The “Naughty” and “Nice” of Facilities Management

With the festive season in full swing, and this year, it’s not just Santa who’s making a list, and checking it twice. At FMI, we speak with hundreds of facilities teams across Australia and New Zealand. As a result of these conversations, we’ve put together a facilities management “naughty and nice” list.

The "Naughty"

From bad habits to outright non-compliance, these are the factors that most often prevent facilities teams from operating efficiently, and to the best of their ability.

Relying on outdated technology

Many facilities teams still rely on paper-based processes and spreadsheets to manage assets and maintenance. Relying on outdated technology to support facilities management processes often leaves teams overwhelmed by creating a ton of extra work.

Using these outdated tools for maintenance management often resulted in work orders being lost, leaving stakeholders dissatisfied. Meanwhile, limited visibility over assets and current works often leads to delays in accessing data, which then creates chaos in terms of maintenance management and reporting. FMI Works replaces paper and spreadsheets in facilities management processes to support more efficient processes.

Over-reliance on reactive maintenance

While reactive maintenance is an important part of maintenance strategy, exclusively relying on reactive maintenance creates major problems for organisations. Without planned maintenance, business critical assets are more likely to unexpectedly fail. This creates negative outcomes for organisations that range from unplanned cessation of service delivery to unnecessarily expensive repairs.

With FMI Works, teams can break the reactive cycle, and move to a maintenance strategy incorporating planned maintenance. Jobs can be easily scheduled at required intervals, and work orders can even be sent automatically to contractors to keep the plan on track.

Slacking on stakeholder relations

Facilities management teams are often beholden to multiple stakeholders at different levels of the organisation. Often, simple improvements to communications and reporting can transform the relationships the facilities team has with those stakeholders.

The automated status updates within FMI Works are often cited as a favourite feature. Rather than responding to multiple follow up requests and enquiries, teams can choose to send automated updates to requesters, anytime their job is updated.

The "Nice"

Every day, the FMI Team is privileged to see FM teams kicking goals, working efficiently to transform facilities management for their organisation. This “nice” list highlights some of the most impactful things our team is seeing.

Victories in visibility

High performing teams rely on timely, accurate data to make better business decisions and fuel effective stakeholder communications. Knowing what assets the organisation has, and what condition they are in, is critical for facilities teams wanting to make informed decisions around maintenance strategy.

This visibility helps teams to develop planned maintenance schedules, which reduces the risk of unexpected asset breakdown. Visibility over assets is also critical for teams needing to report on assets to comply with reporting frameworks such as AMAF.

Conquering contractor management

Facilities teams often leverage multiple contractors for various roles. With each engagement comes a host of compliance requirements. From checking licences and insurances, to ensure contractors are conducting themselves in line with organisational values, there’s lots of boxes to check.

FMI makes it simple for teams to make a list and check it twice, when it comes to contractor management. Contractors can upload their own documentation, and teams can have that documentation automatically checked, before work is sent to that contractor.

Automating part of what is usually a time consuming an arduous process supports teams to save time and reduce the risk of human error.

Reinventing maintenance requests

Many facilities management teams spend a significant amount of time responding to reactive maintenance requests. Typically, this looks like facility users sending emails either to individuals or shared inboxes, and hoping it will be actioned.

For facilities teams, this process can create chaos. Valuable time being lost to dealing with duplicate requests, lost requests, and endless follow up emails from requesters searching for a status update on their job.

With FMI Works, requesters submit requests via a simple form. Facilities teams are then able to gain a comprehensive view of all works, and their status. This alone drastically improves communications with requesters, with the team able to quickly and easily provide status updates when asked.

Some teams are taking this one step further and leveraging automated emails to alert requesters whenever their job is updated. This one simple step has transformed stakeholder communications, saving facilities teams time and improving relationships with requesters.

Where do you sit?

If your team is guilty of some of the items on the naughty list, we are here to help. FMI Works is transforming the way facilities management teams work across Australia and New Zealand. Speak to one of our team today about how you can implement simple strategies to make the “nice” list well before next Christmas.