Where to Start

An operator reading this site from the beginning has a long list and no obvious entry point. This is the order that works.

Days 1 to 30: find out what you have

Build the asset register. A day per site, two people, photographs of every data plate. This is the foundation and there is no shortcut.

Record ownership and warranty as you go. This alone typically pays for the exercise.

Photograph the compliance documents you can find, and list what is missing.

Collect twelve months of maintenance invoices and sort them by site. This is your baseline, and without it you will never be able to show the programme worked.

Do not buy anything.

Days 31 to 60: define the process

Write the priority definitions, four levels with examples, and put them on the wall at each site.

Write the reporting form. Asset tag, symptom, numbers, when it started, photograph, in use or not. Ten fields maximum.

Set approval thresholds so routine work proceeds without a phone call.

Write the emergency procedures — refrigeration failure, gas odour, suppression discharge, no hot water, flooding. One page each, in a folder by the phone.

Agree rates and response times with your contractors, in writing. Even a one-page agreement is a substantial improvement on nothing.

Build the monthly site checklist. Ten items.

Days 61 to 90: start the schedule

Put the dozen critical assets per site on a preventive schedule, with task lists rather than dates alone.

Book the regulated items ahead of their deadlines — hood cleaning, suppression inspection, grease service, backflow testing.

Start recording work orders, with the asset tag on every one.

Start the monthly site checklist and track completion.

Verify one preventive visit by visiting the site afterwards and looking at the condenser.

After 90 days

Review what broke. Which assets, which faults, what it cost.

Adjust the schedule based on what the first quarter showed.

Chase the compliance gaps you listed on day five.

Then consider software, with a populated register and a defined process to import into it.

The order matters because

Software before the register produces an empty system.

A schedule before vendor agreements produces work nobody is contracted to do.

Metrics before work order discipline produce precise meaningless numbers.

A rollout before a pilot produces a programme that fails at fifty sites instead of at five.

If you only do three things

For an operator who will not do all of the above:

One: build the asset register. It makes warranty claims possible, tells a technician what they are coming to, and is the foundation of every later improvement.

Two: put refrigeration on a quarterly service with a task list. Condenser cleaning, seal checks, defrost verification, refrigerant check, recorded measurements. Refrigeration failure is the most expensive event in restaurant maintenance and it is the most responsive to prevention.

Three: define what an emergency is, so that emergency rates are paid for emergencies and genuine emergencies are not queued behind door handles.

Those three cost almost nothing and address the majority of the avoidable spend.

What to expect

The first quarter is discovery, and it will find equipment you did not know you had, warranties you were not claiming and compliance gaps you did not know about.

The second quarter is friction. Site managers forget, contractors ignore the new process, and the checklist completion rate falls.

The third quarter starts to show something, as the emergency share begins to move.

The first full year of clean data is the year after you start, which is when the decisions this site describes become possible.

Anyone promising faster is describing a software installation rather than a maintenance programme.

What to read next, by situation

The material on this site is long. A shorter path depending on where you are.

No register, no process, one or two sites: the small operator guide, the asset register, and the refrigeration article. That is enough to start.

Multi-site, reactive, no programme: the asset register, maintenance strategies, the preventive schedule, priorities and response, and vendor selection. In that order.

Programme exists, spend is rising: cost per asset, recurring failures, repair or replace, and the vendor review.

About to buy software: what software does, evaluating a platform, and the migration question. Do not start with the demonstrations.

Compliance is the concern: the compliance file, temperature obligations, hoods and suppression, and inspection findings.

Something specific just failed: the equipment article for that asset class, then recurring failures.

Whatever the entry point, the asset register comes first. Every other article assumes it exists, and it is the one piece of work with no substitute.