At 3.15am on a Thursday, the alarm company rings the area manager: the front window of the high street store has been smashed. A glazier boards it up before dawn and the store opens on time. By Friday nobody can say whether the locksmith checked the door, whether the roller shutter still closes, or who ordered the replacement glass, and the store manager is answering the same three questions from head office by text.
Retail maintenance is spread thin across a lot of stores. A chain might trade from shopping centre tenancies, strip shops on high streets and standalone sites with their own car parks, each with a different landlord, a different lease and a different set of local contractors. The person who sees the fault is usually a store manager on a trading roster, not a facilities coordinator. The fault is easy to spot. Getting the right contractor through the door before trade, and knowing the job was finished, is where the week goes.
OpsChase gives every store one board: your regular refrigeration, electrical, glazing and roller-door contractors are offered the job first, every attendance is followed up until photos and sign-off, and area managers see every open job across their stores without ringing each one.
From the shop floor to a work order
Store managers raise a work order from their phone against the store and the item: the dairy freezer reading warm, the roller shutter jammed half open, a flickering light box over the entrance, a leak above the change rooms. Add a photo and a short note on what is at stake: stock at risk, a door that will not lock at close, or a trip hazard in an aisle.
Put the access note on the job too: the rear door or loading bay, who holds the keys and the alarm, centre trading hours and any after-hours sign-in the centre requires, and when the store is quiet enough for work on the floor. A contractor who arrives at the front of a centre at 10am on a Saturday to replace ceiling tiles costs the store a trading morning.
Your job or the landlord’s
Every store sits under a lease, and the lease decides who fixes what. In a shopping centre, the air conditioning and the fire system may belong to the landlord while the shopfront, the lighting and the display fridges are yours. On a high street, the roof and the gutters may be the landlord’s and the roller shutter yours. At a standalone site, it may all be yours.
Record on the job whether it is an operator job or a landlord job. Operator jobs go to your contractors. Landlord jobs still sit on the same board with the landlord or centre reference noted, so the area manager can see that a landlord air conditioning fault has been open since last Tuesday instead of finding out when the store manager raises it again. Keep the landlord’s portal for their process; OpsChase keeps every open job in front of the people who run the stores.
Your contractors per store and per trade
The refrigeration firm that covers your metro stores may not travel to the regional ones. Set the order of your contractors per store and per trade: the refrigeration firm on your service agreement first and a separate after-hours glazier and locksmith for break-ins.
The jobs that fill a retail week
- Cold and frozen. Display fridges, freezers, cool rooms and their condensers go to refrigeration.
- Shopfront and security. Smashed glass and board-ups go to glazing; doors that will not lock go to locksmith; roller shutters and automatic sliding doors go to doors and shutters; alarms and security camera (CCTV) faults go to security.
- Light and power. Store lighting, switchboard faults and power to the registers go to electrical; light boxes and fascia signs go to signage; portable appliance checks go to test and tag.
- Air. Store air conditioning that is yours to fix goes to heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
- Water. Leaks, blocked staff toilets and hot water faults go to plumbing.
- Floors. Lifted tiles, torn vinyl and trip hazards in the aisles go to flooring.
- Fire. Extinguishers, exit lights and fire doors that do not latch go to fire protection.
- Food retail. Pest sightings in stockrooms and around fridges go to pest control.
Attend-by times set around trading hours
Every job carries an attend-by time that fits the risk: within hours for a freezer full of stock or a shopfront that cannot be secured, before the next opening for a jammed shutter or a dark entrance, within the week for a sticking change-room door. Where the work is noisy or blocks an aisle, book it before open or after close. Late jobs show against your response targets, so retail ops can see which stores are still waiting and why.
Contractor compliance before booking
Keep licence, public liability, induction and site-access details on file for each contractor through contractor compliance, so the retail ops team can check them before booking. Shopping centres often run their own contractor induction, so keep a note of which centres each contractor has been inducted for.
Proof the area manager can check from anywhere
Set proof templates per job type: before and after photos, a temperature reading after a refrigeration repair, the service report, and a certificate where the work needs one. Proof of completion lives on the work order, so the area manager can check a repair at a store four hours away without driving there, and the invoice arrives with the evidence beside it.
Planned maintenance across the chain
Refrigeration servicing, condenser cleans, shutter servicing, fire equipment checks, test and tag rounds and air conditioning filter changes repeat at every store. With Assets & planned maintenance switched on, run planned maintenance through scheduling on the same queue as breakdowns, and each display case, freezer and air conditioning unit keeps its own job and service history. When the same freezer fails again in the same summer, every visit is on the asset, so the call between another repair and a replacement is made on the record.
What retail ops sees on one board
With every store on one board:
- Store managers raise jobs from the floor with photos and access notes.
- Operator and landlord jobs sit side by side, each marked.
- Your contractors are set in calling order per store and per trade, with after-hours cover for break-ins.
- Attend-by times follow trading hours and the risk to stock.
- Reports, readings and photos are attached to the work order.
- Area managers see every open job across their stores in one view.
OpsChase is not a point-of-sale, stock or rostering system. Those stay where they are; OpsChase is the contractor follow-up and proof behind each store repair. If most of your stores trade inside centres, see shopping centres; if franchisees own them, see franchise. For the wider picture, read about multi-site maintenance.
Starting with one region
Pick the region with the most after-hours call-outs. Import its stores, the landlord and operator split for each store, the contractor book and the trades each firm covers. Set roles for store managers, area managers and retail ops. Set proof templates for refrigeration, shopfront and electrical jobs. Raise the next fault into OpsChase instead of a text to the area manager, then add the next region.
Read the retail industry page or book a demo with your store list and contractor book. Check pricing when you are ready to put every store on one board.
A smashed window or a warm freezer should not still be a question by Friday. Put every store on one board, get the regular contractor in before the doors open, and know which repairs are finished and which are still waiting.