How Transcendent’s CMMS Can Minimize Risk and Reduce Liability at Your Hotels

A great EAM/CMMS system can help individual hotels as well as entire portfolios of hotels better manage their risk and reduce liability.

Some of the potential risks that pose a real threat to hotels, their reputations, and their bottom lines include things like critical equipment failure, catastrophic failure leading to lost business or closure, poor indoor air quality and odors, fire/life safety violations and fines, mold and mildew, OSHA violations, water leaks or flooding, food-borne illness, smoke and fire damage, Legionnaires’ disease, and carbon monoxide poisoning. Transcendent was designed to address each of these risks at the enterprise level, helping hotels maximize guest safety, employee safety, and legal compliance.

One of the reasons Transcendent is so powerful at reducing risk is that it enables hospitality management companies to implement enterprise-wide programs and processes as well as track the implementation and execution of these programs. Transcendent has been used to create global water safety program which served to keep guests safe by reducing the risk of waterborne pathogens. This water safety program became one of the best programs in the industry. PM, rounds, and inspection activities were developed and rolled out enterprise wide. Transcendent made this easier as it considers the unique set of assets at each property such that only activities that are relevant to each property are scheduled.

After rolling out the program, Transcendent helped ensure that the properties were adhering to all of the key components of the program by leveraging enterprise reports. Data collected like temperature, chlorine, and bacteria readings was analyzed to determine risks, and when necessary, work orders were generated to take corrective action.

Transcendent’s ability to keep guests and staff safe extends to a wide variety of situations and activities. The system can be configured, for example, such that engineers are required to measure the airflow of a bathroom exhaust fan during a guest room PM. This type of PM reduces the risk of odor complaints from guests as well as the risk of having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a mold remediation, which might very well be required if a ventilation problem is not identified and corrected. Transcendent can also be leveraged to require engineers to thoroughly clean and disinfect a guest floor ice machine during a quarterly PM so numerous guests don’t become sick. The simple task of checking the operation of the carbon monoxide sensor at the completion of a PM on gas-fired equipment – another activity easily accommodated by Transcendent – could also save the life of a customer and save the reputation of a company. Transcendent was also built with engineer safety in mind; users can post safety notes and lock out/tag out requirements such that, before performing work on a particular piece of equipment, an engineer would need to certify that they have followed the required safety protocol, keeping your team safe and reducing the company’s exposure to liability. ​

Another important process in ensuring guest safety, reducing liability, and protecting your hotel’s reputation is the concept of rounds. Rounds are inspections and/or readings taken at multiple locations or on multiple pieces of equipment on a periodic basis. Types of rounds that might be scheduled by a hotel include: ​

Mechanical Rounds– Performed once per shift to ensure critical equipment is operating within normal operating parameters.

Daily Utility Meter Readings– Performed once per day, around the same time of day, to allow the manager to validate charges on utility bills and identify anomalies.

Monthly Fire Extinguisher Rounds– One of many life safety rounds, this round is used to validate that all fire extinguishers are in their designated locations, charged, and ready for use if needed.

Water Safety Rounds – Some companies have an extensive water safety program which includes numerous rounds to ensure water-based systems are operating safely.

Transcendent offers great flexibility in creating, managing, and completing all of these types of rounds and more. Rounds are critically important to hotels in mitigating risk in an efficient manner. Consider, for example, a hot water tank with a component failure that is causing excessively high water temperature. A round could be set up to catch such a component failure, but if it goes uncaught, a customer could be scalded or – even worse – a catastrophic failure of the hot water system might occur. In Transcendent, any reading taken on a round or during a PM that falls outside normal parameters can be set up to trigger a flag so the issue can be promptly addressed. As an example, if the water temperature in the domestic hot water storage tank is outside of the normal operating range, the engineer recording that information may be instructed, via their mobile device, to “notify their supervisor immediately.”

Transcendent can help you and your management team sleep easier knowing that your guests and staff are safe and that your hotel is minimizing the risk of surprise fines, expenses, and a reputation-shattering headline on the front-page of the newspaper.

To learn more about Transcendent, schedule a personal consultation with one of our experts today.