Reactive industrial facility maintenance is a gamble that can cost your Houston facility millions. For many industrial facilities, an electrical failure can cost up to $9,000 for every minute of production lost. Proactive industrial facility maintenance can be a cost-saving strategy for your production as a whole by extending the life of key parts and avoiding costly downtime. What many Houston facility managers don’t realize is that reactive maintenance is much more than just an unavoidable expense; it’s a hidden drain on your profitability that can never be fully predicted. When you work with RUS Industrial, our team of professional industrial electrical subcontractors can help you schedule precise proactive maintenance and avoid reactive, exorbitant fees and significant downtime. Use this blog as your guide to understanding the true cost of reactive industrial facility maintenance and how proactive maintenance can save you money down the line.
The Immediate Cost of Reactive Industrial Facility Maintenance
When it comes to paying for proactive industrial facility maintenance in Houston, it can be tempting to look at it like an unnecessary expense. The truth of the matter is that you’re not just paying for scheduled inspections and maintenance – you’re paying for predictable uptime and output. When you rely on reactive maintenance, there are four primary ways that you may visibly see your budget decrease, including:
- Emergency service premiums: This is the largest disadvantage of relying on emergency repairs or replacements. In almost every case, this requires higher hourly rates, minimum call-out fees, and significant travel costs for unplanned dispatch.
- Overtime and dual labor: Reactive repairs rarely happen when it is convenient. Because of this, it often requires overtime pay for both your team and the repair team.
- The “rush” tax on parts: Paying for rushed delivery for integral parts can be costly. Many times, this fee is larger than the price of the part itself.
- Temporary fixes and inefficiency: Many times, reactive fixes can serve more like a band-aid instead of a long-term, highly reliable fix.
These costs can quickly add up on your yearly balance sheet, sometimes leading to budget overruns. While these expenses can be seen in a matter of minutes, the biggest impact that relying on reactive industrial facility maintenance can make is increasing downtime and lost company-wide revenue.
Reactive Maintenance: The Core Financial Issues
Repair bills might be inconvenient, but the real problem with relying on reactive maintenance is the catastrophic downtime that accompanies it. In this section, we will break down the exact ways that downtime impacts your bottom line and why proactive industrial facility maintenance is a non-negotiable for defending your budget and increasing uptime reliability.
Cost-Per-Hour Of Downtime
The true, yet intangible cost of relying on reactive industrial facility maintenance is the cost per hour of downtime. Within high-pressure manufacturing environments, this figure can quickly exceed $200,000 per hour of halted production. For large electrical assets, such as the main switchgear, critical distribution boards, and motor control centers, a failure can shut down the entire plant – not just one machine. Because of that, working with RUS Industrial in Houston for your industrial electrical subcontractor needs is imperative for keeping these key systems in top-tier condition. By working with us, you can be confident in your facilities’ uptime and longevity.
Rapidly Worsening Equipment Damage
While downtime costs can be astronomical, reactive industrial facility maintenance can also rapidly accelerate the quality and performance of all your equipment – a phenomenon known as the domino effect. This is because electrical failures, such as a shorted motor or failed transformer, very rarely happen in complete isolation. Typically, they lead to voltage sags, surges, or distortion that can lead to worsening damage across the rest of your perfectly functioning controls downstream. The problem with reactive repair in these scenarios is that it only addresses the component that failed instead of looking at the root cause, which in turn can lead to repeat failures.
Safety and Compliance Risk
In some cases, reactive maintenance can push emergency technicians to perform under high-stress conditions while in contact with failed, potentially unstable equipment. Working with still-energized equipment on rushed timing can lead to an increase in electrical incident risk, such as arc flash or shocks. This can contribute to hefty safety and compliance risks in the scenario where a repair team becomes injured on your facility’s grounds.
Industrial Facility Maintenance: The Silent Killers of System Health
While the cost of failure and reactive maintenance can be detrimental to your industrial facility – the way to fight back is clear and can be easily achieved using proactive industrial facility maintenance service from RUS Industrial. The biggest difference between reactive and preventative maintenance is that reactive is based on failure points, while preventative failure is based on time-scheduled maintenance that prevents even small-scale issues. By opting for practical maintenance schedules, you can potentially improve the return on investment by 30-50%. The primary ways our technicians can investigate small-scale issues before they grow into detrimental hazards include:
- Infrared thermography: This is a non-intrusive scanning technique that can check switchgear, panel boards, and connections to find loose connections before they fail. This is our top tool for ensuring reliability within your industrial facility.
- Ultrasonic testing: By using acoustic sensors, we can detect early signs of tracking, internal arcing, or corona discharge inside closed electrical equipment. This is critical for checking places that might go undetected.
- Power quality audits: Our technicians can identify and designate harmonics, voltage fluctuation, and load imbalances that can quickly deteriorate motors and VFDs over the course of their lifetime.
- Scheduled critical checks: This is arguably the most important aspect of full-scale proactive electrical industrial facility maintenance. By choosing RUS Industrial to perform planned, minor shutdowns for essential tasks, including insulation resistance testing and torque verification, you can save money and improve your defense against unplanned downtime.
By choosing to invest in proactive industrial facility maintenance, you can help balance your budget by avoiding the excess fees associated with reactive maintenance, as well as protecting the rest of your equipment. This is because when one piece of equipment fails, it is only a matter of time before another piece down the line fails.
The Smart Investment in Industrial Facility Maintenance
As an industrial facility owner or operator in Houston, the smartest thing you can do for your operation is to invest in proactive industrial building maintenance from RUS Industrial. Industrial facilities are costly operations; one small failure can quickly snowball into detrimental replacement fees, emergency repair price increases, and full-stop downtime. Proactive maintenance addresses this by finding solutions to minor issues before they grow into large-scale failures that can impact both your bottom line and your facility’s longevity.
While many facility operators might question if they can afford proactive maintenance, the real question is, how can you afford to rely on reactive maintenance? While reactive maintenance is associated with soaring fees, high stress, and emergency technicians, proactive maintenance gives you the ability to rely on predictable fees, scheduled maintenance, and stress-free budget planning. It’s time to stop paying the hidden tax of reactive industrial facility maintenance fees. Contact RUS Industrial today for a free industrial building maintenance estimate for your Houston plant.