Commercial buildings are a requirement for organizations to provide a safe environment for their employees and consumers. Facilities management must be sustainable through energy conservation, waste management, planned maintenance, and more.
Still, many business owners fail to understand that sustainable success and growth cannot be achieved without effectively planning facility management.
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What is facility management?
Facility management is a professional discipline that involves efficient and sustainable delivery of services and facility improvements to ensure uninterrupted productivity.
Here are the top tips for driving long-term facility management success that we have learned after interviewing 20+ experienced facility managers.
Six ways to improve facility management operations
1. Automate facility management activities by using facility management software
How can you streamline facility management and reduce operational costs? It’s a common question asked to facility managers. The solution is data that can be used to analyze and forecast various facility management processes.
An investment in an integrated workplace management software system that can automate facility management activities can help you create a well-orchestrated workplace in your facilities. These systems offer numerous features and resources that facility managers can use to get deeper insights. This data can help them make decisions that can drive beneficial changes.
When you can automate most facility management services such as vendor management, in-house service tracking, availability to track work orders, automatically invoice vendors, and advance notify workers about upcoming maintenance of service requirements, you can manage facility service much more efficiently. A software system does much more than one person can ever do – streamline facilities management services.
2. Implement a preventive maintenance plan to make it easier to forecast when a repair is required
Facility managers must be able to operate services at optimum efficiency. For this, assets must be managed carefully with a preventive maintenance plan. Experienced facility managers understand how with preventative maintenance, the life of the assets can be extended, infrastructure can be maintained, and downtime can be reduced to a bare minimum.
Key performance indicators or KPI analytics data can help you make data-driven decisions for constructing a preventive maintenance plan.
Some facility managers find maintaining and tracking necessary performance indicators for preventive maintenance plans overwhelming.
It often happens when there is no software maintenance to help you collect and analyze data. Again, the importance of an integrated facility management software system is highlighted here. When you can manage and track as much information about equipment within the facility, you can forecast preventive maintenance better.
Facility management software records all important equipment details such as manufacturer, serial number, emergency repairs, warranty information, and recommended checkups. It is beneficial because you are no longer susceptible to reactive maintenance as you proactively fix faulty equipment or wear and tear before it halts operations at facilities.
3. Centralize all the facility management operations
Decentralization can be a significant hurdle in facility management. When facility managers do not have access to all the information regarding the operation process, there are more likely to make mistakes. This is why centralizing all the facility management operations using the software is how you can improve facility management.
There are several benefits of centralized federal facility management operations. You get real-time data on repair and maintenance management, easily track parts and supplies, inform settlement and payment processing, perform asset management more efficiently, and provide faster support to contractors, vendors, and customers.
You can open a new frontier for futuristic facility management services by correctly leveraging the facility management software. Digitalization of businesses is mandatory today. If you want to stay relevant and beat the competition, you have to initiate data-driven decisions. Centralization of the facility management operation is how you can achieve that.
4. Engage with their employees across all departments and know about the issues
To improve facility management operations, facility managers must collaborate with other stakeholders. Engaging employees from technical teams, janitorial crews, packers and movers, waste haulers, and others will help you manage operations and eliminate miscommunication.
Building relationships with these key stakeholders and encouraging feedback can help reduce facilities’ environmental footprints, increase recycling rates, and ensure operations run smoothly.
When facility managers can encourage and engage with employees across several departments, they create a sustainable and positive environment. Employees feel encouraged to take accountability for their roles and perform at their best.
5. Upgrade your equipment
A core responsibility of facility managers is to ensure that building assets and equipment remain updated at all times. You must keep an eye on the newest technologies that can help optimize facility management operations and cut costs. For example, for most facility buildings, upgrading HVAC systems, installing solar panels, replacing old lighting with LED, and replacing or repairing old equipment will boost efficiency and sustainability.
Potential cost reduction can be accessed by upgrading HVAC systems as you can provide ventilation on demand, saving heat and electricity. Automatic adjustment of ventilation within the facility building is also eco-friendly. Lighting, ventilation and air conditioning should be optimized automatically based on the occupancy of the facility buildings.
6. Track employee attendance properly
Facility managers cannot be at all places at all times, making it extremely difficult to manage the facility’s workforce without automated software. Another way to improve facility management operations is to adopt employee attendance tracking software to ensure workers are performing tasks allotted to them at the designated location within the facility.
Truein is a hardwareless time and attendance management system based on cloud infrastructure. Facility managers can use Truein to track employee locations using geofencing and GPS targeting. For facility workers, the app offers the option to record attendance using their smartphones. This software uses face recognition technology to identify employees.
Conclusion
As a facilities manager, you will come across opportunities and face new challenges, but with appropriate tools, you can streamline the operations. We hope these tips on improvement of facility management operations will help you improve overall sustainability and cut operational costs.
