If you have a booming business, congrats! Your personnel is growing, and so is your equipment and the accompanying technology. Now, you need a person who will make sure that everything runs together smoothly. Yes, you need a facilities manager.
What does a facility manager do?
Facility management is a profession that focuses on the efficient maintenance of an organization's buildings and equipment in a way that offers the best value to the building owner and users alike.
It's also a multi-disciplinary support service that can be applied in any niche or industry. While the nature of the job differs depending on the business, facilities management is always essential.
Facility management encompasses all activities related to keeping a complex operating. Facilities include grocery stores, auto shops, sports complexes, jails, office buildings, hospitals, hotels, retail establishments, and other revenue-generating or government institutions.
Facility managers are generally responsible for ensuring that everything to do with the physical infrastructure of the business is running as it should, as well as identifying areas for greater efficiency and cost-saving and keeping the employees satisfied and their needs met.
Why do you need a facilities manager?
To better understand the importance of having a facility manager by your side, you need to understand better the scope of their work and why it is so important.
A facilities manager is in charge of the day-to-day organization and delivery of services on behalf of your business. The position aims to reduce the outgoing costs of your business while ensuring that it still meets all of its objectives.
This means that it is up to them to make sure that your company complies with the law and meets its environmental targets. With a facility manager’s help, your business will keep to a strict budget while being a safe and positive workplace.
Responsibilities of the facility manager
The role of the facility manager is to ensure that the facility is operating as it should daily by completing daily inspections and conducting proactive and reactive maintenance. These responsibilities go four ways.
When it comes to employee support, facility managers are there to:
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Coordinate desking arrangements
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Manage employee directories
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Facilitate moves and space utilization
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Handle emergency planning
Facility managers serve as a bridge between the workplace and the employees working within it. Whenever troubles with accommodation, safety, or comfort arise, it’s up to the facility manager to deal with them.
They are also essential when it comes to establishing processes and keeping them in order. What they need to do includes:
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Submitting a work order request
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Reserving space within the facility
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Checking in guests and visitors
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Emergency action planning
Whenever there is a new problem with the workflow, facility managers have to solve the issue. Still, they also have to create a reliable action plan for resolving the same issue if it ever happens in the future.
Of all the duties of a manager, facility maintenance and improvement is the one that is most likely to pop into your mind when thinking about this position. Examples of this broad range of responsibilities include:
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Finding and maintaining vendor contracts
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Repair, maintenance, and building improvement
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Workplace cleaning and décor
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On- and off-site property management
Facilities are the second largest expense behind the workforce—it’s the job of a facility manager to turn the workplace into a place that can meet the needs of the people using them.
Finally, we have technology integration. Workplace management systems aggregate data, which drives crucial decisions about how to run the business. That is why identifying and implementing the right technology is the chief responsibility of facility managers. While technologies mostly fall into the IT department’s domain, the facility managers are the ones who determine how they’re selected, used, and leveraged. Some examples of what this looks like in a modern setting include:
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Researching IoT devices based on data collection needs
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Integrating IoT devices into everyday facilities processes
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Determining the cost, ROI, and advantage of smart technologies
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Using aggregated data to understand the workplace better
Facility managers can collect and analyze data from networked technologies to get insights about the workplace. This fuels better decision-making on how to optimize the work environment for the people using it.
How it all comes together
Now that you know what and how a facilities manager works, consider your company and the issues you might be facing. If you have recurring safety issues or difficulties in asset management or tracking, it is time to seek professional help. Also, if your maintenance costs are escalating or you notice a growing backlog of uncompleted maintenance tasks, it's clear that time and valuable resources are going to waste.
It doesn’t matter if you ask for help from an in-house facility management team or outsource everything to an independent contractor. The point is that you understand how facility management can result in significant cost savings, improved safety performance, and better overall service delivery for your company.
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