Coast Revamps Preventive Maintenance Approach for Save the Chimps

Save the Chimps is a nonprofit organization that specializes in the care of chimpanzees — so its maintenance department’s workload is anything but standard. It’s not like manufacturing in that you have a somewhat predictable understanding of when equipment might break down. “If a chimp smashes something, you have to drop everything you were going to do that day to go fix it,” says Mark Yohannan, the nonprofit’s facilities and project manager.

It’s safe to say Yohannan never gets bored. He oversees maintenance across the sanctuary’s 150 acres that have been carved into 12 islands to house the 233 chimps that have essentially retired here after being rescued from outlawed test labs, the exotic pet trade and the entertainment industry. On each of the 12 islands, there are about four to five island structures with three- to four-story wooden platforms for the chimps that all require maintenance. Within the 150 acres, there are also 16 buildings, including a hospital and a commissary, which is responsible for handling up to 3,000 pounds of chimp food a day. Plus, there’s a 1.2-mile road, six trucks, 39 golf carts and a water plant with three wells that generate 14,000 gallons of drinking water every day. “That’s a lot of expensive moving parts,” Yohannan says. 

Lack of a Preventive Maintenance Program

Before using Coast, the 25-plus-year-old nonprofit never had any kind of identifiable preventive maintenance (PM) program. Yohannan says they used checksheets and would write some information down, but there was too much heavy equipment to get a full grasp of how often the team was working on any given asset and for how long. 

It wasn’t for a lack of trying either. Yohannan says he had tried logging golf cart downtime on his own but couldn’t do it anymore because it had become too complex. He even tried UpKeep’s CMMS software a few years back but was disappointed because “no one answered the phone, there were no analytics whatsoever, and some of the offerings were way overkill.”

The team needed to get a PM program in place in order to reduce the reactive maintenance work they had become accustomed to. The golf carts, for instance, were especially in need of a PM schedule. The entire facility’s staff of 80 people uses the golf carts, and they’re oftentimes used to haul 200 to 300 pounds of food up and down big hills on the islands. “It’s not what they’re made for, so we have to fix them a lot,” Yohannan says. 

That unusual wear and tear is exactly what Yohannan wanted to track more precisely. After all, reducing golf cart downtime would benefit the entire facility in saving time and, therefore, money in the long run. The HVAC systems used throughout the facilities were also key assets to track. Same for the main water plant and wells.

A Need for Reporting and Analytics

“We wanted to get our arms around all of that and not rely on either a calendar hanging on the wall or a scratch pad to remember that we should backwash filters,” Yohannan says.

Not only would using a CMMS help the team schedule PMs, moving to a more proactive maintenance approach, but it would also help them provide reports to the board of directors on how they were spending money on facility and asset maintenance as well as what the organization needed to budget for in the future.“We’re really starting over and putting together [a maintenance plan] that explains to the board of directors how we got here and, by the way, where we’re headed, so save up because this is what’s coming.”

Coast Provides Unparalleled Customer Support

To get a more proactive maintenance approach in place, Yohannan started searching for a new CMMS software solution. It came down to Coast and two others, but two things stood out that made him choose Coast above the rest: customer service and the price. “I got the answers I needed the first time around, and [implementation] was executed really well,” he says. “Our software was built and loaded in a very timely manner, and there was always very good communication — Coast understood what we needed and, frankly, what we didn’t.”

Yohannan adds that he asked Coast’s customer support the same question so many times that they ended up making him a video, admitting that it was just a simple button he didn’t know existed. He also claims that he never would have had the time to make the transition to a CMMS if it wasn’t for them. “Coast still has customer service in an age where that has been sacrificed for the bottom line,” Yohannan says. “The larger companies I deal with have automated service departments that only allow me to talk to a computer or email a bot. Coast is better than any sized company, larger or smaller, because its employees work with customers directly and follow through with what they have committed to.” 

After six months with Coast, Yohannan is now tracking about 100 assets, and his eight-person maintenance team has completed hundreds of work orders. The best part? Yohannan is excited to be able to present data to the nonprofit’s board of directors for the first time in the organization’s history. 

Improving Work Order Completion Rates

Coast’s maintenance reports provide precise figures on the number of work orders, their status (open, pending or closed) and overall workflow efficiency, so this initial report will highlight all the PM work the team has done to prevent asset breakdowns. 

“[In the next few months], we will be able to say all of our work orders are being completed within five days of their scheduled date,” Yohannan says. “To measure that against the past, I guess you could say the improvement is 100 percent because we never did PMs the proper way.”

The next step will be tracking parts and new projects (like building new structures instead of repairing old ones) as well as using data for budgeting and labor costs, highlighting all the ways the team is reducing maintenance costs using Coast.

“Coast is the perfect solution for us. It’s simple enough to use once you learn where everything is at, and I like how it’s laid out on the left panel where you can get what you need,” he says. “I’d recommend the product for sure. It acts like an up-and-coming company in that it’s customer based, and I think some of the big guys would do well in choosing it.”