Three years ago, the Association of People with Disabilities of the city of Dieppe (APEI de Dieppe), decided to deploy a next-gen, community-based CMMS. Since then, communication between the association’s different sites has been more fluid than ever.
Founded in 1966, the “APEI de Dieppe” supports individuals and families with a child, adolescent or adult with a disability and encourages them to participate in the daily life of the association. They work with elected officials and public authorities to defend the moral, material and financial interests of the people it serves.
We met Gabriel Foucart, whose adventure with the asssociation began 6 years ago. He started as an electrician but his position evolved little by little: today he is one of the three maintenance managers of the association. It counts several sites and structures each for different purposes. The Mobility Work maintenance management application has been deployed at three sites, each of which now employs one maintenance manager and an average of three maintenance technicians.
“Mobility Work: In which circumstances did the idea of deploying a CMMS solution emerge?
Gabriel Foucart: In the beginning, we used little cards that we systematically had to fill out. But inevitably, at some point, the card would disappear.
So our quality manager started to do some research and he came across Mobility Work CMMS. The board, the quality manager, the IT manager and the maintenance managers got together and we decided to give it a try.
Being able to test the application really comforted us in our choice – we wanted to see if your software could meet our expectations regarding our equipment.
After our trial period and the conclusions we came to, we met with the board: based on our demonstration, they immediately decided that Mobility Work should be deployed across the entire association.
What elements confirmed your choice?
Initially, we never thought of deploying a CMMS at all, so we asked for a second trial period. It allowed us to visualize the whole project. Mobility Work’s sales department has always taken good care of us and has always been available.
How much time did you need to deploy the solution?
It took us a little more than three months to be sure that the tool was right for us. For three weeks, one of our employees took care of filling all the information in the CMMS, in order for us to start using the application as we wanted.
Once everything had been inventoried, equipment and maintenance plans created, it took us two weeks to get the tool up and running.
What are the benefits of such a tool in your daily work?
We used to spend an infinite amount of time on the phone, exchanging information that we didn’t remember because we were caught up on something else. We were unable to hold meetings and to communicate effectively between maintenance managers.
“This year, I was even able to take three weeks off work in a row, because the person who took over for me could take care of all the interventions thanks to the CMMS”.
Mobility Work became our only communication tool. Workshop instructors, for example, have a lot of equipment: now, when they have a problem, they know how to request a task. Everything is traced.
This year, I was even able to take three weeks off work in a row, because the person who took over for me could take care of all the interventions thanks to the CMMS. Everything is listed, everything is marked: past interventions, what remains to be done, maintenance plans, etc. It’s a really interesting tool for us.
What feature do you use most?
We mostly use all the features that revolve around prevention.
The second feature we can no longer do without is the intervention request feature. If there’s a breakdown at another site, they create a task that we can schedule right away, so that we can intervene as quickly as possible. We also know who goes to the site, since we all have a tablet with the Mobility Work application. This way, we hardly waste any time calling each other for information requests.
Our quality manager however, loves the dashboard: he can find out about how much time we spend per site and track the profitability and reliability of every piece of equipment.
On your site, for what kind of intervention do you use the Mobility Work CMMS most often?
We use your CMMS a lot for all kinds of troubleshooting. Instead of sending each other emails, everyone relies on the application. We’ve filled the tool with photos of buildings and equipment.
All users think that the tool is simple to use and the vast majority are totally satisfied with the CMMS. If they need something, they log in and make their request, for example: “heating failure in the office. Request for intervention”. 90% of the time, this is how we use the application. We, as maintenance managers, use it for every intervention concerning our preventive maintenance strategy.
What do you think of the mobile version of our maintenance management application?
All our priorities are handled on mobile. Otherwise, we spend some time in the morning and some time in the evening on the classic web version to check our preventive maintenance tasks, what has happened on the other sites and what we urgently need to deal with.
The mobile version is a very strong argument: every deputy director of the association, the general manager and the administrators have downloaded the mobile application.
Are you satisfied with the responsiveness of our team?
In my opinion, I have nothing to complain about. Whenever I had technical questions, whenever I needed help filling in tables, or whenever I was confronted with updates that I didn’t understand, the Mobility Work teams always took the time to explain.
I can assure you, it wasn’t easy at first. We are technicians: dismantling and reassembling a machine is completely fine, however, IT tasks are a bit more complicated for us.
Every time I made a request to retrieve information on material that I had already saved as an archived task, your teams took the time to answer the phone and make sure that I had understood. Sometimes they even called me back a few weeks later to ask me if I was satisfied with the solution we found together.
What are the organization’s future projects regarding the CMMS?
We would like to deploy the Mobility Work CMMS to the entire association, on all sites. Three of our networks already communicate with each other via Mobility Work, but our goal is to make your CMMS available to the people working in our latest structure, a hosting home.
We would also like to organize a training session with the deputy managers of the sites that use the Mobility Work application, my colleagues in maintenance, the people who work with the maintenance managers and all the association’s workshop instructors, so that the Mobility Work CMMS becomes the main tool, common to all”.
We want to thank Mr. Foucart for sharing his testimony and experience with the Mobility Work community-based maintenance management platform!
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