How City of Dallas Used Coast Maintenance Data for Budget Increase

Dallas, Ore., is a relatively small town with a population of about 17,000 residents, located 15 miles from the state’s capital city of Salem. But the city’s facility division is anything but small — overseeing 26 buildings that encompass about 1 million square feet, to be exact.

Matt Butler, facility foreman for the city’s facility division, moved to Dallas from Salem in 2019, and the difference between how the two operated was night and day. In Salem, it was very compartmentalized with software being used everywhere throughout the organization, so that’s what Butler was used to for several years. When he came to the Dallas facility division, it had nothing. Not even a pen and paper. There was only one person and a tool belt, and City of Dallas employees didn’t even know for sure when to call the division if something was broken.

How to Prove the Facility Division’s Value

The problem was twofold. Not only did the division lack a maintenance strategy to help organize repair and maintenance tasks across the city’s facilities, but having no documentation meant they couldn’t prove the amount of work they were doing and, therefore, how much budget they required.

“We needed numbers to value our work, and it was hard to do that with a bunch of napkins in a file folder,” Butler says. “Having a software system can store all that data for you. It forces people to start funneling information into one singular point. And then you can start extracting that data and showing your value.”

Looking for an Affordable, Intuitive CMMS

Butler wanted to prove the division’s value to get the budget for two key things — personnel and fleet vehicles — since he didn’t have any. So, he started looking into different computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) software that he knew could help him show that value.

The issue? Budget. 

Looking into different software options, Butler learned rather quickly what he could and couldn’t afford. “It really just came down to a numbers game. The City of Dallas never had a software like this before, so they were kind of hesitant,” he says. “I had to go on the cheaper scale, but [Coast] turned out to not be cheap in what it offered.”

It came down to Coast, Brightly and MaintainX, and Butler chose Coast for its affordability and ease of use.

“One thing that really made me gravitate toward Coast that I didn’t see in any other software, not even the really expensive ones, was its intuitiveness,” Butler says. “It reminds me of just a phone. You drag and drop and play with it. It’s very easy for all age groups, and I have all age groups.”

Triaging Work Requests Faster

The facility division team has now been using Coast for 1.5 years, and they’re tracking about 50 assets. In that time, the team has completed 1,500 work orders, and the requests are only ramping up now that the city has 25 to 30 full-time Coast users across all its divisions.

Right now, the facility division team uses Coast primarily for work order requests and scheduling preventive maintenance, but Butler says they’re starting to dive into asset management and parts inventory a bit more, with restock requests being the next aspect of it he hopes to put to use.

One maintenance tech who benefits greatly from using Coast is Aristo, Butler notes. He’s able to complete tasks faster because Butler can create procedure checklists and add information to a work order that Aristo can use as a resource when he’s out in the field, making it super simple for him to know where to go and what to do to complete the work order.

Butler says a lot of hours are also being saved as a result of using Coast, and the turnaround time to complete work orders has significantly decreased. Before, it would take a few weeks to complete a work order, and now it’s a day or two. That’s because all the requests that came in before were difficult to understand how to prioritize.

“Now, I can triage work requests on a city-wide level and get things scheduled like a doctor’s office,” Butler says.

No More Deferred Maintenance and Increased Budget

Perhaps the best part of being able to triage work requests and increase turnaround time is the fact that the team no longer has to defer maintenance. Before Coast, Butler says they were deferring about 20 to 30 tasks every few weeks. And now that number is closer to zero — to the point where Butler no longer needs the file he had originally created for these tasks.

Coast’s reporting showed the sheer amount of work requests coming in and being completed, which meant Butler was finally able to prove the team’s value, increasing his budget to not only be able to get two fleet vehicles but to also get two full-time personnel.

Coast Molds Software to Meet Customer Needs

His advice for those considering Coast?

“If it’s your first software, it’s really easy to dip into,” Butler says. “And customer support like Joyce have been amazing with triaging and fixing my issues. Even the ones that I think are big are super simple for her. The customer service is great.”

Butler also advises having a good understanding of what you’d like your maintenance process and strategy to look like because it helps with implementation. That said, if Coast doesn’t have a specific feature, Butler says he’s been able to ask for it and get what he wants within a week. “I’ve talked to other facility managers in the area who use different software, and they don’t have the ability to make requests like that,” he concludes.

As the facility division’s work only continues to ramp up, Coast will be key in storing and tracking data that Butler will be able to use in evolving their maintenance strategy — as well as helping prove the team’s value every step of the way.