Facility Management

What is facility management?

Facility management focuses on systematic planning, designing, and maintenance of all the physical resources available within an organization's premises. It coordinates the existing working environment, including people, processes, places, and technologies. A facility management team, usually with the help of facility management software, ensures the overall well-being and functioning of the facility that comprises the building, IT systems and security, lighting, furniture, and other services.

Facility management is a core business process for organizations of all sizes. A well-planned facility improves an organization’s productivity by reducing the risk of system failures, ensuring the safety of workers, and minimizing maintenance costs on fixed assets. It keeps an organization up and running throughout the year. The responsibilities of facility managers are to identify facility-related issues on time and collaborate with other departments to fix them.

Facility management applies to all sorts of environments—from multinational corporations to SMBs, hotels to hospitals, and manufacturing plants to educational establishments like schools, universities, and research laboratories. The nature of the business decides the role of the facilities management team and the processes involved in it.

Types of facility management

There are mainly two types of facility management, hard facilities management (Hard FM) and soft facilities management (Soft FM):

• Hard facility management (Hard FM): Hard facility management encompasses the importance of physical assets and infrastructure present in a facility. It includes building maintenance, air conditioning, lighting, electrical and mechanical works, plumbing, wiring, fire safety systems, heating, and cooling. These are immovable assets on the premises and directly affect the safety and welfare of employees.
• Soft facilities management (Soft FM): Soft facility management usually includes service-based responsibilities in a facility that requires everyday management and coordination like sanitation and cleaning services, catering, security, ground maintenance, pest control, waste management, car parking, and workspace management. These ensure employees have a pleasant and secure working environment in the facility. It also includes services that create a healthier, safer, and visually appealing environment.

Benefits of using facility management

A well-designed facility management system provides multiple benefits to the internal and external stakeholders of the organization. Some of the common benefits are listed below: 

• Ensure safer premises: Organizations must ensure the buildings and infrastructure remain safe for the people working there. Many real estate spaces have several codes and regulations that must be followed during construction and operation. Facility management brings expertise to manage these spaces better by diving deeper into the data and insights provided by each surface and system. Facility managers use this data to formulate effective facility management strategies to keep the workplaces up and running.
• Minimize operational costs: Managing a facility can be expensive at times. It is essential to keep an eye on budget and expenses to avoid overspending on the facilities and resources required. A well-strategized facility management program minimizes the cost of running a space and helps save a lot of operational costs every year. A check on unnecessary expenses and efficient use of resources reflects a healthy bottom line.
• Support workforce productivity: Facility management commonly works in sync with enterprise asset management to ensure the effective use of assets for the efficient and sustainable operation of any organization. It takes care of the system and services on the floor to support the high productivity of primary business processes, occupants, and end users. Facility and asset managers together develop a comprehensive approach to manage the entire lifecycle of an asset, including design, construction, operation, maintenance, replacement, and decommission.

Facility management best practices

In order to make facility management work, companies must follow these best practices:

• Integrate with other software: Facility management software can work better if it is integrated with integrated workplace management systems (IWMS), computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), and enterprise asset management (EAM) software. It is essential to break down silos in a typical facility management system into these separate systems to understand how different parts of their facilities affect one another.
• Collect insights and information: The use of analytics, AI and ML, and IoT-enabled facility management software can help collect valuable data, insights, and information that help in deeper analysis of finding gaps and diagnosing them. It also helps formulate new facility management strategies and capitalize on trends to stay relevant.
• Prioritize expense and budgeting: Budgeting is critical to facility management as it is more aligned with reducing business costs. Correct reasoning behind allocated expenses and budget is essential to eliminating extraneous costs on operation, hiring workers, and maintenance work needed to keep the workplace safe. It plays a vital role in a company’s fiscal health and improves bottom-line performance.