At Property Meld, we speak to hundreds of property managers each day. Through learning about many different maintenance processes, we’ve noticed that many maintenance departments don’t have the ability or the capacity to track essential maintenance KPIs like technician throughput.
If you aren’t tracking and improving your technician utilization rate, you have the potential to lose more than 100k annually in revenue.
What is Technician Utilization Rate?
If your have poor technician throughput will be inefficiencies in your maintenance process which leads to upset residents and property owners. Not to mention, the significant loss in revenue. Technician Utilization Rate is the measure of how much time your internal techs are spending on billable maintenance tasks versus their total amount of hours. For example, if your tech works 40 hours a week and only spends 20% of their time on maintenance jobs, 80% of their time is not being utilized.
How is Utilization Rate Calculated?
Generally, any utilization rate under 45% is considered bad, 45%-75% is okay, and above 75% is considered exceptional. The good news? Adjusting your utilization rate to exceptional levels is not difficult, and the financial gains are substantial. So, why wouldn’t you want to focus on increasing productivity and revenue?
Technician Utilization Rate is calculated by dividing the number of maintenance hours logged by the total number of hours worked in a given period.
For example, if you have a maintenance tech who works 40 hours a week and has logged 25 hours of maintenance tasks, your utilization rate would be as follows:
25 / 40 = 62.5%. This would be considered an okay Technician Utilization Rate, but there is room for improvement.
Why is it essential to monitor Technician Utilization Rate?
Monitoring your technician throughput is crucial because it helps you identify essential things in your maintenance process.
1: If you need to hire additional staff: If all your maintenance technicians have great utilization rates, but you’re still struggling to complete work orders on time, it may indicate you need to hire more team members or outsource work to third-party vendors.
2: How much time do employees dedicate towards maintenance work: Monitoring the productivity of your internal employees is crucial to revenue generation. If your maintenance technicians only spend a small portion of their time on billable maintenance work, they may not be the most productive employees to help you complete your business goals.
3: If you can accommodate more customers: If all your technicians have poor utilization rates, this could be an indication you don’t have enough work to keep all your technicians busy. This means you are able to take on more customers and properties without sacrificing your level of service.
How Small Improvements Can Have a Huge Impact
Forget the thought that you’ll need to change the entire structure of your business to improve your technician throughput. Increasing by just 10% can immensely impact your annual revenue. In the example below, your technician, John, averages 2.06 daily jobs. See how much your total income is affected by increasing his utilization rate by 10%, 20%, and 30%.
This slight increase doesn’t cause John to burn out because he still has time within his week; you are just making him more efficient. Implementing these increases across your entire team makes the ripple effects unmatched. Increasing your jobs per day increases your parts and labor revenue. The more work that is completed generates more revenue for your business.
With Property Meld’s Insights dashboard, you can see your Technician Utilization Rate at any given time. By plugging in a few numbers regarding your maintenance process, our team can show you how to move the needle positively and highlight the potential revenue you may be missing out on. An increase of just 10% could prevent 100k from slipping through the cracks every year.
