For many maintenance teams, the start of a new year brings familiar conversations. We talk about fixing the PM program, downtime, budgets, and improvements when things slow down. But for Canadian maintenance leaders heading into 2026, there is one reality that cannot be ignored: things are not slowing down.
Costs continue to rise. Skilled trades are increasingly difficult to find and retain. Supply chains remain unpredictable, with tariffs and global trade pressures increasing both the cost and lead time of parts. Assets are aging as capital budgets tighten, and expectations around uptime, safety, and sustainability continue to grow. Whether it’s in manufacturing industries such as food and automotive, municipal and utility services, or even the hospitality industry supporting restaurants and hotels, maintenance teams are being asked to deliver more work, more reliability, with fewer people, under greater uncertainty.
This combination of pressures can make improvement feel overwhelming. But it also makes one thing very clear: today is the best time to start improving your maintenance program. Keep reading to learn some of the critical steps to making that improvement here at the start of the year or any time you’re ready.
Starting does not mean launching a large transformation initiative or buying new technology. In fact, waiting for perfect conditions is often the biggest barrier to progress. Improvement in maintenance rarely happens because circumstances improve; improvement happens because teams decide to act despite imperfect conditions.
One of the most common misconceptions about maintenance improvement is that growth requires fixing everything at once. In reality, meaningful progress comes from small, deliberate steps that compound over time.
This is the foundation of our message for 2026: every month is an opportunity to grow.
Starting maintenance growth begins with a mindset shift. Many teams are extremely busy, responding to breakdowns, chasing parts, and keeping production running. But being busy is not the same as being effective. Growth starts when teams move from reacting to issues toward asking better questions. Which assets truly matter? Which failures cause the greatest disruption? Where is effort being spent without reducing risk? These questions do not require new systems or tools, just clarity and focus.
Another critical step is establishing a baseline. You cannot improve what you do not understand. Baselines do not need to be perfect or complex; they simply need to exist. Basic measures such as PM completion, backlog size, breakdown frequency, or major downtime drivers provide visibility and alignment. Even imperfect data is more powerful than no data at all. Baselines give maintenance teams a starting point and enable meaningful conversations and decisions with operations and leadership.
Starting also means focusing on what you can control. Maintenance teams cannot control tariffs, hiring challenges, or global supply chains. But they can control:
- how work is planned and prioritized
- how failures are analyzed
- how knowledge is captured before experienced workers retire, and
- how maintenance and operations collaborate.
Growth happens when teams take ownership of these controllable factors instead of waiting for external conditions to improve.
What are some ways to start?
Setting up teams for success is essential. Without buy-in, confidence, and a sense that the work being done is meaningful, improvement efforts will struggle, regardless of the software or systems in place. Change is often met with resistance, especially when teams are already stretched. That is why starting small is so effective. Something as simple as consistently recording reactive maintenance can replace informal logbooks with shared information and give trades a way to tell the story of their day, something many technicians value but rarely feel is captured.
Piloting improvements in a single area, asset group, or team is another powerful approach. Pilots reduce risk, allow time for adjustment, and give end users the opportunity to shape how systems and processes work. When technicians help define the solution, adoption improves and resistance decreases.
Creating a single entry point for maintenance requests further supports growth. A structured request process improves visibility, prioritization, and trust between operations and maintenance. It reduces noise, limits informal work, and helps managers control the flow of work more effectively. This allows the managers to manage and the techs to keep the assets running.
Finally, realistic and achievable goals are critical. Early wins build confidence and momentum. As teams and systems mature, goals can be adjusted and expanded. When people feel successful, they are more likely to engage, contribute, and support improvements moving forward.
Maintenance growth is not a single project or initiative. It is a journey. Over the course of a year, growth may include establishing meaningful KPIs, improving work management, introducing risk-based maintenance where it matters most, strengthening reliability culture and leadership, using condition data to reduce reactive work, and connecting maintenance decisions to long-term asset sustainability. Each step builds on the last.
In 2026, maintenance is no longer just about fixing equipment. It is about protecting production, managing risk, supporting people, and enabling business. The organizations that succeed will not be the ones with the biggest budgets or the newest tools. They will be the ones that started and kept going.
Today is the best time to start improving your maintenance program. And every month in 2026 is an opportunity to grow. Ready to get started? Contact me.
