From Reaction to Results: How a California city is Creating a Smarter and More Sustainable Future

Uncovering new opportunities for energy savings

While in his first year as the City’s Municipal Services Manager, one of the client’s first priorities was to take a close look at the city’s operational data through Brightly’s asset management solution, Asset Essentials, to uncover any potential opportunities for improvement. By reviewing maintenance work orders and service histories from the past, he noticed a pattern of repeated circuit resets and HVAC-related service calls that stood out across several buildings. 

By digging deeper, his team identified an unexpected contributing factor: extensive use of portable space heaters by staff members. The client noted, “When we started investigating, we found one facility that was maybe 5,000 square feet, with less than 20 people working in it, that was using 17 portable heaters.” 

“The city keeps all their facilities between 68 and 72 degrees, and the portable heaters are trying to warm it up while the AC is trying to cool it down. Who’s going to win that? Nobody - we’re just spending a ton of money.” 

The client said he was able to identify the extent of the problem through Asset Essentials and used his findings to recommend removing all dangerous and high energy using space heaters across the city – a change he believes could save the city close to $500,000 a year in electricity costs.

Evolving from reactionary to proactive maintenance

Like many communities, the California city is still feeling some of the long-lasting effects of the Covid era. Holdover processes led to the majority of maintenance work being based on responding to issues as they occurred – a common scenario for growing municipalities where urgent needs often take priority. Rather than viewing this as a “flaw,” the client saw it as the natural starting point for building something even stronger.

The client stated that, “When I first started, everything was just about putting fires out. The one thing I felt the [Brightly Software] could help us do is go from reactionary maintenance to preventive and then ultimately to predictive maintenance. Once you do that, you’re going to be so highly productive that your team will be able to do other things for the city and just continue to increase efficiency.”

Using Brightly, the client and his team have begun setting up a structured PM program and even initiated the development of five- and 10-year capital improvement plans, to better align infrastructure investments with asset conditions and long-term financial planning. “That’s my entire direction at this point, is just trying to gather as much information and go in the direction that I need to go to create an accurate five year and 10-year budget.”

He says he’s already starting to see the results of some of his efforts, noting that by putting more emphasis on getting ahead, his team is increasing their KPIs and identifying areas where they are spending too much time and money. Today, the city’s maintenance team has greater visibility into upcoming tasks, better insight into asset performance, and a clear roadmap for keeping the city’s growing infrastructure in top condition.

Harnessing data to improve resource management and staffing

Although the city had already implemented Asset Essentials as its work order system before the client started, many of the platform’s features around labor tracking, resource management, and service level measurement had not yet been fully utilized. “There was no tracking of labor hours, what went on for work orders, nothing,” he said. Now he sees this as an opportunity to bring greater visibility to his team’s efforts and help leadership make more informed decisions around hiring.

One of the improvements the client has made since beginning his role was establishing expectations around work documentation. By fully utilizing Brightly’s solution, Municipal Services Manager and his team can now track technician time more accurately, connect materials and parts to specific jobs, and monitor how quickly work orders are completed against target service levels. This improved visibility into daily operations has helped improve operational efficiency, resource tracking, and staffing justifications. 

With only 12 technicians managing over 1.4 million square feet of city facilities – compared to the estimated 28 staff typically recommended by industry standards – The client is using real-time data to build the case for hiring additional employees. “When a guy is out or something doesn’t get repaired, people get mad at us. But Asset Essentials lets me document and show what our priorities are, and it lets me justify where our limited staff is needed most.” 

The Municipal Services Manager is continuously bringing Brightly’s dashboards and reports to his weekly meetings with his executive director every week to fight for more staff. With the city building a new stadium and aquatics center, he’s hoping the data from Brightly’s asset management solution will help justify his requests.