The City of Conroe, TX Parks Department was looking for a different way to track their work orders and increase accountability within and outside of their team. Lauren Arnold, who has been Parks Superintendent in Conroe for 22 years, says they work on everything from ballpark maintenance to infrastructure to irrigation repairs, and they were trying to track it all with Excel spreadsheets and Office products.
“We had been looking for some sort of work order system,” he said. “We needed documentation on if the issue got resolved and when it got resolved. We needed some accountability.”
After seeing a demo of Brightly's software, they signed on to use MaintenanceEdge, our maintenance management solution. “Our team was excited to get this implemented,” Lauren said. “It was fairly easy to navigate through and get all of the initial information set up in the system.”
Getting started
The implementation process also included giving his crew leaders access to the system. Now, it is very well adopted in his division, and the team can see the change it’s made. “They feel more accomplished when they know they’re recording their time,” Lauren said of his staff of 9. “If there was ever a doubt what they’re doing, it’s in the system.”
He says that no matter your computer skill level, the software is easy to pick up.
I feel confident that it’s so easy to navigate through. Most of the staff can enter work orders or complete their tasks, fill out time, etc.
Reporting leads to transparency
Lauren says that one of the benefits is that when issues come up, they can look back or run a report to see what was done when. Also, they can customize work orders and preventive maintenance to fit their needs, especially for tasks like playground inspections that require specific documentation for legal purposes.
“The customization is the one thing that stands out, as far as PMs,” Lauren said. “I like the idea that I can customize it to each playground that we have.” He also utilizes the reporting features to run reports on total number of work orders and costs for man-hours to put into the Advisory Board report.
“We spend a lot of time on ball field prep. Now, I can show them those hours and dollar figures, so when we go to make the budget we have those numbers available.”
