6 Urgent Reasons To Consider Essential Door And Dock Maintenance
By Donald Markham
At some point, you may have encountered vendors in charge of servicing doors and docks at your facilities trying to sell you on preventive maintenance.
And while it’s true that even the toughest equipment will eventually fall victim to wear-and-tear damage under harsh conditions, maintenance providers often leave this out:
Not every bit of wear-and-tear that shows up requires your immediate attention.
That’s right, given everything you have on your plate already—scheduled tasks, employee meetings, paperwork, etc—it’s the essential requirements that deserve your attention more than anything. The very same ones that leave you exposed to downtime, safety hazards, and compliance risk, if left unchecked.
So where others are hesitant to draw lines between what can and cannot wait, it’s only right, for the sake of facility operations, that you’re finally made aware of 6 urgent requirements essential door and dock maintenance keeps you prepared for at all times!
ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS FOR
DOOR & DOCK MAINTENANCE
1. OPERATIONAL WORKFLOW
One of the primary functions of equipment at your facilities is to allow people and goods to move from one place to another. Without this it simply isn’t feasible to make or distribute any of your products—let alone receive payment for getting them into the hands of your customers.
As a result, when door and dock equipment designed to facilitate operational workflow fails, what often follows is a sudden break in the action that can force productivity to come to a standstill for as long as the problem remains unresolved.
Fortunately, this an area where an essential maintenance program has you covered, by routinely assessing wear-and-tear damage to workflow-related doors and docks, prior to taking care of repairs that are necessary to keeping facility operations in motion and productivity on track!
2. EQUIPMENT INTEGRITY
For mission-critical equipment to function properly it must be working together as a unit, like originally intended. Only then can it actually serve its purpose without becoming unreliable or turning into a flat-out liability that causes way more problems than it solves.
So, in the event that one or more equipment parts integral to the safety of your doors and docks were to reach the point of no return, it wouldn’t be out of the question to assume catastrophic failure for the entire system.
Unless, of course, you had the protection of an essential maintenance program focusing strictly on uncovering the most severe forms of wear-and-tear damage, while at the same time providing high-priority repairs to doors and docks that can’t be allowed to fail!
3. SAFETY AND EHS
Equipment specifically designed to protect your products, processes, and personnel from environmental hazards should never be overlooked. On the contrary, they deserve the utmost attention, considering they’re an object of extreme scrutiny from outside regulators.
In fact, even the slightest breach could be a big cause for concern, since compliance violations related to unsanitary doors and docks can carry strict penalties like mandatory fines and shutdowns until the problem is fixed.
Given this strong emphasis placed on environmental safety, an essential door and dock maintenance program proves its worth by anticipating immediate concerns (no matter how small) and bringing a swift resolution to dangerous threats—before the damage is done!
4. SECURITY
Optimal security inside and outside of facilities depends on integrated measures that can respond at a moment’s notice. This way, you and personnel don’t have to feel increasingly vulnerable, compromised, or unprepared in case of a serious and unforeseen accident threat.
Still, accidents can happen, and if existing door and dock equipment isn’t up to task of performing its security functions right when you need them, then the consequences could lead to prolonged facility exposure and even physical damage.
The good news is, an essential maintenance program keeps all of this under control for you by closely monitoring door and dock security, making sure to correct any irregular protocols long before they have the chance of backfiring on what that matters most!
5. FIRE STANDARDS
Fire standards are there to protect facility operations from going up in flames. For this reason they should always be treated with extreme caution—should you ever have to rely on them to insulate you from the devastating effects of unexpected fire incidents.
But aside from being legally enforced, even the smallest fire door oversight puts your property and operations at risk, also endangering the lives of innocent people who are simply doing their job.
Extremely vigilant, therefore, of the dangers and legal requirements surrounding fire safety, one of the top priorities an essential maintenance program tackles immediately is the appropriate testing and repair of fire-rated doors that must be up to code!
6. SANITATION
Given the highly infectious spread of COVID-19, sanitation is a pressing issue that won’t be going away any time soon, for the simple reason that everybody is at risk of being exposed.
That said, if there’s one thing you can count on it’s that any basic measures you’ve come to rely on will no longer be enough, since sanitary procedures are sure to become stricter than at any time in the past for doors and docks.
Because of this, an essential maintenance program that adheres to the latest federal and state guidelines for sanitary facility access could simply not come at better time, and will ultimately prevent you and everyone who uses yours doors from getting infected!
Donald Markham is an experienced facility access specialist helping facility operations teams move the needle in the areas that matter most with proven door and dock solutions that got your back in every situation!
