Published: June 10, 2024  Updated: February 19, 2025

A Guide To Park Maintenance

What do you need to ensure parks remain safe, clean, and cater to the diverse needs of visitors? In part, organized maintenance involves a dedicated workforce engaging in various responsibilities. Landscaping. Facility upkeep.

A great "tool" to use is a Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). In this article, we'll present a guide to park maintenance. Topics include maintenance responsibilities and how a CMMS benefits the entire maintenance program.

Responsibilities of Park Maintenance

Aesthetics: Workers, including skilled landscape professionals, plant shrubs, flowers, and bushes. They mow lawns, manage irrigation systems, and handle essential tasks like snow removal and leaf clearance.

Facility Upkeep: The team diligently attends to the cleaning and maintenance of restrooms. Upkeep on picnic shelters and grills. Inspection of playground equipment, fire pits, and swimming pools. Responsibilities include floor mopping, restroom cleaning, leaf sweeping, and window washing.

Asset Management: Technicians inspect and repair park infrastructure. This includes HVAC, electrical systems, and water management. Additionally, they ensure that equipment and tools used by landscape professionals are service-ready.

Leadership: Supervisors oversee the entire orchestra of park maintenance workers. Their role involves managing schedules, assigning tasks, and hiring and training staff.

CMMS

The goal of CMMS software is to organize existing maintenance operations. Part of how it accomplishes this is through:

Asset Management: CMMS facilitates the meticulous tracking of park assets, including equipment, infrastructure, and facilities.

Inventory Control: Efficient inventory management keeps workers productive. A CMMS lets you have access to inventory lists, costs, and stockroom layout. Create "kitted" parts. For these, you bundle parts that you'll use for the same job each time. This saves search time.

Note critical spares and repairable parts.

Work Order Management: With a CMMS, maintenance supervisors process work requests and generate and track work orders. It offers priority notations and types of maintenance. You'll have plenty of space for job descriptions and attaching images, documents, and relating inventory. You’re able to organize the planning and scheduling of work orders.

Preventive Maintenance: Like assets and inventory, you list your routine preventive maintenance tasks. Again, you give priority rating, create detailed instructions, add checklists, and convert those PMs to work orders.

Example of Park Maintenance Enhanced by CMMS

In the spring, as nature awakens, the park maintenance team utilizes CMMS to plan and execute their tasks efficiently. Workers clear dead plants, dry leaves, and debris. Technicians complete PMs on mowers, irrigation systems, shelter houses, restrooms, and other assets. Other activities include routine inspections of the grounds, campsites, and other public areas. The supervisor schedules and dispatches these work orders through the CMMS.

All playground equipment, boats/canoes/paddleboats, and all accessories receive inspection and repairs.

The CMMS tracks all work orders, asset upkeep, and inventory purchases. Any park that uses barcoding relies on the CMMS for processing: integrating with label printers and scanners to ensure the proper number is tracked consistently.

Parks Maintenance News and Resources:

For further information beneficial to park maintenance departments as well as other staff, visit the following sites:

National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA): CMMS software acts as a technological ally and complements NRPA resources. It aids professionals in understanding their role in the larger mission of park preservation.

State-based Parks Associations: These sites offer insights and foster a collaborative approach to maintaining public spaces. For instance, in Iowa, visit the Iowa DNR.

Conclusion

A guide to park maintenance involves conservation, mitigating safety hazards, asset repairs, preventive maintenance on assets, inventory oversight, and labor resources training. Using a CMMS organizes all of the above. A CMMS helps extend asset life and reduce costs. You'll see improved efficiency and productivity. Generate honed reports that show how you can improve operations.

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