No two days are ever the same in busy and modern facilities, and all experienced facility managers know that. It’s not uncommon for facility managers (FM) to have their hands full day in and day out to keep all processes and systems running smoothly. However, all facility managers need to identify some common facility maintenance challenges in office buildings, hospitals, convention centers, and universities.Â
By identifying these facility maintenance challenges, FMs can resolve the issues before it becomes more pressing. On that note, we’ll highlight some of the common maintenance challenges that many facilities managers face today.Â
Containing Facility Maintenance Costs
Controlling the costs of facility maintenance is a common source of concern for FMs. Maintenance teams are responsible for keeping their facilities running smoothly and efficiently even with limited resources and budgets. And this means that they sometimes have to do more with less. To ensure high-quality services, maintenance workers need to work together and control their buildings’ overall operational costs.
Here are some minor changes that maintenance teams can implement into their operations:
Budget planning
It is essential to track maintenance costs and financial information to identify abnormal spending before it escalates. Using a computerized maintenance management system or facility management software can help a great deal in this area. You should plan all potential costs, both fixed and variable, and always maintain a buffer for emergency expenses.Â
Managing inventories
Improper management of inventories can scale up your costs and bring in more unnecessary problems for your organization. It is unfortunate that many facility managers still use manual or paper-based inventory management systems, which are inefficient and prone to errors. With facility management software with inventory management capabilities, FMs can control inventory costs more efficiently. Additionally, it helps generate work orders, monitor inventory and pricing, and provide an overview of all associated vendors.Â
Managing Energy
It is a well-known fact that most of the significant monthly expenses for a facility are energy costs. In contrast, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that 30% of the buildings’ energy usage is useless. You can address this problem by using more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly options like LED lighting or natural lights.
Substandard Data Management and Insights
Facility maintenance is an important task. A few days is enough for facility managers in a large facility to get drenched in paperwork if they do not use any dynamic tools for managing data and systems. Besides, inadequate and inefficient data management implies that the organization can’t leverage the insight that its data offers.Â
To solve this problem, FMs will need to capture accurate and reliable maintenance data then store it in a centralized database like CMMS.Â
Managing Equipment Failures
Equipment failure is undesirable and can pose a lot of problems in facility maintenance. It remains an inevitable issue in all the industries you can imagine. Equipment failure can result in catastrophic hazards and environmental accidents to loss of productivity, especially, if it’s aging equipment.Â
That said, equipment failures can be minimized with proactive maintenance approaches. For example, practicing preventive maintenance or planned maintenance rather than performing maintenance when equipment breaks down.Â
Simplifying Facility MaintenanceÂ
Even seemingly small changes in certain areas can significantly impact overall costs and productivity – progressive managers leverage technology to simplify their maintenance activities. Modern tools like facility management software and computerized maintenance management system are currently the best tools in the market to empower your maintenance teams and overcoming many facility maintenance challenges.Â
