Any experienced facility manager knows that there are many challenges of facility management that must be faced to keep the business operations running smoothly. They constantly look for ways to identify these challenges and determine the most efficient and effective ways to neutralize them.
Challenges of facility management
Keeping that in mind, we’ve come up with a list of the top challenges of facility management that the typical manager will face, and ways to resolve them:
Constant damage control
As a facility manager, you will always have to be at the top of your game. Without a good preventive maintenance plan in place, you can expect to face an uncountable number of damage control activities throughout the day. You will constantly receive urgent calls where you must figure out where to go and how to prioritize your tasks at hand.
Taking care of shutdowns efficiently
Equipment will shut down, and it is imperative for good facility/maintenance management to efficiently repair it ASAP, as downtime is extremely concerning to clients. They simply cannot afford to have their productivity compromised because of broken equipment, which piles the pressure on you as a facility manager!
Understaffed and overworked facility team
Without a facility management software that can track how busy the facility team schedule is, other departments expect their tickets to take priority. I can’t stress enough how much this frustrates the facility team when they are understaffed and overworked. Even the most well-maintained facilities deal with unplanned breakdowns which may cause a complete shift in schedule.
Expectation Vs. Reality
We have mentioned before that the facility team is always understaffed and overworked, so a facility manager is constantly budgeting the team’s time and cost. You will regularly be asked to provide support to more clients, and while you want to provide the highest quality of service it is also important to have the overall best interest of the client in mind, and sometimes that means saying no to a request. In cases like these, you should always provide explanations of why you chose to go a particular direction; this will give clients the confidence you have their best interests in mind.
Recurring maintenance and setup
It’s not uncommon to find that the previous contractors didn’t follow the exact maintenance procedure, or that they fixed an issue with a temporary solution by changing the designs or implementing new installations without following drawings or building infrastructure. This often causes a facility manager to have to fix the same problem again a few months down the line, which can be very frustrating and increases the risk of permanently damaging the equipment.
Choosing the correct technology
Given the endless challenges of facility management, it’s no surprise that modern facilities utilize different technologies such as cloud-based facility management solutions to gain a competitive advantage and make operations run smoothly. To accomplish this, it essential that you choose the right technology, especially because every business is unique and so are their requirements. This is something that you as a facility manager have to do as soon as possible before the lack of one starts hurting your business.
One of the best ways to tackle facility management challenges is to implement a facility management application. CloudApper offers Facilities, a powerful mobile and web-based application that ensures the streamlining of your work facility, asset, and maintenance management. Contact us today to learn more about it!
