Career Path: Becoming an AM Service Manager (Skills & Salary)

AM Service Manager: Daily Checklist & Best Practices—

Being an AM (Asset Management) Service Manager means balancing operational reliability, cost control, and customer satisfaction. This role sits at the crossroads of maintenance strategy, field service coordination, and asset lifecycle optimization. A structured daily routine and a set of proven best practices help maintain uptime, reduce unplanned maintenance, and extend asset life — all while keeping stakeholders informed and satisfied.

Morning — Start the Day with Clear Priorities

• Review overnight events and alerts. Check monitoring systems, SCADA, or condition-monitoring dashboards for alarms, spike trends, or anomalies that occurred overnight.
• Daily KPI snapshot. Look at key metrics such as asset availability, MTTR (mean time to repair), and open critical work orders. Identify any KPIs outside target thresholds.
• Huddle with operations and field teams. Short (10–15 min) stand-up to align priorities, communicate urgent tasks, and verify resource availability.
• Customer and stakeholder updates. Send brief summaries to account managers or clients if service commitments (SLAs) are at risk.

Checklist (morning):

• Check alarms/alerts dashboard
• Review overnight shift logs
• Confirm critical spares inventory
• Conduct 10–15 min team huddle
• Send SLA risk notifications (if needed)

Midday — Coordinate Workflows and Resources

• Prioritize work orders. Use risk-based criteria (safety, environmental, production impact, cost) to rank tasks and allocate technicians.
• Dispatch and logistics. Confirm field crew assignments, route plans, and tools/equipment availability. Ensure technicians have required permits and lockout/tagout details.
• Parts and procurement follow-up. Track long-lead items and expedite critical spares. Avoid downtime by maintaining minimum stock levels for high-risk items.
• Quality assurance and documentation. Ensure work orders are being closed with complete diagnostics, root-cause notes, and parts used. This feeds reliability analytics.
• Vendor and contractor coordination. Confirm schedules and deliverables for third-party providers.

Checklist (midday):

• Re-prioritize tasks based on new data
• Confirm technician assignments and routes
• Verify spare parts for scheduled jobs
• Review work-in-progress documentation
• Coordinate with vendors/contractors

Afternoon — Analysis, Continuous Improvement, and Planning

• Review completed work. Audit closures for quality, compliance, and billing accuracy. Identify recurring failures and trigger root-cause investigations.
• Condition-based insights. Analyze condition-monitoring trends to update predictive maintenance triggers or thresholds.
• Plan preventive tasks. Schedule upcoming PMs (preventive maintenance) and align them with production windows to minimize disruption.
• Training and safety checks. Identify skill gaps from field reports and arrange short training sessions or toolbox talks. Verify safety compliance for ongoing activities.
• Performance reporting. Prepare concise reports for leadership: trends, critical incidents, cost impacts, and proposed corrective actions.

Checklist (afternoon):

• Audit recent job closures
• Update predictive maintenance settings
• Schedule PMs and align with operations
• Plan short training/toolbox talks
• Prepare daily summary report

Evening — Close the Loop

• End-of-day handover. Compile a concise handover to night shift or next-day teams, highlighting unresolved high-priority items.
• Archive logs and update CMMS. Ensure all events, actions, and findings are entered correctly in the CMMS for traceability.
• Reflect and capture lessons learned. Note any process or system gaps encountered during the day for follow-up.
• Stakeholder follow-ups. Send final updates to customers, operations, and leadership as required.

Checklist (evening):

• Prepare handover notes
• Complete CMMS updates
• Log lessons learned and action items
• Send end-of-day stakeholder updates

Best Practices — Systems, People, and Processes

1. Asset-criticality assessment

   • Rank assets by safety, environmental, production, and cost risk. Focus resources on the top-critical assets.

2. Data-driven decision making

   • Use CMMS, IoT sensors, and analytics to drive maintenance priorities rather than intuition.

3. Risk-based maintenance planning

   • Blend preventive, predictive, and run-to-failure strategies based on asset criticality and failure modes.

4. Root-cause focus

   • Treat recurring failures as systemic problems. Use RCA (5 Whys, Fishbone) and implement corrective actions to prevent recurrence.

5. Spare-parts strategy

   • Maintain a classified spare strategy (A/B/C parts) and safety stock for critical components.

6. Cross-functional collaboration

   • Keep strong ties with operations, reliability engineering, procurement, and safety teams.

7. Standardized work and checklists

   • Create clear, concise SOPs and checklists to reduce human error and ensure consistent quality.

8. Continuous training

   • Invest in technical and safety training; use shadowing and competency matrices to credential technicians.

9. Contractor governance

   • Define KPIs, inspection regimes, and contractual SLAs for third-party vendors.

10. Performance transparency

    • Share dashboards with stakeholders; promote accountability with measurable targets.

Tools & Templates to Use Daily

• CMMS (work orders, parts, history)
• Condition-monitoring dashboards
• KPI dashboard (availability, MTTR, backlog)
• Standard operating procedures and checklists
• Spare parts inventory matrix
• Shift handover template
• Root-cause analysis templates

Example Daily Handover Template (brief)

• Date/time
• Critical open issues (asset, description, status)
• High-priority scheduled work for next shift
• Parts pending/delayed orders
• Safety concerns/permits outstanding
• Contact list for escalation

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Reacting only to failures instead of analyzing trends
• Poor documentation in the CMMS
• Understocking critical spares
• Overlooking contractor performance management
• Lack of daily communication with operations

Metrics to Track Regularly

• Asset availability/uptime
• MTTR and MTBF
• Backlog (planned vs. emergency)
• Maintenance cost per asset
• Schedule compliance
• First-time-fix rate
• Safety incidents

Being an effective AM Service Manager requires discipline, clear communication, and a habit of continuous improvement. A structured daily checklist combined with data-driven best practices reduces downtime, controls cost, and improves reliability across the asset base.