Work Order Management: Guide to Prioritizing Work Orders

Key Takeaways:

• Reactive maintenance leads to inefficiencies, delays, and unexpected costs.
• A work order prioritization system reduces downtime and improves safety.
• CMMS automates work order prioritization.

---

Work orders should help maintenance teams stay organized, but without the right prioritization, they create more chaos than efficiency.

Urgent repairs get delayed, minor issues consume valuable time, and extended downtime of critical equipment drives up costs.

So, how do you ensure the right tasks get done at the right time?

This guide will summarize key factors for prioritizing work orders, common mistakes to avoid, and how automation can streamline the process.

Importance of Work Order Prioritization

Effective work order prioritization is the backbone of a well-run maintenance operation.

Without it, teams waste time on low-impact tasks while critical repairs get delayed.

This results in increased downtime, higher maintenance costs, safety hazards, and frustrated users.

Take, for example, the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD).

Due to failed air conditioning systems, the district had to close several schools and send children home.

These issues were reported on time, but a massive maintenance backlog prevented timely repairs.

Records showed SAISD had 4,765 open work orders, with HVAC and plumbing issues making up more than half.

An investigation into the backlog revealed that SAISD’s work order system was disorganized, making it challenging to prioritize repairs effectively.

As a result, the district struggled to address critical issues on time.

In response, SAISD officials have committed to implementing a more effective work order prioritization system.

This example underscores the importance of a clear and effective prioritization system, ensuring that urgent and high-impact tasks get addressed first.

A great example of such a system is a priority-level framework like the one below:

As you can see, this priority matrix consists of just three levels, keeping decision-making simple yet effective.

The highest level, A is reserved for emergencies when lives, assets, or facilities are in immediate danger.

Next, A* signals that preventive maintenance (PM) work orders are the highest daily priority unless an emergency occurs.

This honorary priority A work emphasizes the importance of proactive maintenance over reactive responses.

The B level is assigned to critical repairs, particularly those involving essential equipment or work that could lead to significant service disruption within the next 24 hours.

Lastly, C is reserved for routine work orders, such as unfinished work from the previous day, planned backlog work, and other non-emergency work.

While a structured framework like this helps prioritize work orders, prioritization isn’t automatic.

Instead, it depends on several key factors.

Key Factors for Prioritizing Work Orders

Clearly, some work orders demand immediate attention, while others can wait.

While some instances are obvious, many fall into a gray area, as seen with school HVAC failures.

How do you determine which work orders should take priority?

By evaluating key factors that influence each work order’s urgency, impact, and feasibility.

Safety

When prioritizing work orders, safety must come first.

Any maintenance issue that poses a risk to workers, occupants, or equipment should be addressed immediately to prevent injuries, property damage, or compliance violations.

For example, a faulty electrical panel or gas leak on equipment should precede cosmetic repairs or non-urgent tasks.

In these cases, the malfunctioning equipment should be locked and tagged out to prevent accidental operation until the issue is resolved.

Of course, your team may sometimes face multiple urgent hazards at once.

Prioritization is still necessary in such cases, even among critical safety concerns.

To determine which issue to address first, consider:

• Which reported safety hazards also impact production, and to what extent?
• Which risks can be temporarily controlled (e.g., warning signs, restricted access) while higher-priority emergencies are handled?

By systematically addressing safety concerns first, your maintenance team can reduce the risks of accidents and injuries, ensure compliance, and create a safer work environment for everyone.

Asset Criticality

Not all equipment holds the same importance in daily operations.

Some assets are mission-critical—their failure would cause significant downtime and production losses.

For instance, a malfunctioning air compressor in a manufacturing plant might halt an entire production line, making it a top-priority repair.

Conversely, while inconvenient, a broken light fixture in a storage area won’t disrupt operations as severely.

To prioritize effectively, it’s best to list critical assets and their impact on production or essential processes if they malfunction.

This can further streamline work order prioritization, ensuring resources go to the most urgent, high-impact tasks.

Value of Maintenance

Not all maintenance tasks contribute equally to operational efficiency.

Therefore, your team should assess the value each task brings.

While emergencies come first, other work order tasks should be ranked based on key factors.

For instance, work on critical assets directly affecting operations is typically considered the most valuable.

The following image highlights this and three other essential considerations when determining a maintenance task’s overall value.

Another factor to consider is the time required to complete the task.

This can be estimated using historical data from similar work orders.

A good work order management system can track and record the time it takes to complete tasks, which helps in making more accurate time estimates for future tasks.

Location and proximity of the task are also important for prioritization.

For example, bundling multiple work orders in the same area can help you save on transportation costs and minimize unproductive technician time.

Lastly, consider the consequences of deferring the task.

A minor issue today could escalate into a costly failure tomorrow, making proactive decision-making crucial for long-term efficiency.

Risks

Every maintenance task carries some safety-related, operational, or financial risks.

Effective prioritization requires your team to assess the likelihood and severity of potential risks associated with incoming work orders.

For example, a leaking pipe in a mechanical room might seem minor initially, but if left unchecked, it could lead to equipment failure or structural damage.

A risk severity matrix helps categorize maintenance tasks based on their impact (consequence) and probability (likelihood).

The key idea behind risk matrices is to quantify the risk level of each maintenance task and prioritize accordingly, ensuring that the most critical risks are addressed first.

In life-threatening or operation-stopping emergency repairs, these should always be the highest priority.

By systematically evaluating risks, your team can effectively address costly failures and safety hazards while maintaining operational stability.

Available Resources

When prioritizing maintenance tasks, available resources—such as workforce, tools, and materials—are crucial in determining what can be accomplished and when.

Even high-priority work orders may need to be delayed if necessary resources aren’t available.

For example, a critical repair may require specialized equipment, spare parts, and materials, or a technician with specific expertise.

If either of these is unavailable, the task must be postponed.

As we’ll discuss later, a digital work order management system that tracks employee availability (through a calendar, as shown below) and current inventory can help you quickly assess these factors.

Beyond ensuring technicians have the right tools and materials, assigning the right person to the task is important.

The technician assigned to a task should have the appropriate skills and, when needed, proper certifications.

Sometimes, you may need to reprioritize or reassign tasks to ensure timely completion.

Considering resource availability ensures that work orders are prioritized by urgency and when they can realistically be completed, and how well.

Common Prioritization Mistakes

Not everyone considers these key factors, which leads to some common prioritization mistakes.

One mistake is focusing too much on minor, non-urgent tasks, such as preventive maintenance.

While these tasks are important, they can usually be rescheduled in favor of critical work orders that directly affect production or safety.

As John Schultz, a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional, points out:

Schultz further explains that, in his opinion, another 30% of PM activities don’t add enough value and should be re-examined for potential elimination.

By considering these insights, your team can ensure that only the most necessary maintenance tasks are prioritized, freeing up resources for critical repairs.

However, be cautious—delaying long-term maintenance needs too often can result in unexpected breakdowns and higher repair costs.

Other common prioritization mistakes include:

• Focusing only on urgency, not importance
• Relying on intuition rather than data
• Not regularly reassessing priorities
• Ignoring resource availability

These pitfalls can be avoided by defining clear prioritization criteria and leveraging automation to streamline decision-making.

Using Automation for Work Order Prioritization

A good computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) provides automation features that simplify work order prioritization.

It organizes all asset information and automates key tasks such as work order creation, scheduling, tracking, and inventory monitoring.

Let’s take WorkTrek, our CMMS, as an example.

First, employees or external clients can use the WorkTrek app to report issues and submit work order requests quickly.

They open the app on their smartphone or another device and tap on a new request.

As shown, the mobile app provides a simple, structured template for users to report maintenance issues, add descriptions, and attach photos or documents for context.

This crucial information helps the maintenance manager or prioritization team accurately assess each work order’s urgency and resource requirements.

The manager can quickly request additional information if any details are missing before assigning a priority level.

Before assigning a work order, the manager can use WorkTrek to ensure all necessary tools and materials are available.

The system can alert them when the inventory count falls below the predetermined minimum inventory levels.

This inventory tracking feature can help avoid stockouts, reducing instances where a work order can’t be prioritized higher due to a lack of critical tools or parts.

What’s more, CMMS like WorkTrek centralizes task management, allowing your maintenance manager to track the progress of completing work orders.

If a higher-priority task appears, the manager can easily check which technicians are almost done and reprioritize pending tasks.

In summary, a CMMS automates issue reporting, work order assignment, and progress tracking while providing real-time visibility into resource availability and inventory levels.

These capabilities help your team make better-informed prioritization decisions, saving time and effort.

Managing High-Priority Work Orders Without Disrupting Routine Tasks

When an urgent work order arises, handling it efficiently without disrupting routine maintenance requires a structured approach.

First, there should be clear, predefined criteria to determine a priority level for each work order.

These criteria should align with the key factors we discussed, such as safety hazards, asset criticality, and resource availability.

As said, a CMMS will display work orders based on priority levels, ensuring that assigned high-priority tasks get immediate attention.

Another crucial element is having an effective escalation process that defines who is responsible for reviewing and adjusting work order priority.

This responsibility usually falls to an experienced maintenance manager or a cross-functional team including relevant department representatives.

Clear communication is also essential.

Maintenance managers should use mobile-friendly CMMS to notify technicians of priority changes and updated work schedules instantly.

If technicians are occupied, managers should reassign tasks based on workload and urgency.

At the same time, planned preventive maintenance tasks can be rescheduled strategically to prevent backlog accumulation.

Conclusion

Effective work order prioritization ensures that your maintenance team can focus on critical tasks while managing routine work.

Doing so can reduce downtime, control costs, and improve safety.

However, achieving this requires a clear prioritization framework and automation tools like CMMS.

If you are ready to improve work order prioritization, now is the perfect time to take action.