Facilities Management · West Columbia, South Carolina · Est. 2013
We publish the jobs we had to come back to.
MetCore Facilities maintains commercial and institutional buildings across the Midlands. Every month we publish first-time-fix rates by trade and the proportion of jobs reopened because our own repair did not hold.
- Years in the Midlands
- 12
- Buildings maintained
- 146
- First-time fix
- 87%
- Jobs reopened
- 6.2%
Why we publish it
A closed work order proves nothing.
A contractor reports 98% of work orders closed within SLA. The number is true and it describes only how fast tickets were marked complete. It says nothing about whether the fault came back, and in reactive maintenance the fault coming back is the entire question.
Closing fast and fixing properly pull in opposite directions. A technician under time pressure will get the unit running, close the job, and move on. Three weeks later the same compressor fails, a new work order opens, and the SLA report counts it as another job closed on time rather than as one job done twice.
So we publish first-time-fix and reopen rates by trade every month. Our reopen rate is 6.2%. On refrigeration it is 11%, which is the worst number on our own report and the one we brief the client on first.
A fault that returns in three weeks appears in an SLA report as a second job closed on time.
The record
By trade, every month.
| Trade | Jobs | First-time fix | Reopened |
|---|---|---|---|
| ElectricalLighting, distribution, emergency systems | 218 | 93% | 3.1% |
| Plumbing & drainageLeaks, blockages, sanitary | 184 | 89% | 5.4% |
| RefrigerationOur weakest trade. Two technicians, both stretched. | 96 | 78% | 11.0% |
| HVACAir handling, controls, filtration | 241 | 86% | 6.8% |
| Fabric & joineryDoors, ceilings, floors, glazing | 173 | 91% | 4.2% |
| Fire & life safetyAlarms, extinguishers, emergency lighting | 128 | 95% | 1.6% |
| Refrigeration is the trade we perform worst on and we say so before a client finds it. We are recruiting a third refrigeration engineer; until that post is filled the number will stay where it is, and we would rather brief that than manage it quietly. | |||
How we work
Reopened jobs are not rebilled.
If a fault returns within 30 days, the return visit is free. Labour and travel are absorbed; only genuinely new parts are charged. That is a direct financial reason to fix things properly the first time and it is why the reopen rate is a number we watch.
Technicians are employed, not subcontracted. Twenty-eight on payroll. Subcontracted reactive work is where first-time-fix rates collapse, because nobody carries the history of the building.
Planned maintenance is reported against completion, not against attendance. An engineer arriving on site is not a task completed, and most PPM reporting quietly conflates the two.
Do you know your reopen rate?
Most SLA reports cannot produce it, because closing a ticket and fixing a fault are recorded as the same event.