Imagine for a moment going to see your primary care physician because you’re feeling so ill you can’t work, your doctor visually looks you over from head to toe, pokes you in the belly and tugs on your arms and feet.

Your doctor suddenly decides to replace your liver, and suggests that if that doesn’t make you feel better than he’ll replace your kidneys!

How would you feel about that doctor? Would you trust him? Would you agree to his decision and allow him to proceed?

Of course not!

Before making any decisions on treatments you want your doctor to take your temperature, look in your nose throat and ears, order blood tests, take your blood pressure, listen to your heart and lungs with that ice cold stethoscope and put on a rubber glove and have you bend…Okay maybe we don’t want to go that far but you get my point…YES?

For maintenance technicians the clamp-on-multi-meter is the equivalent of all those tools a doctor uses to diagnose you, and far too many maintenance technicians don’t have clamp-on-multi-meters.

Many maintenance technicians own a meter of some type and don’t know if it’s the best type for the job or even how to properly use the one they own.

Multi-Meters are not all equal, any maintenance technician whom desires to be a Physician of Maintenance should own and have the ability to properly use a clamp-on-multi-meter that will test the following:

• Voltage
• Current
• Capacitance
• Resistance
• Temperature

These clamp-on-multi-meters can range in cost from $60.00 to $350.00, (the $60.00-meter works just as well as the higher priced meters).

How can we expect maintenance technicians to properly diagnose anything electrical without this knowledge and equipment?

For years’ maintenance technicians have learned by watching someone do it, or going to sort half day or full day classes offered in house or by venders, these instructors are current or ex-maintenance technicians who more often than not learned from watching someone do it!

About 3 years ago I sat in on an electrical class, the instructor was explaining Ohms law, he told the class that in the Ohms law pie the letter (I) represented current, and that’s true but he went on to say that (I) stood for impotence…I all most lost my lunch! The letter (I) in electrical terms stands for intensity of current.

I give credit to Multi-Family companies for wanting training for maintenance, but I also question their commitment to it, heaven forbid the leasing staff not show up for training. Managers must learn the ins and outs of leasing before being responsible to manage a property but they receive no maintenance training!

I have trained for over 11 years and I train on over 20 topics for the multi-family industry, rarely do managers attend maintenance classes. I don’t call myself a maintenance trainer because I also offer maintenance training classes that are specifically designed for managers so that they can identify if their maintenance team are physicians of maintenance or part changers.

Part changers waste time and money, but physicians of maintenance offer leadership to their teams and success to their companies!