As industrialization accelerated in the 19th century, office buildings and factories needed dedicated personnel to oversee their daily operations. From janitors to maintenance crews, they formed the early backbone of modern facility management.
Today, FM teams ensure that systems in the built environment work together seamlessly—from parking lots to executive suites. Learn how the profession has evolved to meet evolving business needs and technological breakthroughs.
Why Facility Management?
Facilities management is the process of overseeing a company’s physical assets and supporting services to ensure a productive working environment. When the behind-the-scenes work of facility management is running smoothly, everyone can focus on their jobs and deliver quality products and services to customers. Facility managers are able to provide valuable insight into the overall efficiency of the business by analyzing data and making informed decisions to improve processes.
The key to a successful facilities management team is establishing a culture of continuous learning and professional development. This is important to foster a workforce that is capable of adapting to new technologies and embracing innovative solutions to challenging problems. Encourage your facility management team to attend conferences and workshops and pursue certifications in sustainability, data analytics, and project management to build their skill sets and expand their expertise. Mentorship programs are also an excellent way to cultivate a resilient and flexible facility management team.
Modern facility management practices often involve upfront costs for technology integration, sustainable initiatives, and employee well-being programs. Demonstrating the return on investment of these efforts is a key challenge for many organizations. Fortunately, there are several ways to mitigate the risks and demonstrate the value of these investments. One way is to leverage technology, such as CMMS software, like a Cloud CMMS, that provides real-time monitoring and alerts when equipment or systems are at risk of failure. This allows facilities teams to predict maintenance needs and prioritize repairs.
Another way to measure the value of facilities management is to analyze actual building performance metrics, such as space utilization. Using this data, you can optimize office layouts and allocate resources more efficiently. Lastly, by consolidating service provider contracts into one contract, you can save time and money on management costs by leveraging economies of scale.
A strong facilities management strategy can reduce the cost of operating a business by improving operational efficiency, increasing productivity, and improving customer satisfaction. By focusing on preventive and predictive maintenance, facilities management helps to maximize the lifespan of your assets and provide a better experience for your employees and customers.
What Is Facility Management?
Facility management is the coordination of people, processes, and systems to ensure the functionality, comfort, and safety of buildings and their supporting infrastructure. It includes coordinating maintenance, security, cleaning, catering, waste disposal, and other services. Significant sectors of the industry include real estate, government, education, military and defense, and healthcare. The role of facility management is constantly evolving to meet business needs. This may include introducing shared workspaces, improving lighting and air quality, or adapting to changing work environments. Facility management must also be able to keep track of and make informed decisions using data from various sources.
The facilities manager must also stay up-to-date on new trends in workplace technology to improve the overall work experience. This will require leveraging new technology solutions, including smart building tech and IoT devices, as well as understanding how these trends can be leveraged to create a more productive work environment. These tools can range from carbon monoxide sensors to tracking water and energy consumption. The ability to recognize and capitalize on emerging technology trends will help the facilities manager to control costs for operations and maintenance while delivering a high-quality experience for workers.
A centralized software platform is essential for any successful facility management program. Look for a solution that offers real-time data and analytics, as well as the ability to customize and automate workflows. It should be able to integrate with other tools and systems within the organization, creating a single, comprehensive environment. It should be mobile-friendly and easy to use, allowing employees to make changes from anywhere.
Finally, the facility manager must be able to respond quickly and effectively in the event of an emergency. This will require clear communication and coordination with the relevant departments and a willingness to make adjustments in order to protect employees’ safety and property.
The future of facility management will have a larger focus on human capital and the tools that help them perform their jobs. While physical building, tool, and equipment maintenance will always be important, boosting employee productivity and creating an overall positive working experience will become increasingly more crucial.
How Does Facility Management Work?
Often, companies seeking smooth-running operations contract out facilities management to outside providers. This allows in-house staff to concentrate on goals more closely aligned with core business functions. Companies that do this benefit from measurable savings in the form of reduced maintenance spending, avoided warranty leakage, and more. To maximize these benefits, a service provider should use tools like CMMS software to automate work order processes, facilitate preventative maintenance, and streamline invoicing and payment processing for improved data-driven decision making.
Depending on the industry, facility management can cover a wide range of services and systems. It might involve maintaining a single building, or it could mean an entire campus used for multiple revenue-generating sites like manufacturing, retail, and healthcare.
In addition to ensuring buildings and equipment are in good condition, facility management also ensures that people can perform their jobs efficiently. This means making sure vehicles, supplies, and equipment are available and working when needed, and that the environment is safe and comfortable.
A well-functioning facility department is a key contributor to productivity, and that’s why it’s vital to provide a high level of support to employees. This can be achieved by ensuring that spaces are clean, organized, and ready for use; providing training and education on important topics like safety, environmental regulations, and best practices; and fostering a positive workplace culture.
While some organizations rely on a single person to oversee all aspects of their facility, as the company grows, specific services may be delegated to specialized teams. For example, a transportation manager or a production manager may take charge of their respective areas within the organization. This gives the facilities manager more time to focus on strategic planning, and to collaborate with the executive leadership team.
For organizations that have multiple locations, a robust facility management platform will help to streamline the process of coordinating and monitoring all work orders across the enterprise. These platforms can be hosted in the cloud and integrated with third-party software, minimizing manual data entry errors and streamlining payment and audit processes. Using the right software also helps to reduce operating costs through optimized space utilization, improved maintenance workflows, increased energy efficiency, and data analytics.
What Is the Future of Facility Management?
The future of facility management has three major pillars: automation, data analytics and sustainability. Automation is a key part of the future of FM as it allows teams to scale up and automate routine tasks that would otherwise be time-consuming or expensive for a person to do. This helps reduce labor costs and provides better service while ensuring that building systems are operating optimally.
As the use of sensors grows and more data is collected, facilities managers can track a variety of factors including energy usage, HVAC performance, water consumption, security system inputs and occupancy data. This information can be used to identify efficiencies, create predictive maintenance strategies and automate workflows for higher productivity.
This data also enables team members to make better decisions and provide higher levels of customer service by predicting when an issue may arise. This helps them schedule preventative maintenance and repairs when the facility is least occupied. By identifying and fixing issues as they come up, it can help reduce cost overruns as well as downtime due to equipment failure.
One trend that is already affecting the future of facilities management is Integrated Facility Management (IFM) which integrates all aspects of FM into a single team with a shared platform to improve efficiency, collaboration and communication. IFM also enables the adoption of new technologies and creates a clearer picture of the entire operation, making it easier to assess current processes and find areas for improvement.
The future of facility management is also leaning towards sustainability goals and employee wellbeing. By incorporating environmental concerns into daily operational tactics, it will become easier for facilities to achieve ESG and green building certifications. It’s also important to note that a lot of these changes are happening at a time when the labor shortage is causing facilities managers to have to rely more on automation and technology to get the job done.
This is a critical time for FMs to embrace technology that will allow them to improve efficiency, reduce cost and meet the demands of the ever-changing business environment. By leveraging the right tools and training, they can keep their buildings running smoothly while providing a high level of service to tenants and employees alike.