When Planners Get Pulled Into Reactive Work, Maintenance Capacity Suffers
According to Plant Services, most plant managers are actively sabotaging their maintenance planning functions without realizing it. Columnist Jeff Shiver points to a common pattern: surface-level metrics like schedule compliance and PM compliance look acceptable, but they mask deeper problems, including low planned labor percentages, missing precision job instructions, and technicians losing time searching for parts that should have been staged in advance. At one facility Shiver visited, only about 25% of available labor was actually scheduled.
What It Means for Subcontractors
- If your field planners are regularly getting pulled into hands-on reactive work, your scheduling and job prep quality will erode, driving up costs and rework on the next contract.
- Metrics like schedule compliance can hide real inefficiencies. Tracking what percentage of your crew is working from a formal job plan gives a clearer picture of actual productivity.
- Planning is a leadership responsibility. Protecting planner time and defining clear outputs is a management decision, not something that fixes itself at the crew level.
