50 Facilities Management Tips and Best Practices - Camcode - 0 views
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Cut night site lighting. “Depending upon how your site lighting is operated and circuited, you can create an ‘economize mode’ for overnight when the site is at its lowest occupancy. Keep perimeter site lighting on around your property and all entrances and main drives lit.
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Replace older lighting with LEDs. “Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center chose LEDs to replace existing lighting in a parking garage open 24/7, halving the garage’s power consumption. Meanwhile, Mediapolis Community Schools in Mediapolis, IA, also embarked on a retrofit of LED exterior lighting.
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Implement a sustainable facility design plan. “Sustainable design is more attainable and affordable than it’s ever been, especially when you think in terms of years instead of days and weeks. It’s also worth noting that sustainable design is very well favored among the public, which is an extra incentive for companies interested in reinforcing their reputation as socially responsible and environmentally concerned
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Know the total cost of all facility work done both directly and indirectly. “To the untrained eye, the facilities maintenance arm of a business appears to be a black hole of cost. The costs of these FM services add up, and unless discrepancies arise, that is where most of the business analysis ends. However, facilities maintenance managers, who are privy to all of the nuances that make up eac
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h work order, understand the complexities and overhead involved in this sector of business.
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Consider less obvious improvements that impact facility energy use. “Some energy-related projects will be more or less hidden from the users and primarily pursued to reduce energy demand, such as chiller and fan-unit upgrades. Such projects may end up providing the building users with better temperature control, but this is not the primary goal of the upgrade
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Operational changes such as reducing the hours of HVAC and lighting operation, and changing setback temperatures, which require very little expenditure (if any at all) do not directly affect user experience, but can produce large reductions in electricity loads. In general, working with the building operations team to reduce energy use can produce impressive reductions in loa
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his allows building and facility management professionals to determine whether the cost to improve a particular element of a building or a system in it against the cost savings over the same period. If the cost of an upgrade over its lifetime offers an advantage over the building operational costs it will save, then it’s generally considered a good investmen
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“Finding the right suppliers to maintain your facilities can be difficult and time-consuming. From janitorial services, to groundskeeping and maintenance supplies, ensuring suppliers are providing apples-to-apples quotes, developing contracts with clear service levels, and validating that supplier quality
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“Boilers today can reach efficiencies of up to 96 percent using condensing technology; however, a typical building, including new buildings, uses atmospheric type boilers which, for all intents and purposes, are only slightly more advanced than a science lab Bunsen burner. This technology is reliable and it works, but it is expensive to operate
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An energy audit systematically identifies and develops opportunities to help reduce energy use in an institutional or commercial facility and, as a result, decrease building operating costs. Focusing the audit is imperative for maintenance and engineering managers.
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“Commercial kitchens are high energy users, consuming roughly 2.5 times more energy per square foot than any other commercial space, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Of that, as little as 40% is used in the preparation and storage of food, says the UK’s Carbon Trust; much of the wasted energy is dispersed into the kitchen.
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All commercial buildings are insulated; building codes make it mandatory to insulate up to a certain level. Unfortunately, because most buildings are put up under strict guidance to budgets, they are usually put up with only the minimal amount of insulation
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Develop performance measures for your PM process with an emphasis on measuring the amount of PM that is work completed compared to all other work. Total PM hours should be the highest percentage of all the department’s maintenance work. This goal might seem impossible, but over time, it is very achievable
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“Preventative maintenance is all about planning, plain and simple. Every piece of equipment or machinery at your disposal or under your care should have a schedule of what type of maintenance it requires and when it requires that check-up.
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“Failure modes are defined as “how something fails.” Let’s use a flat/membrane roof to show an example of what a failure mode is. On a flat/membrane roof, one failure mode may be “penetration of roof membrane,” and the causes of this failure mode could be many. Knowing the failure mode(s) of a specific maintainable item such as a membrane roof and its causes can be key to early detection of roof failure (not meeting the intent of the end user) so the repair can be made before it affects an operatio
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“Catch small problems now before they become big ones. Addressing small details can add up to huge improvements in appearance and functionality. Ask your facilities services provider, janitorial company
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You may schedule preventive maintenance based on meter readings on an equipment. However, equipment meters usually do not differentiate between work time and idle time
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Greasing the rack and pinion of a beam saw, for instance, can cause grease and saw dust to solidify inside the gears over time, eventually preventing them from moving. If you’re unsure which tasks are beneficial to each piece of equipment, ask your equipment representative.”
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Having spare parts and supplies around the time of a major preventive maintenance schedule is absolutely critical. Asset management software allows you to check the availability of the spare parts for dates when the work orders are due. This report can help you identify parts that are insufficient for the required work orders in the future. If you know which parts you are falling short on, you can order them in advance from suppliers rather than waiting till re-order limits are reached
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“Appropriate repetition and reinforcement are necessary. The average person is bombarded with more than 300 messages while at work, and multiples of that outside of work, Finney says. Getting a message to land with an audience might take as many as 12 repetitions, in some cases, he says
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Let’s get together: when you’re designing your facilities, design social spaces for your employees. These might be lunch or break rooms, games rooms, gyms, or even community gardens.
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While other managers may work to manage clients or staff, your job is to manage facilities and all that occurs in them. Your corporation’s physical assets are just as important as your human resources, and you are the expert in this field. Whether it’s collating data or contributing to the organization’s bottom line, your input is a valuable part of corporate decision-making
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“Workplace inclusion has to be clearly defined before any initiatives can be pushed forward. One useful definition of an inclusive office is a workplace in which all staff are treated with respect and have equal access to resources and opportunities. Facility managers should build on this high-level description to create an idea of what concepts like equal access, diversity and fairness look like in their own facilities
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Space costs money. Knowing that we are moving towards a working environment consisting of virtual or mobile workers, investing time in developing new workplace designs that can suit these new ways of working while increasing space utilization rates can result in impressive cost savings
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Performing facility maintenance and engineering tasks is like sailing among icebergs. What technicians can’t see will sink them — or their facilities. Thermal imaging technology gives technicians the ability to see the unseen, making it easier to spot failing motors and electrical components,
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This concept is broadly used to describe our attempt to formally identify in-house talent in many of our labor shops. We identify talent through a competitive selection process based on potential vs. skills and promote our selected personnel to the worker and helper level while training them to achieve appropriate full mechanic level with associated certifications/licenses
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This directly leads to the client receiving a more fit-for-purpose solution and ultimately receiving greater value which grows a greater relationship.
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In other words, there has to be a compelling reason based on our mission for why we would submit budgets for anything.” By presenting specific information on how and why you’ve chosen your budget numbers, you can help the C-suite see that your budget is well within reason
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When you automate the work order process, you remove human error associated with it. Essentially, you’re taking the people out of the process and ensuring nothing gets missed or overlooked
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“There are many different software options out there than can aid FMs in organizing and streamlining their everyday tasks. This ranges from software designed to help manage all maintenance activities to logging and tracking facility visitors for security purposes.
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uch smart sensors, operating costs are dramatically reduced, productivity is enhanced, and occupants’ comfort is improved.
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“One of the most exciting features of Facilities Management software is the ability to manage heating and cooling remotely, or set a programmable thermostat to move set temperatures up or down throughout the day. Facilities planners love the ability to analyze and explore energy use from heating and cooling systems
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“Maintenance and facilities administration systems must frequently abide by national and global regulatory requirements. All maintenance administrators face occasional random or audits inspections by regulatory authorities. Maintenance software enables you to prove regulatory conformity and decrease the amount of paperwork and preparation that is needed for an audit.
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KPIs allude to opportunities and errors in your company. Paired with the Internet of Things (IoT) and energy management systems, KPIs can be used to highlight missed maintenance tasks, greater traffic area of your business or problems with machinery
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“Closely monitoring energy and water use to reduce building-operating costs is another benefit. By allowing owners to monitor and analyze the performance of multiple systems—air-conditioning levels, lights on automatic dimmers, water usage
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“A feature that’s gaining a lot of ground is using facial recognition technology to let people in and out of the building. It’s more secure than key fobs or cards, and unlike cards and fobs, you can’t forget your face at home. It’s like batting a triple, or killing three birds with one stone
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You cannot do your job properly without the correct information. If you don’t have proper records on the state of your facilities, you can’t do your job as a facilities manager.
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“A surprising number of facilities managers have no true system in place for managing their space. More than a quarter of everyone interviewed – 28 percent –
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. It may help significantly with compliance with various industry standards, such as HIPAA in the healthcare industry and Sarbanes-Oxley in the financial field. It can help to document best practices for avoiding accidents, or in the worst case scenario,
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This method identifies how critical a piece of equipment or maintenance task is to your business and will ultimately show you where it should land in your prioritization process
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Smartsheet is a spreadsheet that you share with your co-workers, but its features go far beyond Excel. This tool combines the traditional spreadsheet with project management tools, templates, and forms and allows you and your colleagues to access spreadsheets on mobile devices and work on them collaboratively
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The business world is increasingly embracing a larger remote workforce. Offices are used as areas to collaborate, develop, and design new ideas. The day-to-day work can be, and often is, done from home
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“Another possibility for cutting costs, say experts, is not just moving staff around, but moving work around also. This means carefully examining all outsourcing contracts to see if they can be scaled back and the work completed by in-house staff
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“Verify assets from a minimum of two data points, such as the barcode and the item’s serial number.
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After collecting data and developing a maintenance schedule for your assets, you need to plan for the long-term maintenance of your asset inventory
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However good asset management and maintenance planning is, there comes a time when an asset reaches the end of its useful life and should be disposed of.
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“If you’re trying to get a handle of your documents, the first thing you should do is an asset assessment. Detail the condition of all the main equipment and systems, and document those conditions
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Strategic asset management integrates key relationships between planning and delivery activities.
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Maximize your use of vertical cubic footage by placing seasonal products or those that move less frequently in harder-to-reach vertical storage areas
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the article highlights how companies can benefit from sustainable design and gives tips on preventive maintenance
