The maintenance activity must be considered not only from technical aspects, but also the costs of realization and the costs of non-realization must be evaluated. Utilities can use a new methodology Reliability Centered Maintenance to optimize maintenance resources and to develop maintenance plan for distribution networks and substations. Some practices for utilities to have in place are:

a. Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS): Utilities use a management software that performs functions in support of management and tracking of O&M activities, with some minimal functionality such as work order generation, prioritization, and tracking by equipment/component, historical tracking of all work orders generated, tracking of maintenance activities, storing of maintenance procedure and of all technical documentation or procedures by component, real-time reports, calendar or run-time-based preventive maintenance work order generation, capital and labor cost tracking by component and others;

b. Training and standards: There is an annual training and recycling plan for maintenance crews. It is defined the reporting requirement for O&M activities and its frequency, also there are Operations and Maintenance Manual including written operations procedures and preventive maintenance work procedures and checklists.

c. work orders: All types of work to be performed must be created in the system like a work order. The work orders can be into one of two categories: planned work and unplanned work. Work orders must have the minimum information to guarantee the safety and quality of the work, such as: Geographic location, reference equipment, standards, contact of the Operation Center, and among others.

d. Management of field work: Remote dispatch should be used and dynamic dispatch of crews to reduce travel time and improve response to emerging jobs.

e. Human Resources Management: It is important to reduce the non-productive time of the crews (late out, early return, extended breaks) to optimize field force utilization. In addition, processes should be created to use field forces to close work plans when completing work, eliminating additional administrative costs;

In addition to these practices on the maintenance process, it is also important to highlight that maintenance can be performed reactively in emergency situations (corrective maintenance) or planned to act preventively (preventive and predictive maintenance).

For preventive maintenance some recommended practices are:

• Job Planning: Every activity must have a planning stage that must be carried out in advance and, if possible, by different personnel who will carry out the activity. The plan must contain all the necessary resources: materials, equipment and labor.

• Job Scheduling: optimize work schedules over a period of several months, smoothing peaks/valleys for equipment and labor, minimizing the impact of limited resources;

• Workstations: Jobs: It is important to work with a plan considering several workstations in different regions. This improves flexibility for resource sharing, rather than artificially restricting labor and equipment to a single operations center or territory;

• Supply Chain: Look for an improvement in the materials staging to eliminate the impact in other stages of the process. The supply chain should never "command" the all operation.

• Resource Availability: All resource options (contractors or employees) should be considered based on demand and cost. When the workload associated is constant, it is an ideal task to outsource work with a fixed amount.

For corrective maintenance some recommended practices are:

• Trend: It is possible to check the volume trend of this work in recent years to realize that the volume can be predicted based on environmental events. As such, model work plans must be created and made available for application in this work, minimizing planning and maximizing standardization.

• On-call staff: It is necessary to maintain a minimum number of crews, of different types, available in the regions with the highest incidence of events or the highest density of consumers.