Facilities Management News

No matter the size of your business, the industry you’re in or the number of locations you have, it’s almost certain that you’ll have to plan capital projects.

Recovering from the operational effects of natural disasters is complicated enough. Repairing facilities and equipment can be even more complicated.

Keeping facilities up and running is a critical concern for everyone from the C-suite to facilities managers and front line workers. With less downtime, there are fewer disruptions, more productivity and an enhanced customer experience.

Strong partnerships with facility service providers improve operational quality. With an enhanced visibility and the potential for more efficient operations, you can make your partnership with service providers stronger by gathering and analyzing data that reflects technician performance. Through this analysis, your company gains valuable insight into the most efficient ways to assign work to technicians based on their abilities. From this, your organization can then make the best maintenance choices for its unique needs. 

In theory, utilizing service providers with lower rates would reduce the overall cost of facility maintenance. However, the hourly rate charged by technicians is only one factor that should be considered.

According to Reliability Web, maintenance management typically makes up 40% to 50% of operational budgets. Therefore, the possible savings from increased efficiency, such as the ability to spend money where it will create the most value and reducing the number of unnecessary maintenance orders, is significant. Supporting this, Transcendent reported that the average company can save between 12% and 18% of their maintenance budgets by prioritizing preventative maintenance over reactive maintenance. 

Understanding the maintenance cost structure of a single facility can be a challenge. Stakeholders first need to uncover where their spend is going and measure the effectiveness of their facilities management program. Organizations with nationwide facilities face a more daunting challenge, as getting visibility into spend per location may be difficult to achieve.

Grocers and restaurant retailers have more complex maintenance needs than businesses that deal in non-perishable goods, and that means facility managers in this industry must have a transparent view of their equipment management program. However, distributed locations and multiple service provider relationships can make this goal difficult to achieve.