Choosing and Managing Vendors

An operator who contracts all maintenance is buying relationships. The quality of those relationships determines response times, rates, diagnostic quality and whether anything is documented.

What to look for

Licensing and certification for the trade. Refrigerant handling, gas, electrical, fire suppression all require credentials. Verify them rather than assuming.

Insurance, current, at a level appropriate to the work. Ask for the certificate.

Restaurant experience specifically. Commercial refrigeration in an office building is a different job from a restaurant walk-in during service. Ask for restaurant references and call them.

Geographic coverage matching your sites. A vendor who covers most of your estate is worth more than a marginally better one who covers half.

Capacity. A two-technician firm cannot serve thirty sites in a heatwave.

Out-of-hours capability, genuinely staffed rather than an answering service.

Parts sourcing, as discussed elsewhere.

Willingness to use your work order system, or at least to provide structured reports. Vendors who insist on their own paperwork leave you without a history.

What to agree in writing

Rates: standard hourly, out-of-hours, holiday, minimum charge, travel and call-out.

Response times by priority, with the priority definitions attached.

What is included in a preventive visit — the task list, not the duration.

Reporting requirements: completed task list, measurements recorded, photographs, and a note of observations.

Approval thresholds. Below a figure, proceed; above it, call. This single term prevents most billing disputes and most delays.

Parts markup, which is where margin frequently hides.

Warranty on their own work, and its period.

Escalation contact — a named person, not a general number.

Termination and handover, including return of your records.

Rate structures that produce surprises

Minimum call-out charges that make a small repair expensive.

Travel billed portal to portal, which can exceed the labour on a distant site.

Two technicians dispatched where one would do.

Diagnostic charges separate from repair.

Parts markup at a multiple of trade price.

Ask for a worked example. "What would a Saturday afternoon walk-in call-out with a two-hour repair and a $200 part cost us?" A vendor who cannot answer promptly has a rate structure you will not be able to predict.

How many vendors

Fewer than most operators use.

One primary per trade per region, with a named second for capacity and leverage.

The argument for few: better rates through volume, a vendor who knows your equipment, a relationship that produces favours when you need one, and a manageable number of agreements.

The argument for a second: capacity during peaks, a check on pricing, and continuity if the primary fails.

Sole-sourcing a critical trade with no alternative is a genuine risk. Have a second who does occasional work, so they know your sites when you need them.

Managing them once appointed

Review quarterly against a small set of measures: response time achieved, first-visit resolution, repeat visits for the same fault, cost per work order, task list completion, and report quality.

Share the data with them. A vendor shown their own repeat-visit rate generally improves it. A vendor who is never measured has no reason to.

Spot-check preventive visits. Look at the condenser the day after it was cleaned.

Escalate patterns rather than incidents. One bad visit is noise; three repeat visits on one asset is a conversation.

Pay on time. Operators with a reputation for slow payment get slow response, and it is the cheapest lever available to improve service.

When to change

Repeated failure to meet response commitments.

Repeat visits for the same fault, which indicates diagnostic weakness.

Billing that consistently exceeds estimates.

Reports that are not provided despite being agreed.

Loss of the technician who knew your estate, which is a real and underestimated event.

Have the handover clause in the agreement so that changing vendors returns your records rather than losing them.

The quarterly vendor review

Thirty minutes per vendor, with the data in front of both parties.

Response time achieved against agreed, by priority.

Repeat visits for the same fault within thirty days.

Preventive completion rate and task list quality.

Cost per work order, with the trend.

Report completeness — how many work orders arrived with measurements and photographs.

Open items ageing.

Share the numbers. A vendor shown their own repeat rate generally improves it; one who is never measured has no reason to.

Ask what would help them. Access problems, unclear reports, slow approvals and late payment all degrade the service you receive, and some of them are yours to fix.

Record the actions and check them next quarter. A review that produces no follow-up teaches the vendor that the measurement is decorative.