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Risk Management
maintenance had you done that repair or maintenance before
GEASLIN’S INVERSE-SQUARE RULE
FOR DEFERRED MAINTENANCE the failure occurred,” he states. That $2.5 million worst-case
scenario becomes a far more digestible $1,581!
Whenever you defer You can easily test this theory. Geaslin challenges you
a repair, you may be to think of a recent breakdown/ failure event of one of your
incurring a cost of $10k
15 times that amount. lifts that disrupted your operations. Consult with different
departments at your resort and list all of the costs associated
with that event. Don’t stop until you have identified every
$100 $665
cost. Using this 40:1 ratio for estimating the ultimate cost of
part repair breakdown
deferred maintenance, you may be very surprised at the enor-
mity of the risk incurred by deferring the maintenance event.
In looking at the risk to reward ratio, you must ask yourself,
If a part is known to be failing and the repair is deferred and
allowed to remain in service until the next level of failure, can you afford to take that risk?
the resultant expense will be the square of the failed part. Using this model can help a resort make sound business
decisions around the need for proper and ongoing mainte-
nance. But let’s go back to that concept of maintenance staff
replacement gear box here by tomorrow, lost business during experience and knowledge. The industry has a core group
the repair, damaged reputation and customer dissatisfaction, of dedicated, veteran lift maintenance personnel with that
and far worse, injuries—you can see how you arrive at a knowledge. Trust that they know and understand your lift
potential 40:1 figure for the ultimate cost of deferred main- equipment, how long it can operate before failure, and when
tenance. Geaslin takes the model further to work backward preventative maintenance needs to be done. Combine that
to calculate the costs of a timely repair. “Take the square trust with an understanding of Geaslin’s risk/reward ratios,
root of the total costs (including all of the potential collat- and management will begin to support their maintenance
eral costs) and it will be close to the cost of the repair or team with additional staffing resources, training, and needed
parts inventory for proactive repairs and maintenance.
This is just one step in the equation. Yes, the industry
must solve the problems of retaining maintenance staff,
offer significant training and educational opportunities,
and do a better job of sharing the collective institutional
knowledge that exists across the country. In the meantime,
I take Sid Roslund, NSAA’s director of technical services, to
heart when he says, “Funding and executing an aggressive
maintenance program can lead to benefits. By being up-to-
date with a maintenance program, older workers will have
the opportunities to pass their knowledge onto younger
workers. With this passed down knowledge and outside
training opportunities, younger workers will recognize
situations before advanced and expensive failures happen.”
Or take Albert Einstein to heart: “We cannot solve
our problems with the same thinking we used when we
created them.”

Jimmy Lawrence recently retired after 45 years in the ski indus-
try, the last 16 of which he was vice president of loss control
with MountainGuard. A longtime member of the ANSI B-77
Ropeways Committee, Lawrence also helped lead the NSAA
Fall Risk Management Series for many years. Today he is a ski
resort risk and safety consultant, and continues to work as an
independent consultant with MountainGuard.

8 | NSAA JOURNAL | SPRING 2017 @mtnguard | www.wlspro.com/mtngrdnsaa