Standby generators exist for the worst day of the year. That makes generator service a strange business to schedule. Most of the time, the work is routine: maintenance visits, load tests, battery and filter changes, the occasional repair. Then a storm knocks out power across a region and every customer whose generator didn't start calls in the same afternoon, along with plenty whose generator is fine and who just want reassurance.
Your crews can't double overnight. So generator scheduling is really about two questions. How do you get routine maintenance done in the calm months so fewer units fail when it matters? And how do you decide who goes where when the calls arrive faster than you can answer them?
Calm months: spread maintenance on purpose
Generator maintenance agreements tend to bunch. Customers sign up after a storm, so their annual visits all come due around the same anniversary. Leave them there and you get a crowded month every year, often the one just before your region's storm season, when you'd rather have slack.
The fix is to move visits, deliberately, into the quieter months:
- List every agreement with its due month and a realistic visit length from your own records, split by unit size if that matters.
- Total visit hours by month and compare with technician hours after travel.
- Pull visits forward from crowded months into lighter ones, especially out of the weeks before storm season. A visit done a little early is better than a unit that hasn't been checked when the outage comes.
- Group by area within each month, so a technician's day is a loop of nearby units rather than a tour of the county.
The maintenance agreement scheduling entry covers this in more detail. The field service capacity planning guide covers the month-by-month comparison in general. The point for generator companies is timing: maintenance has to be finished before the season you exist for, not during it.
Before the storm: the forecast week
Many regions get warning before a major storm. That week is valuable, and it's easy to waste on whoever calls first.
A useful order for the forecast week:
- Units with known problems from the last visit, where a repair or part was pending.
- Customers who depend on power for health or safety, if you know who they are from your own records.
- Overdue maintenance on units in the storm's likely path.
- Reassurance calls last. "Can you check it before the storm?" on a unit serviced last month is lower priority than an overdue unit with a weak battery.
The drive matters more in the forecast week, not less. Technicians are trying to fit as many visits as possible into a fixed number of days, and every cross-town leg is a visit that doesn't happen.
During and after: triage by arrival time
When the power goes out, the call list fills with genuine failures (the unit didn't start or shut down), questions that a phone call can solve, and requests for routine work that can wait. The first job is sorting them. The second is deciding who goes.
For genuine failures, the useful question isn't "who's closest?" It's "who can actually get there first?" Roads may be blocked, traffic may be unusual, and a technician's current job may take longer than planned in the conditions. The emergency call scheduling entry covers holding response capacity rather than finding it by bumping booked customers, and the same logic applies here on a larger scale.
Storm weeks also mean long days. Know what those hours cost before you commit to them; the overtime cost calculator runs the numbers for your own crew.
A worked example: storm-day capacity
This is an illustrative example. The numbers are made up to show the arithmetic; use your own technicians and call history.
After a storm, a company has 6 technicians available for a 10-hour day. A failure call averages 75 minutes on site. The question is how many failures the team can reach today, depending on how calls are assigned.
Six more customers with power back today, from the same people working the same hours. On a normal day that difference is efficiency. In a storm week it's the difference between a customer without power tonight and one without power for another day.
Grouping by area doesn't mean ignoring priority. Within the most urgent group, place calls so each technician's next job is close to their last. Then pull lower-priority calls into the same areas as fillers.
Installs and the rest of the year
New generator installs are long jobs that often involve an electrician, a gas connection, a pad and a permit where required. Those details vary by jurisdiction and site. For scheduling, the point is that installs pull your most capable people off service for a day or more. If you can, avoid booking installs into the weeks before storm season, when the same people are needed to finish maintenance. Many generator companies also do general electrical work; see electrical contractor scheduling for how service and project work share one board. HVAC companies run a similar weather-driven peak season; see HVAC scheduling.
How CrewLink handles generator scheduling
CrewLink builds live travel time into availability. The slots it offers are ones a technician can physically reach, with travel computed from where they'll actually be (the previous job) rather than the shop. In a storm week, that's how you see who can really get to a failed unit first.
On the dispatch board, drive time sits next to each job instead of being hidden inside it. When you group calls by area, the saving is visible, and when a technician's day is mostly driving, you can see that too.
Be clear on what CrewLink doesn't do. It doesn't monitor generators remotely, receive alerts from units, track agreements or their due dates, stock parts, read traffic or road closures, or invoice. It doesn't sort your call list for you; your dispatcher decides priority. CrewLink checks that the day you build from those priorities is one your crews can drive. It's built for companies running 5 to 50 trucks, and a walkthrough uses your own territory and service times.
What to take away
- Generator companies run steady maintenance most of the year and a surge when the power goes out.
- Move maintenance visits out of the weeks before storm season and group them by area.
- In the forecast week, prioritise units with known problems and overdue maintenance over reassurance checks.
- After a storm, sort calls first, then assign by real arrival time and group by area within each priority.
- Fewer cross-town legs means more customers with power back the same day.
Common questions
How do I schedule generator maintenance agreements?
List every agreement with its due month and typical visit length, total the hours by month, and compare with technician hours after travel. Pull visits forward out of crowded months and out of the weeks before storm season, then group each month's visits by area.
How should a generator company dispatch calls after a power outage?
Sort the calls into genuine failures, questions you can answer by phone, and routine work that can wait. Send failures first, assigning each to the technician who can arrive soonest given where they are now. Within each priority, group calls by area so technicians aren't crossing the territory between them.
How many generator service calls can a technician run in a storm week?
Divide working hours by the time on site plus the average drive between calls. Run it twice, once with calls taken in order and once grouped by area, using your own numbers. The gap between the two answers shows what call grouping is worth to you.
Should generator installs be booked during storm season?
Avoid it if you can. Installs take your most capable people off service work for a day or more, and storm season is when you need them most. Book installs into quieter periods and keep pre-season weeks for finishing maintenance.