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Installed Sites With No Maintenance Agreement: What to Do
A maintenance agreement is easiest to propose at handover. Both parties are present, the system is new, the warranty period has just started, and the customer’s engineer has the context to say yes or ask for a formal proposal. That moment is the right one. But it passes. And for many contractors who have been closing factory installations for two or three years, a growing number of sites closed without a maintenance agreement in place.
These are not problem sites. The installation was completed, the handover was signed, the warranty clock started. The follow-up simply did not happen. The question is what to do now.
How Do You Know Which Installed Sites Have No Maintenance Coverage?
Usually, you do not. Not without a system that connects job closes to maintenance agreement status.
For every installation a contractor closes, one of three things eventually happens:
- The maintenance agreement was proposed at handover and signed. The site is in the active portfolio.
- The proposal was made but the customer deferred it. Nobody followed up. The agreement was never signed.
- The maintenance conversation never happened at all. The job closed and the crew moved on.
Most contractors running three or more years of installations have sites in all three categories, but only the first category is visible. The second and third only surface when something forces the question: an unplanned fault call from a site nobody knew was uncovered, or an annual inspection deadline that passed without anyone scheduling it.
Knowing which sites fall into each category requires the job close data: the customer, the system, the handover date, and whether a maintenance agreement was ever signed. Without that data in one place, the list of uncovered sites is invisible.
Why Does the List of Uncovered Sites Keep Growing?
The pressure after a job closes moves immediately forward. The billing run, the next project, the crew dispatched to the following site. The maintenance conversation that was supposed to happen at handover was deferred, and deferred conversations become no conversations as weeks turn to months.
No natural handover exists for the question “which of our installed sites has no maintenance agreement?” Installation is tracked until close. Maintenance is tracked from the moment a contract is signed. The gap between close and contract belongs to nobody.
A contractor closing eight to twelve factory installations per year adds eight to twelve sites per year to a list that nobody is managing. After three years, that list might hold twenty or thirty sites. The ones that call are reacting to a fault or a deadline. The rest are quiet, which is not the same as covered.
What Is the Second Window to Re-Engage?
The best time to propose a maintenance agreement is at handover. The second-best time is just before the first statutory inspection date.
Thai electrical safety regulations require commercial and industrial facilities to have their electrical systems inspected annually by a licensed electrical inspector. The first inspection falls roughly twelve months after commissioning. That date is specific to each site and tied to when the system was energised.
A factory that had its solar system installed sixteen months ago is past its first inspection deadline. The customer’s facility engineer either has it under control or is aware that it needs to happen and does not yet have a clear plan for how. In either case, a call from the installing contractor that opens with “we have your site data and can run the statutory inspection” is not a cold pitch. It is a practical offer for something the customer must arrange.
The inspection is the door: once through it, the contractor has current site data and a natural basis for the longer-term conversation.
What Does the Site Register Give You for This Conversation?
A site register written at job close holds exactly the information that makes the re-engagement call specific rather than generic:
- System type, equipment count, and key specifications
- Manufacturer warranty expiry dates by component
- The energisation date and the first inspection deadline
- The name and contact for the customer’s authorised signatory at handover
For a contractor with this data, the call starts: “The first annual inspection for your facility in Rayong was due last September. The inverter warranty is still active, but the combiner box warranty expired this spring. We have the installation data on file. The easiest thing would be for us to schedule the inspection and review the open warranty items at the same time.”
For a contractor without this data, the call starts from scratch: “We installed your system around two years ago. We wanted to check in.” The customer has to supply context the contractor should already hold. The conversation is harder to land and easier to defer.
The data that makes the second window work is the same data that should have been written at job close. If it was captured then, it is available now.
How to Work Through the List
Once you can see which installed sites have no maintenance agreement, priority order is straightforward:
- Sites within 90 days of their first inspection date: approach now. The inspection obligation is the natural reason to call.
- Sites past their first inspection date: the obligation is already overdue. The customer knows it or will know soon. An offer to run the inspection immediately addresses something concrete.
- Sites still inside warranty with no inspection due soon: lower urgency. A check-in is appropriate but the conversation has less of a natural anchor.
The goal of the first contact is not to close a multi-year maintenance agreement. It is to schedule one defined visit: the statutory inspection. Getting through the door on a legal obligation is easier than proposing a contract cold, and the visit gives the contractor current data about the site’s condition before any longer-term scope is discussed.
FAQ
Does the customer know the annual inspection is a legal requirement?
Often, not precisely. Factory engineers at large manufacturers usually track this. Smaller operations where the installation was handled at the owner level may not have anyone whose job it is to follow the inspection calendar. The contractor who raises it proactively is providing something the customer genuinely needs.
What if another contractor already ran the inspection?
Find out who handled it and whether an ongoing service arrangement is in place. If there is, the timing is not right for a maintenance proposal. If the inspection was handled ad-hoc with no continuing arrangement, the question of who runs the next one is still open.
What if the site register does not have the first inspection date?
It can usually be reconstructed from the job close date plus twelve months. If a commissioning record was kept, use that instead. If neither is available, ask the customer for the original handover document. They should have one. Capturing the inspection date at job close is easier than recovering it from a conversation two years later.
To put the site register and maintenance pipeline in place from the next installation forward, visit /program/ or book a call to walk through your current portfolio.