Recession & Facility Managers

What does top management expect from Facility Managers during recession?

If this recession goes on like this the senior management will want facility managers to cut costs and add value simultaneously.

The trick to doing that is to focus on corporate outcomes, not on faciltiy operations outcomes. Facility Managers have to have business acumen, they have to understand the financials, and have to know how to manage relationships internally.

Some examples on: How add value while cutting costs?

• Facility Managers have to optimize to the fullest when it comes to space. Getting rid of unnecessary space is the fastest way to cut facility-operational costs. But cutting down too much space could leave the corporation ill-positioned when the economy rebounds. A lot of corporates are concerned that they’re going to cut too much. There has to be some flex in how you manage your property portfolio.

In past downturns, corporate facilities were managed to balance “value creation” strategies to improve operational efficiency with “value protection” measures to cut costs. Greater use of alternative work strategies such as hotelling or telecommuting helped to maintain this balance because they achieved both goals.

• Corporates continue to emphasize measures to reduce their environmental impact, but Facility Managers are more sensitive to costs than, say, a couple of years ago. The idea of paying a green premium is harder to sell; so is the cost to get LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standard certified, though LEED remains the touchstone for green building initiatives. Instead, there’s a new focus on energy efficiency.

• In the 1991-92 “depression,” as the Urban Land Institute called that downturn, one telecom took the opportunity to buy property at 50 cents on the dollar. The same thing may happen in this recession period too, with corporates willing to own a higher percentage of their space than in the past, when the industry average was about 60 percent leased space.

Hope this info is useful....I look forward to give you more related information....

Happy Facilities Management

FacilitiesDesk - Overview

FacilitiesDesk - iPhone & BlackBerry

Value and benefit of PDA or Handheld device integration offered in FacilitiesDesk 5.7

In general Facilities Management is a dynamic department in any concern. Let us assume a daily scenario in a company with big infrastrucutre facility.

Where, a Facility Management staff have to be physically present in the place of issue to fix it. Which means the Facility Services Staff is always on the move as and when a work request in raised.This is where integration with mobile client or a handheld device like Blackberry or an iPhone comes in handy.

In FacilitiesDesk the PDA integration function brings the following benefits for a Facilities Management Staff:

Requests raised through phone calls can now be instantly created from your hand-held device on entering details such as, requester name, request title and description.

• View Request Details then and there
• Assign requests to Supervisors instantly
• Spontaneously add Resolution to a request
• View/Edit Resolutions for a request
• Add Worklog for a request
• Add the time spent details for a request from your mobile device
• Add Craft person Worklog
• Add the time spend details of the craft person too from your hand held device

FacilitiesDesk - CMMS CAFM Software

FacilitiesDesk is a computer aided facilities and maintenance management software. It facilitates in managing and maintaining the property, space, people and asset of an organization effectively. This facilities and maintenance management application provides all that you need to have for integrated workplace management and general service administration. This CMMS tool offers seamless maintenance and workorder management, real-time data sharing of all the maintenance & facilities' activities and reduction in facilities cost run.

BrotherSoft has a nice review about FacilitiesDesk CMMS/CAFM software.

http://www.brothersoft.com/blog/2008/11/03/facilitiesdesk-all-in-one-is-possible/

You can also play with FacilitiesDesk software available at http://demo.facilitiesdesk.com

To find more information about FacilitiesDesk CMMS/CAFM software

http://www.facilitiesdesk.com

CMMS Selection Checklist

Checklist for selecting a CMMS tool

1. CMMS Tool to maintain

• Building or Space
• Equipment/Spares/Components
• Fleet

2. Required Modules

1. Work Order Management
2. Work Request Management
3. Asset Management
4. Purchase Management
5. Contract Management
6. Reports

3. Required Options in Work Order Module

1. Severity & Priority Options
2. Impact and Impact details
3. Parts/Components usage logging
4. Time spent logging

4. Required Options in Work Request Module

1. Easy Work Request for all employees
2. Options to submit Work Request(Email, Phone, Web etc)
3. Authorisation levels for approving the Work Request

5. Software Requirements

1. Web Enabled for remote access
2. PDA solution for mobility

CMMS Search - 1

Selecting a CMMS from the ocean of CMMS tools is a herculean task. Finding reviews about CMMS tools on the net is next to impossible

Getting CMMS Product Download and Demo's is quite difficult. Once you get hold of a evaluation version, with the limited time available what things to try on the CMMS Product. In this post we will look into the basic modules in any CMMS Solution

Look for the basic modules in any CMMS Solution

1. Work Order Management (CMMS tool should handle both Preventive and Breakdown work requests)
2. Asset Management

3. Purchase Management

4. Contract Management

5. Reports

Why do you need a Facility Management tool?

Optimizing facility management can save your organization a considerable percentage of its maintenance charge.
Breakdown of resources can take a toll in your revenue through loss in productivity.
Costly downtimes can be reduced if a proper facility management system is in place.