When considering a commercial lighting maintenance service program for your organization there are a few options on the table. If you are like most organizations, you would rather be focused on your business then worrying about lighting outages, maintenance, and repairs. Plus, you are probably not fond of forecasting a lighting maintenance budget when managing multiple locations. We understand the struggles related to maintaining your organization’s illumination, and the good news is, you have options. Today we are going to review the differences between a scheduled vs. an on-demand lighting maintenance program. There are what some may consider benefits and downsides to both plans. Without understanding how the plans differ, you can’t make an informed decision for your organization.
 

Scheduled Commercial Lighting Maintenance Service

A scheduled lighting maintenance program runs on a set timeframe. Depending upon your organization’s needs, a tailored schedule is designed around a timeframe of monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually. The scheduled lighting maintenance is set at a fixed rate, so your organization can maintain the illumination in your facilities with minimal concerns, at a set budget.

A scheduled lighting maintenance program comes with some benefits

1. Ensuring Your Lamps are Lit.

We have all seen those organizations that have a few lights out or their signage is not evenly illuminated. Depending upon the location of the burnt-out lighting, this can cause safety issues as well as be a detriment to your brand. With a scheduled commercial lighting maintenance program, a lighting technician will visit your sites on a scheduled basis and ensure your lighting is at optimum levels.

2. Decrease Outages Over Time

With the proactive nature of a scheduled lighting maintenance plan, your organization will decrease lighting outages over time. As an added bonus, when a lighting technician visits your locations on a set schedule, they can spot, lighting issues and address them before they become a larger problem.

3. Your Internal Staff Will Thank You

For organizations with multiple locations, your internal facility management team has a LOT on their plates. By adding a scheduled lighting maintenance plan, you allow your internal staff to focus on short and long-term objectives. Instead of being bogged down with every lighting outage across your locations.

A scheduled lighting maintenance program also comes with a few obstacles

1. Bring-to-Burn

A lot of organizations don’t take this under consideration during the evaluation process. A scheduled lighting maintenance program has an upfront cost or bring-to-burn cost. When a new scheduled program is initiated, your lighting service company will facilitate an initial visit to all of your locations. In this initial visit, a lighting technician will replace ALL of your lighting outages. The cost of this initial coverage is called a Bring-to-Burn and ensures that you start your scheduled commercial lighting maintenance program with all lamps illuminated.

2. Emergency Services

With a scheduled lighting maintenance plan you still have to consider emergency services. No matter your set schedule, be it monthly or semi-annually, you are going to encounter emergencies. With a scheduled commercial lighting maintenance plan, you need to take emergencies into consideration and work them into your agreement. Don’t forget them, they could come back to haunt you.

On-Demand Commercial Lighting Maintenance Service

An on-demand commercial lighting maintenance service program generally runs on a, you guessed it, on-demand basis. When you are experiencing a lighting burnout, you contact your lighting service provider and they send out a lighting technician to service the outages. Depending upon your service provider, this could take anywhere from 3 days to several weeks. Just like other plans have their ups and downs, so too does an on-demand lighting maintenance program.

An on-demand lighting maintenance program comes with some perks

1. Pay as You Go

An on-demand lighting maintenance plan is a pay as you utilize program. You have no bring-to-burn costs and only pay for services as needed.

2. Emergency Services

Like with a scheduled lighting maintenance plan, your emergency services are not included in your plan. But they are not as hard to budget for. When you are experiencing an emergency with your lighting, you follow the same procedures and request service. The only difference is the slightly higher prices due to a faster emergency response time.

An on-demand lighting maintenance program also comes with a few drawbacks

1. Relying on Internal Staff to Report Outages

When utilizing an on-demand commercial lighting maintenance program, you are relying on internal staff to report outages. So, ask yourself this: Let’s say your process is that the location manager is responsible for reporting outages. But said manager works first shift and never notices that half your parking area lighting is out. We would hope that someone at the location would notify the manager and the outages would be serviced but relying on one individual who may not be in a position to notice outages, is asking for trouble.

2. No Budget Restraints

With an on-demand lighting maintenance plan you have no budget restraints in place. With multiple locations, this can become a very big concern. How do you plan for your lighting maintenance if you have no idea when, where, or how often you are going to need service?

Making Your Lighting Maintenance Program Decision

After reading about the differences between commercial lighting maintenance service programs, you probably have a good idea of what would work best for your organization. Now it really comes down to deciding on a Lighting Services Company. At Action Services Group we provide both service option to our customers. Our scheduled lighting maintenance program is tailored to our customers’ needs and available on their optimal timeframe of monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually. Our On-Demand lighting maintenance program is available on request within 72 hours of a service request. Our Emergency services are available in both maintenance plans 24/7/365 and will have a lighting technician on-site within 4 hours. To discuss your Commercial Lighting Maintenance Service options with Action Services Group, call 610-558-9773, email [email protected] or schedule a call.