Conquering Contractor Management

Efficient contractor management processes are a key consideration for facilities teams. By improving contractor management, teams can ensure contractor engagements produce positive results for both parties.

Without efficient contractor management processes in place, facilities teams can come up against challenges such as:

·     Difficulty measuring contractor performance and alignment with service terms.

·     Incomplete, inaccurate or inaccessible asset data.

·     Endless emails back and forth with contractors.

·     Compliance-critical activities overlooked.

These challenges can be overcome by introducing systematic improvements to contractor management processes.

Consider contractor performance

Many organisations adopt a “set and forget” attitude when it comes to engaging contractors. This creates problems when teams seek to evaluate contractor performance, which should be done on a regular basis.

Evaluating contractor performance requires facility teams to know that the work was done to the required standard and at the right time. For teams relying on spreadsheets or calendar reminders, knowing what work is happening when is a challenge, let alone verifying the work.  

Dedicated facilities management software empowers teams with automatically generated work orders. Scheduled and sent on the correct frequency, automated work orders ensure the correct work regime is maintained.  

Setting up automated work orders helps make it clear if work is overdue or missed. Simple visualisations help facilities teams to immediately identify what work is happening, and when.

This improved visibility helps teams to determine if contractors are meeting service agreements.

Streamline service reports

Keeping all your facility asset data in one place helps to ensure accurate and comprehensive maintenance histories are created for each asset.

Once work is completed on an asset, contractors are expected to produce a service report, providing details of the work completed. Typically, this happens once they’re back in front of a computer or through handwritten reports.

This process makes data management difficult. Inconsistencies in reporting processes, delays between the work and the report, and significant manual effort often results in disparate and incomplete asset information.

Consider asset data a part of the asset itself. If your organisation owns the asset and wants to maximise utility of that asset, so too should they own and utilise the asset data.

Dedicated facilities management software allows contractors to quickly and easily complete a work order from their smart phone. Photos, reports and invoices can be attached to the work order, ensuring all relevant information is kept in one place.

Simplifying this process improves asset maintenance histories for the organisation, and creates a better experience for contractors.

Cut down on endless emails

Contractor communications can be a challenge for facility teams. The large volume of information to be exchanged makes it easy for things to be missed. Billable hours can be wasted when contractors need to search through emails for bits of information once they arrive on site.

Dedicated facilities management software helps to streamline contractor communications, improving compliance and saving time and money.

Create contractor cheat sheets

Dedicated facilities management software like FMI Works allows facilities teams to create “cheat sheets” for contractors, enabling information like sitemaps, important phone numbers, building access and parking information to be created as a package.

These informational packages can be automatically attached to work orders, bringing all information contractors require into a single place.

Accreditation validation

When engaging contractors, teams often need to verify the validity of licences and insurances. Primarily, this is about checking expiry dates for the documentation, to make sure nothing has expired.

This simple task can become arduous for both parties when it necessitates continual back and forth over email.

Dedicated facilities management software helps to create efficiencies in accreditation validation and verification processes. Expiry dates of important documentation can be recorded against the contractor, negating the need to sight it every time.

When expiry dates are approaching, the system can automatically prompt for updated information, preventing work from being assigned to noncompliant contractors.

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This blog is not a substitute for legal advice on building and contractor compliance.