Covid-19: What Impact on On-Site Maintenance Activities?

27/07/2026
15:33

reading time : 2 min

Lucie Monnot

Content Marketing Manager

From the first lockdown to today, the pandemic and health measures have continued to upend installation and maintenance operations at customer sites.

Jean-Paul Canonne, Director of Strategic Projects within the Service division of Mettler-Toledo, and Patrick Hourqueig, Tools & Methods Manager at ENGIE Solutions, tell us about what their organizations put in place to adapt to the situation and enable technicians to carry out their assignments.

ENGIE Solutions brings together the B2B energy activities of the ENGIE group. Its technical teams install, maintain, and monitor a wide variety of installations — building boiler rooms, cooling towers at industrial sites, cogeneration energy systems, district heating and cooling networks — all subject to strict operating and safety standards.
Mettler Toledo is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of precision balances and weighing and analysis instruments for industry, research and production laboratories, and commerce. Its specialized technicians carry out preventive maintenance, repair, and regulatory verification of equipment installed at customer sites.

Team safety above all

On 16 March 2020, the announcement of a nationwide lockdown caught everyone off guard:

“We were not expecting the lockdown to be on such a scale,” explains Patrick Hourqueig. “The group’s first directive was to ensure the safety of employees and in particular our 7,000 field technicians. This remains, at all levels of the company, the number one priority, reiterated every week during briefings on the health crisis.”

The same priority applied at Mettler Toledo, which relied from the outset on its workplace risk prevention bodies and quickly set up a special COVID committee to inform and respond to the questions of not only employees but also customers.

Sourcing masks and gel

Nobody has forgotten that masks and hand sanitizer gel, essential tools in the fight against the spread of the virus, were impossible to find in France at the start of the pandemic. To source and equip their staff in this context of shortage, both companies went to great lengths:

“Our technicians were given priority access to gel, masks, and gloves, with whatever could be found on the market at the time,” explains Patrick Hourqueig. “The company then took measures at national level and arranged for a plane to bring us masks directly from production sites.”

“Like everyone else, we had a difficult period,” recalls Jean-Paul Canonne. “Fortunately, we were able to call on our factories around the world, particularly in China for masks. Thanks to the international Mettler Toledo network, this issue was quickly resolved. On the ground, our first concern at the beginning of the lockdown was to equip our 180 technicians. To do that, we first needed to know where they were in order to send them the right equipment to the right place at a time when all intervention schedules were being disrupted.”

Reorganizing activity according to customers and resources

At both Mettler Toledo and ENGIE Solutions, the entire planned activity had to be completely reorganized to constantly take into account:

customers forced to close their sites or establishments, or unable to receive technicians for scheduled control and maintenance operations. Not all sectors were, or are, in the same boat. For example, among the many facilities whose heating installations ENGIE Solutions manages, schools have reopened, while swimming pools, gyms, performance venues, and cinemas remain closed. At industrial customers, production did not stop, as some installations must, no matter what, continue to operate. The food retail sector, where Mettler Toledo has a large number of customers, continued to function, as did the food processing industries. “But,” nuances Jean-Paul Canonne, “as this period was a peak of activity for them, some industrial customers asked us to postpone our operations. We spent a great deal of time checking which customers it was possible to visit and modifying our operatives’ schedules accordingly.”
unavailable technicians, whether due to childcare during the first lockdown or, more recently, because being a “close contact” means they must self-isolate for a week. “Overall, I think we have been operating with 60% of our usual headcount since the beginning of the crisis,” estimates Patrick Hourqueig. “That makes a big difference, and if we managed to cope, it was also because we had far fewer corrective operations to carry out due to the number of installations that were shut down at customer sites.”

The key role of planners and planning tools

Given these constantly changing constraints, it is an understatement to say that planning teams have been working flat out for nearly a year, incorporating changes as they come into schedules and maintaining the highest possible level of activity.

“Fortunately,” points out Jean-Paul Canonne, “the planners who usually work at headquarters were able to switch to remote working immediately. Thanks to the Nomadia Field Service solution, they can work from home without any IT security issues. To ensure they worked in good conditions, we simply provided them with large screens and all the equipment needed for video meetings.”

ENGIE Solutions’ scheduling teams also switched to remote working overnight, with secure access to their Nomadia tool. “IT did what was needed, and although we encountered a VPN sizing issue on the first day, Microsoft resolved it within half a day,” recalls Patrick Hourqueig. “By the end of that first day, our schedulers had returned to normal activity, and that has not changed since. With remote support from the NOMADIA teams, we even managed to carry out a version upgrade of Opti-Time during this complicated period!”

What strategies were used to maintain activity?

At ENGIE Solutions, the first decision was to take advantage of the closure to the public of certain sites (swimming pools, gyms, schools, etc.) to carry out major maintenance work, overdue jobs, and anything that is difficult to do when these sites are welcoming the public. Prioritizing these operations at the beginning of the crisis not only made it possible to maintain activity, but also to reassure customers that their installations were still being kept in working order.

“This point was very important,” explains Patrick Hourqueig. “One of our concerns was indeed that customers whose installations were shut down might suspend their maintenance contracts, with the foreseeable consequences for our revenue. The technicians really played the game by agreeing to work outside their usual geographical area and on sites not part of their usual portfolio. This is what allowed the technicians present to have almost normal workloads and the branches to continue operating.”

ENGIE Solutions also took advantage of the situation to push e-visits. “Many of our installations are equipped with remote monitoring and IoT. We set up e-visits allowing technicians to remotely monitor the operation of the installations they are responsible for. These e-visits are integrated into their Opti-Time schedules. If a deviation from the normal operating parameters is detected, we trigger a corrective intervention at the site to always keep the installation running properly. Customers were very receptive to this 24×7 supervision mode, and the period is conducive to the adoption of this system by more customers.”

Mettler Toledo also places emphasis on this type of solution: “We have a specialized unit equipped with monitoring and remote control tools. We have strengthened the security of these IT tools so that technicians can work from home. This activity has taken a significant leap forward since the beginning of the crisis and, as it can be extended to other customers, it should continue to develop.”

Jean-Paul Canonne nevertheless highlights that the company experienced real drops in activity: “We went down to 40% of our usual technician headcount. This considerably reduced our operational capacity, especially since our technicians are highly specialized and can barely substitute for each other. Given these specializations, there were times when we did not have enough work to give to certain technicians because their customers were closed. There were also times when we had too many technicians in some specialties and not enough in others.”

Was 2020 a disastrous year after all?

Ultimately, no, estimates Jean-Paul Canonne. “By juggling constraints and with everyone putting in a great deal of goodwill, we managed to catch up on some of our backlog. This means that, once the shock of the first lockdown had passed, we were able to adapt.”

“The first lockdown period was the most tense and the most complicated to manage,” acknowledges Patrick Hourqueig. “But very few customers suspended or terminated their maintenance contracts. Today, our technicians have returned to an almost normal pace of activity: industrial sites are open, educational establishments are too, unscheduled operations are picking up again, which means our scheduling teams are working at full capacity.”

Both express satisfaction at having had very few cases of Covid-19 within their teams, thanks to the measures put in place, strict compliance with health guidelines in the field, and constant communication with employees. While both also acknowledge that Teams meetings played an essential role throughout this period in organizing and coordinating operations and in maintaining connections, neither wishes to see them become the norm. “Teams meetings will continue, because they are efficient and save time. Similarly, remote working, which had never previously been considered, is now one of the possible working arrangements for schedulers and other office-based employees. But in the long run, doing everything remotely and never meeting in person is not sustainable for human beings! We all feel the need to come together,” concludes Patrick Hourqueig.

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