintainX, Ryan has been able to move his team toward preventive maintenance practices and stop asset failures before they happen. 

“The residents are looking to enjoy their retirement every day—we don’t want them to go to the pool and not be able to use it because the heater is out,” Ryan says. “Using MaintainX to track assets helps us see how often an asset goes down or how many times a work order has been created for a certain issue. This allows us to be more proactive and not reactive—and that's really our motto here.”

The team has decreased reactive work by 30%, while increasing preventive work by 116%. 

Increased efficiency

MaintainX has been easy for Ryan’s team to adopt, and it’s accelerated their responses to requests. Overall, the software has helped the team increase productivity by 27%.

“Since implementing MaintainX, the efficiency level is night and day. We’ve gone from completing work orders within a two-week period down to two or three days,” Ryan says. “It’s been a great experience, and the team enjoys using it.”

The software has also been a win for the team in terms of resident satisfaction. “MaintainX is a very helpful tool, and we’ve received a lot of good feedback based on completion time, our communication, and the overall adjustment we’ve made to help the residents.”

Vendor collaboration

The efficiency and communication benefits of MaintainX have extended beyond Ryan’s internal maintenance team. He’s instructed his vendors to start using the software, too. 

“We have a couple of large landscape vendors that manage our property. They have about 25 people onsite, and the owner of the company has a login along with six of their superintendents,” Ryan explains. “This helps speed up the landscape-related work orders they're responsible for. So now it's no longer our team calling in—instead, we're partnering with our vendors to use the software. And it's been very effective.”

Performance visibility

For Ryan and his team, gaining a clearer view of performance metrics has been a game-changer. He describes a few ways MaintainX’s easy reporting access has had the biggest impact:

• Proving ROI to the board: “The reporting aspect of the software provides visibility to our residents and our board to show them our efficiency level, including the number of work orders created per month, the completion ratio, and the timing,” Ryan explains. It also gives leaders immediate access to the data they need, without stress on Ryan’s team. “The board of directors is curious about what's going on in each village, and MaintainX allows them to see. They can pull information within a matter of seconds. It’s at their fingertips, so I no longer have to say, ‘I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks because I have to dig through paperwork.’”

• Streamlining audits: Complying with auditors is a far less time-intensive process for Ryan’s team thanks to MaintainX. “We can show auditors the history of the inspections we're doing. It’s helpful that we can pull a report quickly while they're here."

• Justifying costs: MaintainX has given Ryan a window into patterns that can inform budget decisions, like replacing aging equipment. “It's very easy to pull reports and generate the forecasting or data that’s needed to justify spending a large amount on an asset.”

• Boosting team morale: “The team is seeing the value in the software now, too, even in the comments that are coming back to them. We continue to encourage them with the good feedback we’re getting,” Ryan says. “We can say, ‘you provided this resident exceptional customer service. You did a great job today.’ And so the team feels like their work is more meaningful now.”

Looking ahead

Ryan is optimistic about how MaintainX will continue to enhance Villages Golf and Country Club’s maintenance program. “Our number one priority was to get the work order system functioning well. Now, we're just going to continue to improve on what’s already a very good system.”

For example, Ryan’s team is experimenting with MaintainX’s AI-powered tools to speed up digital procedure creation. “We’re continuing improvements on the procedures side and getting better at using the AI features, which is great at giving us a jumpstart,” Ryan says. “You can get writer's block when you're thinking about how to make a procedure, but the AI system allows you to quickly jump into it.”

Ultimately, MaintainX has empowered Ryan and his team to stop firefighting and get more strategic about the future. “It's allowing us to focus on the bigger picture. What are other things that we could do to enhance this community and their way of living?"