The subcontracting of maintenance operations is a familiar feature of the maintenance landscape. Subcontractors are called on to make certain costs variable or to make up for the absence of certain skills. This option can go as far as complete outsourcing with an availability clause.

The scope and depth of the outsourcing is a strategic choice for maintenance and must take a number of factors into consideration: economic, technical, dependability, management of personnel and skills.

Major gains can be achieved if sufficient thought is given to the degree of subcontracting and the subcontracting purchasing and monitoring processes that ensure the subcontracted maintenance is efficient.

ARGON Consulting helps its customers in:

• the analysis of their maintenance activities and their suitability to being outsourced, according to a number of criteria, including: volumes, comparison between internal and external costs, critical importance of maintaining skills in the company, availability of internal and external resources,
• the definition of target subcontracting levels that are compatible with the company’s targets: arbitration between “do or buy”, availability of subcontractors capable of reliably and durably taking on the outsourced tasks, purchasing and control processes, terms and conditions of the contract and reciprocal commitments (packages, time work, check lists) bonus / malus clauses and criteria,
• the definition of the business case that provides an objective view of the gains to be made through the initiative,
• the impact of the target on processes and internal needs for skills:in particular on the control of works, the definition of works (which must be sufficiently precise in both technical and contractual terms) and the contractualization / purchasing / acceptance process,
• implementation support:help to author the specifications and functional clauses of the contract, coaching of the subcontracting purchasing and control functions in the deployment of the new processes,
• tracking of quantitative and qualitative gains using a scorecard to measure changes in performance compared with the objectives set for the initiative,
• transfer of skills and know-how to the customers’ teams.