What is Facilities Management?

Businesses in Suffolk require facilities management to keep them up and running. While the regular staff focus on their tasks like serving the customers, dealing with IT software installations, and running staff meetings, much goes on behind the scenes that most employees don’t think about.

Companies do not operate in a vacuum. They have buildings that need to be properly maintained, equipment that must continue operating reliably, and a need for communications and technology solutions. Without all these being taken care of, pretty soon smaller aspects of the business operations will begin to deteriorate and may eventually grind to a complete halt.

What is Facilities Management?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s maintaining the building, its infrastructure, and the grounds, or other aspects that keep things ticking over, if it’s something that employees rely upon, it needs to be effectively managed. For instance, following a strong storm over the weekend, branches from nearby trees may have blown onto the building’s roof. At which point, the facilities team needs to either get up on a ladder to remove them or to call in a specialist to do so. If there’s roof damage, removing the tree branch sooner would be preferable because if it blows around, it could cause more roof damage or, worse still, fall onto someone’s head from above.

The Number of Tasks Soon Adds Up

Based on the number of facilities, the relative size, and other factors, the facilities require different amounts of management. While a small office with only a few people on a single floor might require little outside of what’s already completed by the building’s manager, for companies with their office building, grounds, and a substantial staff, the expansive facilities can continually keep them hopping.

Tracking problems that have arisen and using preventative maintenance rather than waiting for a problem to arise can work well to reduce complications. Getting to issues earlier reduces their severity in most cases. But as the facilities grow, the management headaches increase with it. That’s something to bear in mind.

Can Software Help to Make it Easier?

Trying to be organised with the management of facilities is not easy. It becomes much easier with a CMMS.

What is CMMS?

A Computerised Maintenance Management System is designed to provide a way to log all issues with the facilities, track the solution to the problem, and mark it off once it’s resolved. Systems like the one from Infraspeak can also allow for forwarding planning to anticipate potential difficulties at the facilities, schedule preventative maintenance, or just a light review to verify all is as it should be.

Using a computerised system lets facilities staff log everything to avoid any site location, equipment, or area from being overlooked.

More recently, Intelligent Maintenance Management Platforms (IMMP) like Infraspeak have come to replace CMMS as the state-of-the-art solution for maintenance management. While a CMMS centralises your information and helps you manage tasks, an IMMP can also provide you with intelligent suggestions and task automations, by connecting all kinds of native apps, integrations and even IoT technology.

Does Facilities Management Save Money?

Typically, it does. The reason is that without proper care and attention, things inevitably will go wrong. That could be repair work on a broken wall not getting done, and someone tripping up and injuring themselves, or vital equipment not being serviced on time and suffering from a breakdown a week later.

While there is a little lost productivity, production downtime, or just inconvenience with maintenance actions – especially preventive actions before a problem have occurred – it tends to reduce losses later. So, operations and results for the company become more predictable as a result.

Visit the Infraspeak website for more information