Looking Back on Maintenance Mania as it celebrates its 25 Year Anniversary

Now celebrating it's 25th year, AAMD's Maintenance celebration event (called "Maintenance Olympics" for the first 15 years), has grown from 60 attendees to over 1,500. This year's anniversary event will take place on April 9, and it is interesting to reflect on the origins and development of what we know now as Maintenance Mania.

The event has been fortunate to be surrounded with a ton of great people. The first ever event was pulled together by a small core of people in 2000. Jeff Harmon, Amie Harmon, Dene Trujillo and I were some of the very early committee members, and as we developed a core of an idea for the games and competitions, and Mark Williams worked to ensure the event offered strong educational content. This was a priority from the beginning, and differentiated our program compared to other markets.

Though the first 10 years were called Maintenance Olympics, we eventually decided it would be best to avoid any trademark issues with the International Olympics Committee, as they are very protective of the term “olympics” and the interlocking rings.

Our first event took place in a small warehouse space on Friday, March 10, 2000 and I recall there were about 60 attendees. The education took place in the afternoon and we enjoyed grilling hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner before the competitions that evening. The games included Plunger toss, mirror cleaning, caulk a joint and drywall repair and many of the winners came from Omni Properties, ConAm Management, Fairfield Development and Urban Property Management.

It wasn't long before we could sense growing interest from the membership as the event grew to a few hundred participants. We eventually began utilizing Wings Over theRockies Museum for the event until we grew out of that space.

At some point early on, Mark Williams and I scratched out how the event might look on a national level. With great support from the National Apartment Association, we were able to introduce a national format, that eventually grew to over 70 events.

Prior to its official first national event in Cincinnati, we pulled together many of the parts and pieces for a trial run with the Apartment Association of Colorado Springs (now Southern Colorado.) We had paper tablecloths, mockup games and the race car event with timer was introduced. All of our proofs of concepts were tested live, and we learned at this event that outdoor events were too risky, as a late afternoon thunderstorm opened up and poured over all our test equipment.

A few weeks later, we were in Cincinnati for the official Maintenance Mania event, which was the first time we ever saw the new games and competition sets. Some parts and pieces arrived via Fed Ex the morning of the event. There were roughly two hundred attendees and they had a great time. NAA's Maintenance Mania which carried on for another 15 years.

Though it was the national evnet discontinued by NAA in 2023, Colorado Maintenance Mania lives on! Along with our long-standing partnership with HD Supply, new games were developed in 2024 that could be replicated each year. And quality education as ever remains a critical priority for AAMD. Now back at the National Western, the event will have a chance to continue to grow for years to come!