This content is written for Talanton Church Services.

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Thank you for listening to the church facility maintenance podcast where we our goal is to help church leaders make the most out of their ministry. I am Kyle Willis, the Founder of Talanton Church Services here in Tulsa, OK. At Talanton we aim to come alongside pastors and church leaders to help ease the burden of administration in operations within the church. Today we will be talking about church facilities and building stewardship. 

 

One question that I’m often asked about regarding church facility maintenance is “How should we take care of our facility?” Well there is no easy and standard answer, I have seen that proper facility stewardship starts with proper leadership. At Talanton church services will look at the lifecycle approach of the facility stewardship and break it down into four key parts. 

 

The first stage is to assess. I’m bringing in fresh eyes and insuring that compliance. For anyone that asks, we will conduct a free on-site, fresh eyes assessment. Assessing is very much like the play book with which we are going to run the maintenance administration. So we take time in the assess phase to really evaluate the current situation, and that includes staffing, training, time per job, job descriptions, etc. 

 

The second phase is to plan. So after we have has assessed the facility, we plan our work. And so this could be something as simple as setting up a work order system, or organizing a janitorial closet, or writing policies on facility stewardship, and budget allocation. But my experience with church consulting Tulsa I often want to go a little bit deeper. I want to understand from the pastoral leadership team with their current objectives are. Sometimes pastors know the age of their facility is it hindering them from attracting new visitors and yet other times they are unaware of the looming financial burden that is coming due in the next decade. 

 

So today is we are talking about church facility maintenance podcast is the third stage, which is to systematize. Systematize is really succession planning. It is how we set up systems, practices, and procedures so that there will not be a disruption of service as employee turnover occurs. One of the things we look at is the inventory of parts and supplies. One thing I often see is months’ worth of cleaning chemicals sitting on the shelves of churches. These chemicals be delivered at no cost within a day, so there is no need to store them for a long time. But this extra inventor poses a greater safety risk and allows for great opportunity for theft to occur and go unnoticed when there is extra inventory on hand. One of the other ways that we systematize is with an emergency action plan, including plans and numbers to call that are readily accessible in the case of an emergency. 

 

And then finally today we want to look at how to improve and so sometimes this can be with energy conservation and or professional expertise in terms of landscaping or structural architectural design, as is the case in long-term capital improvement projects. So this can be short term painting and housekeeping or this could be much larger projects that are in excess of several million dollars. To give an example of how all these little work out what’s talk about HVAC units in about planning the end of life for heating and air-conditioning units. First we want to assess know how many units we have in the age of each one. Then we want to plan and understand what the carrying costs are going to be for the unit is in future years. Then we went to systematize the preventative maintenance to external useful life. And finally we want to improve that made me technological improvements but also just improve the overall HVAC structure and replacing the units. The good new is you don’t have to do this alone, Talanton Church Consultants Tulsa is here to lighten the load and help complete the work for you. 

 

So as we know we want to be good stewards of everything that God has entrusted us with, including our facilities. So if you are out there today and could benefit from a free item fresh eyes perspective, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at 405.343.8700 and we would love to come visit you. Once again this has been Kyle Willis with the Talanton Church Services, Church Facility Maintenance, podcast and it’s our pleasure that you have spent time with us today.

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Written for Talanton Church Services. Church Facility Maintenance | Phases