Paul Clark Services Ltd’s Post

Are you struggling to find quality labor when you need to scale for national IT projects? When sourcing skilled technicians, especially for nationwide rollouts or installations (including in rural or remote areas), here are the top three challenges I’ve heard from field service leaders lately: “All the good techs are already working” There is a growing demand for skilled technicians, but the supply has not kept pace. This scarcity makes it difficult to find technicians with the necessary expertise and experience for large-scale projects, particularly in specialized areas. Even when technicians are available, they may lack the specific skills required for complex installations or upgrades. “There’s no one in the areas I need them” Deploying technicians to remote or rural areas presents significant logistical challenges. Travel, accommodation, and local resource limitations can complicate scheduling and increase costs. Ensuring technicians arrive on-site at the right time and with the right equipment can be a logistical nightmare, especially when projects are spread across multiple locations. “Even new employees are ghosting job sites” Securing technicians who are not only skilled but also reliable can be challenging. No-shows, delays, and inconsistent performance can disrupt project timelines and affect service quality. Maintaining consistent quality of work across different sites and technicians is difficult. Variability in performance can lead to uneven project outcomes, customer dissatisfaction, and increased costs due to rework. While each situation may be unique, the solution to that problem is pretty universal. At Field Nation, we have the largest network of skilled technicians backed by transparent reliability metrics. Find coverage AND consistency ahead of your next project: https://lnkd.in/g7hu_m8h #ITFieldServices #FieldServices #FieldServiceOperations #MarketVolatility #CX #CustomerSatisfaction #LaborMarketplace

Technician scheduling is the core of field service delivery. It aligns the complex gears of job allocation, technician expertise, and customer needs to ensure a seamless flow from assignment to completion 🕒 But what exactly is technician scheduling, and what are the challenges? Swipe below for an introduction, then check out our blog for a complete guide to technician scheduling 👇 https://ow.ly/Y75x50Rj80y #Totalmobile #FSMBlog #TechnicianScheduling

The demands of data collection can be taxing for even experienced fielders, but what about new techs? Crews face obvious challenges by nature of their job, and dealing with bugs, heat, cold, rain, and more is part of their job description. But staying aware of your surroundings takes its own toll. Navigating confused (and sometimes suspicious) homeowners requires tact and grace. And the actual process of collecting data for eight to ten hours a day (or more!) can be mentally exhausting. While your rockstar fielders may take on the toughest parts of data collection with ease, getting new staff up to speed and comfortable can take months. To help you train new team members quickly and effectively, we’re developing a boot camp that walks first-time field techs through the OSP process. With the right onboarding, you can turn inexperienced staff into experts faster than ever. To tackle even the toughest days of data collection, field technicians need the resources and training to succeed. Give us a shout at hello@katapultengineering.com to learn more about our field boot camp!

Want to maximize field service operation outcomes? 🎉 Minimize downtime! In field service, inefficiencies in resource planning lead to delays, frustrated customers, and increased operational costs. When technicians are overbooked, or the right equipment isn’t on-site, it impacts your ability to deliver timely service and meet customer expectations. With effective resource planning, you can streamline technician scheduling, optimize equipment dispatch, and ensure your team is always equipped for the job. 🔗 https://buff.ly/3BmLgGR #ResourcePlanning #FieldService #Efficiency #AssetManagement #FieldEquip

Experienced field service technicians are retiring, leaving behind a skills gap that’s tough to fill. 😣 With fewer young professionals entering the industry, operations are slowing down, expertise is being lost, and service quality is at risk. What happens when your most knowledgeable technicians retire? Are your younger workers ready to handle the complex challenges of field service? Without a solid plan, this talent drain can lead to longer service times, higher costs, and unsatisfied customers. Embrace digital transformation to bridge the gap. Advanced field service management tools like FieldEquip help capture and retain critical knowledge, streamline training for new hires, and ensure that even a leaner workforce can deliver top-tier service. Equip your team with the technology they need to operate efficiently, no matter their age or experience level. 🔗 https://buff.ly/3ILTgT8 #FieldServiceManagement #AssetManagement #AssetMaintenance #PlantManagement #FieldEquip

Are your facility operators 👷♀️ in over their heads sometimes 🤷♂️ ? Do you have outages that take a long time to alleviate ⏳ ? Are you relying on service vendor response 🕥 ? Do you constantly have plant equipment failures and repeated service calls adding up to 💸 💸 💸 💸 ? Listen, it is extremely hard to justify hiring an engineer 👨🔬 on staff to help your technicians 👷♂️ diagnose and get a plant operational again. This is where I can help!!! I helped one of my clients diagnose their boiler, finding a part failure which is under warranty, saving them an expensive technician visit and diagnosis. I provided this in 1 hour remotely over the phone. It would have taken days to get a technician out that had the skills necessary for this boiler setup. I have helped another one of my clients several times now diagnose and get a larger central plant restarted after major power outages, equipment failure, etc. Each time is an hour or two of my effort, saving them thousands on service calls for service vendors that may or may not have been able to help. After I know your plant, I can provide remote technical support ☎ to your team, any time, day or night. I've been called at 7am on a Saturday, 8am on a Sunday, 730pm on a Tuesday, 5pm on a Thursday, it doesn't matter. You obviously can't afford to have your plant down, but you also can't afford to have an engineer on staff, so what do you do? Hire Gillie Consulting Services to learn your plant (1 day), access the BMS if there is one, store the O&M documentation, and then put my personal number on the wall of your facility manager's office for support at any time. Hell, my personal number is 347.276.9941. Have your facility manager call me! #OwnersTechnicalAdvisory #FacilityManagement #FacilityEngineering #DownTime #HELP! #DownTimeIsARoughTime #WhyDoesThisKeepHappening #MakeItStop

PlanningAI Weekly: Skills and skill levels for Field Service Routing. Technicians have different skills. In telco, we can't send a junior fiber technician to work on expert coax tasks. In construction, no one wants a plumber to fix an electricity problem. But some technicians do have multiple skills. So it's not like we can partition our vehicle routing dataset per skill. We need to send the technician with the right skill, and the right skill level to each visit. In the example below, visit A requires a plumber of at least level 2 (medior). - If Ann gets that job, that is infeasible: Ann is not a plumber. - If Beth gets that job, that is also infeasible: Beth is a junior plumber (level 1). She isn't senior enough. - If Carl gets that job, that is ok: Carl is a senior plumber (level 3), so he can do a medior plumber task. So only by assigning Carl to visit A, no hard constraint is broken. But we do have a soft constraint to avoid assigning a technician with a higher than needed level. So if a medior plumber existed - and they're in the neighborhood too - the solver would prefer to assign to job to him. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/erRAGcvR Try it yourself with the Timefold REST API for Field Service Routing: https://lnkd.in/eeijvjTW Next week I'll cover skill dependent durations.

Checkout my article on "Day in the Life of a Proactive Maintenance Supervisor", checkout this article and share your thoughts on how if compares to your position. If you like a copy of this article, send your request to rsmith@worldclassmaintenance.org #maintenancesupervisor #maintenancebestpractices #rickysmithcmrp

Phase 1 complete for digitalization of SMB report. Let's easier of site technician job so that our investigation is correct.

One of the significant challenges in field service management is the communication gap that exists between field technicians, the back-office/dispatchers, and customers. Mobile technology can bridge this gap. ⭐📱 Learn more: https://hubs.la/Q02wRjdn0 #MobileTechnology #MobileFieldServiceSolution #FSM #Dispatchers #FieldTechnicians #CommunicationGap