I have been a sup. in the Navy in charged with the safety and production of several hundred men rehabbing ships in a naval shipyard, and we made historical records with the work we accomplished, I have never been prouder in my life. I was an enlisted man given a rare opportunity, also was apart of a navy educational pilot program of total efficiency and quality assurance control and execution, material and man-hours projection, safety assessment and execution, the 5 levels of preventive maintenance, The 5 Phase of becoming proactive, and utilizing the 5s's. I have been trained by people a lot smarter than me. With that said here is some input I may offer.
Being a property manager, I had the experience of both sides, a third line supervisor to CEO executive assistant, I have seen the corporate V. maintenance battles. It is very difficult for either side to see what the other goes through, there is no understanding unless you really walked that mile with the boots on the ground. It becomes a self-defeating process of drawn-out battles which result in a revolving door of losing well-trained personnel and a litany of costly failures.
it is great when you calculate man hours but you must take in consideration, the builder of the property, materials used, the age, and prior upkeep these usually unseen factors should be calculated in. I work in a place where, not only do we not have the proper tools or equipment to do our job, we don't have the manpower for the near 600 units that require great maintenance. We have huge common areas that need to be policed, septic tanks, which have never been properly maintained and have not been cleaned out in the last nine to ten years, a water treatment facility, and placement of new homes. We have two people to do this, including the super. I basically work for a company that just wants new homes put down, their motto is "Sales before safety and death" they have actually said that. Having the loss of men under my command, I took great offense to that and don't subscribe to it. We have been at odds ever since. Many attempts have been made to the corporate type, we need tools, time, and a little respect we will get this done. There is no listening, many times I have been told: "Don't want to hear it, just get it done." Well, I live here too so guess what I do the right thing regardless of what they say, I have been in worse trust me.
The shame is, the men and I are military vets, we adapt, overcome, modify, improvise, prepare plan and attack, the residents loved us, who made several nice notifications to cooperate and we never had one positive response in reference from corporate. This long-winded background comes to many informative conclusions, the most important, listen to the boots on the ground, they are probably beaten up by the residents, and the managers, but put on the bum and crying filter (for some people), and listen to the needs of the personnel that are literally chested deep in human excrement. The job is hard enough without being blamed for the failures of being micromanaged and then blamed for management failure. Please never make the lack of someones managerial skills become maintenance's emergency. Very difficult to become proactive when everything is the "end of the world priority." Also, just don't focus on the failures, also focus on what went right, and how can we learn from that and improve.
There is much to be calculated and much to be understood before calculating or projecting man-hours, and many easy ways to accomplish this. Communication, teamwork, daily, weekly, short term and long term goals should be established. Plan and simple. BTW mistakes will happen, if we don't make mistakes then we are not working, errors, on the other hand, example, using duct tape on sewer lines, an electrical conduit for pressured lines, etc etc. that is obviously an error.
I love the challenge of this job, but unfortunately, when you work for people that just want you to hear them and don't want you to be heard, it is a recipe for failure. So I hope this insight can give you a better understanding that many times we make the job harder, lose many man hours because of simple errors such as communicating objectives properly and spending the little money to do the job right the first time. Sorry so winded I have so much to say in reference to the subject that I love so much. Be well.