Instead of rethinking the winning formula over and over again, using the best-practice tools for facility operations which have proven to be effective for facility management is much more advantageous. Facility managers share and implement best practices across different industries every day.

While not every organization operates similarly, the answer to the question of how to improve facility management varies accordingly.

Building leaders or managers share an important purpose for facility management: to work effectively, reduce operational costs and increase the productivity of employees. Let’s learn about it further down the line.

What is Facility Management?

Facility management encompasses the functional activities of a business that are essential for its function to its core. Ensuring the right support at the right time at the right price is what facility management is all about.

Worldwide, facility management is a rapidly growing business and the role of a facility manager is becoming a demanding one. With ever changing business scenarios and countless assets managing a facility is not an easy task anymore.

Facility management as a whole ensures that all part of the asset management is done right and maintained accordingly.

While there is not any game-changing formula for successful facility management, some proven tactics can be followed for superior business success. Some of them are:

How to Improve Facility Management by Automating Facility Process:

Effortless operations are essential to the best facility management. Automation makes the workplace structure a little easier to manage from the costs, as well as from the quality perspective. The use of automatic lighting reduces electricity usage. Automation increases information collection and decision-making. Automatic ticket processing expedites the repair of the facility. The list is long. Automation provides support for workers as well as the businesses themselves.

Some of the biggest advantages of automated office workflow includes

1. Reduce manual effort to complete boring tasks.
2. Avoiding manual human errors.
3. Lessen the processing time for different items.
4. Getting valuable performance metrics insight.
5. Making sound business decisions based on data.

Centralize Facility Management Through Software

The lack of transparency in facility management is a big problem. Residential property in a basket; building maintenance in a separate basket; space usage in a different basket.

Until now the opposite has happened. The underlying information helps FMs (facility management software) better understand what parts of a facility are affected by each other and what general trends are present.

Using a facility management software provides with a dynamic dashboard for users which reduces the time of operation process. Let’s learn more about the benefits of using a central software for building or asset management.

Key Benefits of Facility Management Software:

1. Repair & Maintenance Management
2. Parts & Supply Management
3. Settlement & Payment Processing
4. Asset Management
5. Proposal Management
6. Call Center Assistance
7. Contractor & Sourcing Management
8. Preventive & Scheduled Management

Leveraging the facility management software in the most effective way can open door to new opportunities to futuristic facility management services, In an era of digitalization it has become more evident than ever before how important it has become to initiate data driven decisions. 

Top Facility Management Skills in 2022

There are many skills required for facilities management. This could never be truer now that the COVID19 pandemic has caused massive changes at work. It has become more evident that, not just in the systematic approach but also human intervention has become a big part of successful facility management in 2022. Facility managers have to play certain roles too. Let us have a deeper understanding about the qualities needed for a successful facility management from a facility manager’s point of view.

1. Empathy: In a post pandemic world, where employees are overcoming from the losing their loved ones, loneliness, burnout and possible mental health difficulties its important for facility managers to have empathy as a key skill behind successful facility management,
2. Self Awareness: For a successful facility management practice, the facility managers need to be self aware about their strength and weakness to become the best version of themselves & support accordingly to their organization.
3. Humility: Humility is a major contributor behind a sound and successful workplace. Many facility managers lift the organization’s employees through humility. For a safe work environment for the future this is an important skill to have for all facility managers.
4. Adaptability: In professional workplace not everyday is the same. Newer and greater challenges arise almost everyday as part of rapidly growing competitive industry ecosystem. For a proper facility management, facility managers need to be adaptive according to the situational demand.
5. Decisiveness: Being decisive doesn’t always conflict with humility or adaptability as long as the facility manager makes the rational choice while being decisive. It is a dominant characteristic for a facility manager in modern facilities management system.
6. Persistence: To create a seamless working experience for the employees alongside reducing operational costs, facility managers has a big role of involvement. It is not always easy as they need to resume to their roles even after setbacks from the management or other parties. To adapt new changes and implement newer ideas a facility manager needs to be persistent always.
7. Empowering Ability: It becomes increasingly important at some point of facility management to let go responsibilities and assigning to the team members. For futuristic operations facility managers need to maintain their empowering roles.
8. Analytical Ability: Analyzing financial or costing data, facility managers need to have critical and analytical ability to present it to the management with proper viewpoints. Modern facility managers need to have the analytical ability to find sort and present facility data for the benefit of the company.
9. Networking: A crucial part of facility management is networking. A facility manager need to aligned with all parties, such as networking & IT, HR executives outside the peers and administrative body, Networking gives the facility managers with an edge towards solving crucial problems and up to date with latest solutions,
10. Strategic Mindset: With time facility managers become an integral part of the core team and business strategy. To be successful in career facility managers need to have proper knowledge about the company and its business for a sustainable decision making.in way forward. Strategic mindset is important for facility managers for business success.

Collect As Much Information As Possible:

The best practices in facilities operations revolve primarily around analytics. Using data collected on IoT devices, managers can influence work environments in order to improve building maintenance. It starts when the challenges are identified and pinpoint data sources that provide solutions. Use the data as accurately as you can in order to hypothesize solutions. Among the many benefits of collecting facility management data, some of the most highlightable ones are:

1. Eliminate Guesswork
2. Generate Insightful Reports
3. Ensure safety, compliance and accountability
4. Cloud based collaboration
5. Easy integration with existing system

Recognize and capitalize on trends

Collecting data is a vital good practice, but learning to use this information is equally important. It will inform you about all aspects of your facility and will confirm your facility improvements ideas. Every decision is made using data-driven technology. Recognizing trends by identifying and using data is a good technique for gaining confidence.

Customize Facilities According To Needs

A crucial part of good facilities management is to customize the facilities according the employee and workplace needs. To save more utility costs facility management team has to plan it according to the best needs. When a facility is managed without proper understanding and know how it can trigger higher operational costs which becomes a burden for the organization in the long run. But when done right according to needs, it can provide with enhanced return on investment, better productivity and improved workplace culture.

Implement Preventive Maintenance Plan 

Preventive maintenance or routine checkups help the organization with prevention from any unwanted occurrence or downtime. As part of cost savings regular checkup and maintenance needs to be done. In a rapidly growing business downtime or equipment failure can be highly costly. By implementing preventive maintenance plan properly some key benefits can be identified. Such as,

1. Decrease in downtime & closures
2. Increased equipment life expectancy
3. Significantly reduce safety risks.
4. Less energy consumptions.
5. Improved productivity
6. Higher energy efficiency.

Upgrade Equipment’s to Cut Costs

Equipment’s are as important as humans in business now a days. While you follow a proper maintenance schedule energy or utility costs can be decreased significantly. But still, as newer equipment’s consists higher save on energy and resources it becomes an increasingly wise decision to upgrade them over time according to performance analytics. As part of asset management upgrading to newer and efficient systems is vital. For example, lighting accounts for at least 15% of average facilities. By simply switching to censor activated led lights a significant number of human and electricity cost has been saved in many facilities. In a monthly or yearly analytics which shows a remarkable change in operational costs.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• What are the tips to improve facilities management? Some key improvement tips to improve facilities management are,
  1. Routine facility checkup
  2. Keep the equipment’s up to date
  3. Involve key stakeholders
  4. Evolve the recycling operations
  5. Look for different vendors
• What are the 5 Recommendation of ways to Maintain the facility? Some key recommendation to maintain the facility for cutting costs and sustainable development are:
  1. Maintain updated documentation of assets
  2. Equip the team for success
  3. Change the strategies from reactive to proactive
  4. Practice preventive maintenance
• How Can Facility Management Improve Productivity? Improved facility management can improve productivity in employee and work culture. Some of the key things it can improve are,
  1. Better workplace motivation
  2. Improved machineries can cut downtime
  3. Better facility management can enhance team structure. & many more

Conclusion:

Facilities management in todays day and age is becoming more data driven which demands analytical point of views as well. Apart from facility managers, management also has to play pioneering roles of adaptation to influence cost saving decisions and better work culture. In commercial buildings or event factories when businesses implement the smart facility management policies it helps the business significantly by saving costs in an efficient manner. & when the resources can be saved through strategic decision making the resources can be utilized in growing the business further down the line. As a result improving facility management is not just a luxury anymore its an necessity that can not be overlooked anymore.