Facility management starts when the construction project manager hands over the as-built documentation. Preventative maintenance begins as soon as business and work processes commence. Today’s facility managers rarely supervise and maintain one building at a time. They are under increased pressure to optimise facilities and asset management. Facilities managers are expected to oversee health and safety audits, achieve energy efficiency gains, ensure faults and breakdowns are dealt with as quickly as possible. They also run a tightly controlled preventative maintenance schedule, often without being physically on-site. Facility manager software and, increasingly, facility management apps offer tools for optimising assets, repairs and preventative maintenance. Facilities managers can now meet the demands of more diverse portfolios with real-time status checks and reporting.
We can think of buildings as living organisms: mini-ecosystems in which people, processes, structures and information work together. When optimised and fit-for-purpose, buildings provide healthy, comfortable places for people to live or work. To create optimised and efficient buildings, facilities managers need to adopt a holistic approach to building management.
Increasingly, computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) systems are providing tools that simplify tasks, optimise workflows and ensure building and user information is available as a single-source-of-truth. As a subsection of these systems, computerised maintenance management systems (CMMS) software, such as PlanRadar, are optimising maintenance tasks. By automating many elements of auditing, reporting and planning, CMMS software simplifies routine and repetitive tasks. That frees facilities managers to work on projects that add value to the building and its users.
Facility Management – Challenge and Responsibility
Facility management software deals with huge amounts of data, bringing disparate and siloed sources together to create a single-source-of-truth. Data is held in a central point and users access it according to their privileges, adding to the information and making changes as needed. This builds full audit trails. By providing a single, regulated database, facility management software enables the optimisation of resources like manpower, time and money, leading the way to energy-efficient buildings.
CMMS software is specialised for use in the maintenance of buildings, so it can deal with complicated technical structures. Specialist engineers often need to provide preventative maintenance for systems that involve electrical and mechanical components and computer-controlled installations, such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, freight elevators or complex computer servers. ‘Specialist’ often means ‘third party’. That means that it’s important to choose facility management software that allows third-party contractors to access data, complete checklists and locate tools, manuals and resources that relate to the technical structure.
Preventative maintenance and regular audits are important tools to ensure that building users are safe. They also highlight equipment most at risk from breakdowns. By addressing emerging issues, facilities managers can avoid breakdowns and the delays and costly repairs that go with them.
Sometimes, breakdowns are unavoidable. When they do happen, facility management software provides the tools, processes, structure and information for fast and effective repairs.
Facility Manager Software – your tool for preventative maintenance and repairs
PlanRadar is a facility management app, available through most smartphones and available online. The tool provides complete CMMS software for audit, preventative maintenance and repairs.
Complete checks on your smartphone
PlanRadar contains predefined templates for health, safety and fire inspections. You can customise these to your exact requirements, whether that’s based on your property or your company’s preferred style. You can also create preventative maintenance checklists for all technical equipment. Once users agree on the templates, the assessor can access it on their smartphone for easy and quick completion. Facilities managers receive push notifications when checklists are complete and when an inspector flags remedial actions or concerns. Preventative maintenance and efficiency audits are one part of moving towards sustainable buildings.
Easy ticketing
Whether a fault is identified during an audit or found by a member of staff during their day-to-day work, facilities managers need to know quickly. PlanRadar’s ticketing system allows any approved user to access the facility management app and create a ticket from their smartphone. Upload digital blueprints before submitting tickets, pinning them to their exact location on the plan for easy identification. Users can also attach images, voice and audio notes and any relevant documentation to supplement the ticket. This extra information enables managers to fix breakdowns and faults as soon as possible. Supervisors receive notifications for tickets and can assign contractors, even third-party specialists, to resolve the issue. They can also add deadlines and additional information. You can include all tickets in real-time reports. Once you complete a ticket it’s stored as part of the audit trail.
PlanRadar software saves documents and automates the chronological documentation of your facility management and maintenance tasks for complete evidence security.
PlanRadar – built for facilities managers
Property maintenance software solutions, like PlanRadar, help facilities managers to maintain and optimise their building portfolios in the safest, most effective and efficient way. As facilities managers try to achieve tough targets and manage wider portfolios, they find resources stretched and time pressures increasing. Facilities managers can’t be in each building every day so they need a quick and reliable method of understanding each property’s status. By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, PlanRadar enables facilities managers to focus on the bigger picture. That means they have more time for setting strategies and getting more value from the assets they manage.
Try PlanRadar’s facility manager software for free today with our 30-day free trial or contact us now for more information.
