3 Ways Facilities Can Leverage Technology To Mitigate Risk

Reducing risk for your facility is one of the most important jobs of a Facility Manager. Not only does this create a safe environment for your employees, but this also significantly reduces costs – specifically costs that are not in your budget. Technology can be a game changer for Facility Managers looking to reduce their risk, specifically when it comes to security, access control, and auditing.

Security
Keeping your information secure from the outside world is not an easy feat. Facilities have a lot of information to keep secure (facility drawings, purchase order, internal documents, etc.) and this information can be used for malicious intent. Unfortunately, with nearly 60% of corporations experiencing some type of data theft by means of physical documents, it isn’t as simple as keeping everything locked up in a file cabinet (the good old days are behind us). Choosing the right tools with the right security can significantly mitigate the risk of your information falling into the wrong hands.

Access Control
Your facility has a lot of moving parts and therefore a lot of staff. Any time we use the word “risk” you can bet that the word “employee” is also being used. It’s the real world and employees make mistakes, and sometimes these mistakes cost you a lot of money. Technology can help us ensure that only employees that need to access information can access that information. The last thing you need is Bob from accounting deleting all of the drawings for the third floor of your facility!

Auditing
With all the moving parts of a facility it’s almost impossible for a Facilities Manager to know who’s doing what each second of the day. Ensuring that you have an audit trail of actions allows you to know when changes are made and who is making them. When you take this approach with digital drawings you also have the big benefit of version control – meaning that not only can we see what changes are made and who made them, but we can also view previous version of a drawing!

Using technology to help us mitigate risk can make your life easy and dramatically affect the bottom line. Eliminating risky situations and unforeseen costs is essential to running an efficient facility.

Using Technology to Save Your Facility Money

In any business, it’s common to focus on where you can save time and money, and one of the easiest ways to accomplish this is by implementing the right technology for your facility and your team. Technology helps us save by saving space, allows us to work faster fit more work into our day, and by performing repetitive tasks.

Saving Space and Time

Paper drawings worked great in the past, but now that we live in a world where every inch and ever second cost money we need to ask ourselves if this is really still the best way to operate. How much space do you need to store your drawings? How long does it take to go through those drawings to find what you need? How many drawings have you never even looked at, but you are constantly digging past them to find what you’re looking for? By eliminating paper drawings we can save valuable space, but also make our employees much more efficient. Physically going to where the paper drawings are stored and then digging through rolls of drawings to find what you need takes time. Our product, FASTTAC, allows you to take all of your drawings with you on your computer and iPad and allows you to instantly pull up the drawings you need. This, combined with other features, can save your team member’s up to 25% of the time every day – that’s 2 hours an employee!

Work Smarter, Not Harder

By having the information we need, where we need it, when we need it, we can achieve our tasks faster and more efficient than ever before. In the example above we referenced that FASTTAC’s total feature set can save us up to 25% of the time. How? Imagine that your facilities workers need to perform work on a certain section of a building. Not only can they instantly access their drawings on their iPad, but they can also move from floor to floor (same spot, same zoom technology) and make markups and notes on the drawing as they perform the work. Saving time and improving how we work makes us smarter – meaning we can get more work done in the same work day!

Repetitive Tasks

How many processes, calculations, or tasks do you or someone on your team perform each day,every week, or month after month? By automating as much as possible we can save ourselves the time and also increase our accuracy. No this doesn’t mean we need robot’s moving around the facility to perform repairs – something as simple as automated reports can save us a lot of headaches! A good best practice is to write down all of the things you have to do on a reoccurring basis, and once you have that list you can start researching to see if there are tools or software that can help you accomplish those tasks quicker and better!

Technology is not the enemy, it’s can make our lives easier and save us significant resources. Finding the right tools for your facility is as easy as a simple Google search!

Achieving Facilities Management Efficiency: Expecting Standardization

Efficiency is a popular term to throw around because it typically means saving time and energy. Simply put: Efficiency = Profit. The interesting thing about efficiency is that it has a specific definition when used for technology. By itself efficiency is defined as the state or quality of being efficient, but when you talk about efficiency in technology it is defined as the ratio of the useful work in a process to the total energy used for that process. Basically efficiency means that we want to do something better, faster, and sometimes even cheaper.

When we discuss efficiency for managing facilities there are two key components: processes and information. To achieve efficiency we need to have a repeatable process for each task, and each task that we do requires having accurate information available. Implementing these repeatable process is called standardization. Standardization can help maximize interoperability, safety, repeatability, and quality. Being consistent with our actions and handling situations in a consistent manner paves the way for simplicity and efficiency.

So what do we mean when we say “expecting standardization”? We mean that in order to achieve the efficiency goals of managing your facility (ex. save time and energy), we need to standardize how we manage tasks and the staff should be expected to execute these tasks in a consistent way. Now keep in mind this isn’t just the processes we have, doing a task the same way every time doesn’t achieve our goal. We need to standardize the information available for this task and how we use that information. Your facility is a very complex structure that has seemingly endless amount of information available. Training your employees to find and consume this information in a standard way allows them to execute the processes that you’ve put in place – achieving maximum efficiency every step of the way! Having the expectation of a standardized process and information for daily tasks eliminates unnecessary preparation time, making us more efficient.

In the end our formula isn’t Efficiency = Profit, it’s Standardization = Efficiency = Profit.

The Transformation of the Facilities Manager

A few decades ago the profile of a successful Facilities Manager typically was someone that was a technical expert who grew to be a higher ranking manager. The demands’ of facilities today has dramatically changed this profile, now commonly requiring a college degree and years of management experience. By no means are we suggesting that Facilities Managers are no longer technical people, but there is much more of a stress on a managers ability to handle business decisions and to delegate the technical work to skilled employees. What caused this progression? Why do facilities managers need to be more advanced as a manager and (relatively) less technical?

The availability of technical information through skilled workers, technology, and communication allows the modern day Facility Manager to dedicate more effort and time to critical business decisions and deliver higher quality results than ever before. Technical schools are training future-employees to be subject matter experts to be able to handle the complexities that are involved in facilities today. Technology allows us to access a wealth of knowledge faster and more efficient than ever before. Information that use to take hours to sort through is now instantly organized and available on portable devices. Communicating our work and our changes in a facility has always been key to successful facilities management, but in the past we’ve been limited by paper and pencil and paper documents. Keeping managers and staff always up to date not only allows a Facilities Manager to manage better, it makes the entire team more efficient and accurate.

Facilities Management is now far from a one-man show and the focus has shifted to management. How we handle information and resources is what matters, and a good Facilities Manager will absorb the information, process it, put together a plan, and then execute that plan.

5 Habits of Successful Facility Managers

Being a Facility Manager isn’t an easy task. You’re responsible for multiple tasks a day and ultimately you’re the person who ensures that the facility can operate as expected. It’s a job that other employees don’t notice when it’s done right, but if there is a problem with the facility you are the first person they look at.

So what does a Facility Manager need to do to keep things running smoothly? We’ve broken it down into 5 habits that are common in successful Facility Mangers:

1. Know your Building
Your building is a complex environment with many different systems. HVAC, electrical, security systems, etc. Understanding what is in your building and how it works is key to being effective and makes you more efficient in the time of need.

2. Review your Drawings
We don’t mean just know where they are and look at them when you need them. Knowing the original drawings as well as any changes is key to success. Your drawings should always be up to date and easy to access on the job. Knowing these documents like the back of your hand will make you a rock star in the time of need.

3. Knowledgeable and Effective Staff
Most Facility Managers also manage people, and this is often way more complex than managing your facility. You need to make sure you have knowledgeable and reliable employees as well as the right tools to empower them to be successful. You can have the best employees on the planet, but if they can’t access drawings or see the latest updates, you’re going to have problems.

4. Understand Your Service Contracts
Effective dates is key. When do your contracts start and when do they end? Understanding when your service contracts are in effect and what they cover will save you time and money.

5. Be Visible
Remember how we said no one is looking for you until something goes wrong? Be visible. Be available. This will help people understand how complex your day actually is, and who knows, maybe you’ll make a few new friends!

That’s our top 5. We know there are a lot of other traits that can help you be a rock-star Facility Manager, but these ones are the foundation for success!

Measuring Results with Your Project Documents

As the days of handling projects with fine old brainpower and foolscaps transformed into days of shoeboxes and spreadsheets, people began to realize that spreadsheets could, in fact, present them with an improved way of carrying out projects. Nowadays we are going through a comparable transition from shoeboxes and spreadsheets to even superior ways of undertaking projects with dedicated, specialized project documentation software. Nevertheless, human nature indicates that we are quite resistant to change, and this is entirely comprehensible with a decision to spend in construction management software, since it is often a significant investment.

Having said that, project documentation software is totally different to what was available back in the day as it can be easily customized to suit your particular industry or business. If you’re still unsure whether to dive right in and steer clear of spreadsheets, here are four benefits of project documentation software which you could be losing if you don’t:

A Central Database

With project documentation software, you have a core repository for all your project data, rather than spreadsheets spread over different workers’ local hard disks. Two, you can gain access to the central repository from anyplace with an internet access, meaning if you’ve offices in different places, or workers wanting to access files from the site, they’re able to all access the same data. In addition, a central database means your employees work more efficiently as each one has accessibility to most drawing management data. Also, project documentation software commonly provides communication tools which can help teams in discussing challenges in real-time.  The advantage is that each member is usually kept updated, quickly addressing issues as they occur.

Greater Document Control

With a central repository comes better control over all of your project documents. They’re easily retrievable in case of a claim or dispute and are never misplaced or lost. There is also greater personal accountability as each and every user has an account (login), and you may then quickly monitor who created, approved or modified certain documents.

Seamless Integration

Construction document management software allows you integrate all project information with your own accounting system. What this means is there is no wasted time reproducing data from your project crew to the accounting unit.

Standardized Processes

With construction document management software, all your procedures become consistent across the company. Everyone enters similarly required data when generating new documents, and all the reports for every single document feels and looks the same and provides the same information. That time when different employees created different document templates is long gone, and this offers your firm and project team better unity and consistency if they’re all operating from the same data/info presented in a similar manner.

Before investing in project documentation software, it is crucial to assess the requirements of your organization.  Knowing precisely which features will be required will help to simplify the decision-making process.  Properly creating a list of characteristics and functions in terms of required and optional will assist you in deciding which software most closely fits the needs of the firm.

Remove communication problems, eliminate costly mistakes and always keep your entire team up-to-date on your project by using the construction documentation software from FASTTAC. Whether you’re in the field or in the office, our easy-to-use project management software keeps everyone on the same page on the project’s progress. Stop working with old drawings and poor project management and start taking control of your construction site with help from FASTTAC.

3 Ways Effective Facilities Management Software Can Build Your Bottom Line

Effective facilities management solutions for your business may be a way to not only cut costs but improve your company’s bottom line. Such solutions are used worldwide and provide companies with a way to better organize, schedule and manage maintenance tasks. Whether these solutions are local or cloud-based, facility management tools available to you represent a departure from the old way of meeting your ongoing maintenance needs.

Here are at least three ways that affect facilities management software can be a financial boon for your company. These include the cost savings derived from the use of work order management software, how facilities management solutions increase efficiency and reduce redundancies, and, how the use of facility management tools can lead to more productive employees.

  1. Cost Savings with Effective Facilities Management Software

In a 2014 Facility Management trend report published by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), a take away from a prior year’s conference was the promotion of those programs and activities that drive productivity and efficiency. Where most facility management professionals understand those specific business areas that they control in commercial spaces, such as the reduction of costs through energy auditing, the IFMA concluded that greater influence can be exerted over all aspects of the management of a facility. The use of available technologies, such as work order management software, can help you move beyond the implementation of myopic costs reduction strategies and toward more substantial cost savings techniques.

The bottom line for you comes by ways in which facilities management software provides measurable savings. Automated solutions contribute to increasing revenue, a decrease in costs associated with the management of properties, plants, and equipment (PPE), a decrease in the insurance costs needed to cover risks by coordinating monitoring activities and reducing safety breaches, and helping improve your shareholder’s values and stock price.

  1. Increase Efficiency

The use of facility management tools can allow you to be more efficient in the management of your facilities. Whether work is performed in a one or multiple facilities, a centralized software solution is your key in scheduling necessary maintenance work remotely, saving the time and cost associated with traveling between locations. This means your company’s facilities management team can be more efficient in performing their duties and contribute to your overall costs savings.

  1. More Productivity from Your Employees

Towers Watson, a global advisory firm, found that four in 10 employees felt highly engaged while nearly a quarter felt disengaged in its 2014 Global Workforce Study. The IFMA concluded that a direct relationship exists between facility operations and the satisfaction of your employees, through such activities as sustainability initiatives and building controls. Better lighting, cleaner facilities, improved air flow and quality means employees that are sick less and on the job more.

Facilities management solutions that you employ for your business can go along way of lowering the disengagement of your employees. The Towers Watson report went on to further claim that in those companies with effective sustainable engagement processes, which may be achieved through facilities management tools, employee engagement was at nearly three quarters (72%). A look at effective facilities management solutions for your company may be what is necessary for improvements in efficiency, productivity, and your bottom line.

Improve your facility management and discover all the ways it can build your bottom line with help from FASTTAC. Our cutting-edge facility management software provides tech level collaboration within your company to help keep everyone organized and efficient. Stop wasting time on the worksite and request your live demo of the facility management software from FASTTAC today!

7 Steps to Successful Facilities Management

Overseeing the maintenance and management of a facility or production operation can be a challenging task, as you would expect. The arrival of computerized facilities management software has transformed the face of facilities management and enhanced the overall performance of maintenance departments both small and large. With the help of the right software, facility managers can fulfill the potential of their operations.

  1. Manage Spare Parts Inventory

When a maintenance unit is unorganized, it can be hard for maintenance supervisors to locate the parts needed. A CMMS system makes it possible for maintenance administrators to keep track of assets that ought to be taken care of and setup the automatic re-ordering of parts, to make sure they have the appropriate spare parts available and can conduct repairs easily. A CMMS also informs you precisely where the parts needed are stored, which means you don’t squander any time browsing through storerooms.

  1. Eliminate Paperwork

Using software for routine maintenance and facilities administration removes the need for clipboards and paperwork since the software can be setup to record information automatically. In addition, maintenance staff can see all information linked to work orders/tasks on their mobile devices or computers. Therefore, maintenance experts don’t need to search through filing cabinets and folders to obtain the information needed.

  1. Enhance Productivity

Maintenance software may be hooked to mobile gadgets making it possible for maintenance technicians to gain access to real-time data, check inventory, and kick-off work orders without going back to the workplace. This cuts down their journey time. Facilities management software also offers maintenance technicians with information about the processes, tools and parts necessary to accomplish a job; hence they can work without interruption or delay.

  1. Reduce Repair Costs and Downtime

Downtime is expensive with regards to both revenue loss and damage to a firm’s reputation and brand. When you concentrate on planned, precautionary maintenance, equipment down time is lessened. Due to the fact a facility management system allows you to routinely maintain assets and structures, they’re less vulnerable to breaking down, meaning that maintenance costs are also decreased.

  1. Ensure Conformity with Regulation Standards

Maintenance and facilities administration systems must frequently abide by national and global regulatory requirements. All maintenance administrators face occasional random or audits inspections by regulatory authorities. Maintenance software enables you to prove regulatory conformity and decrease the amount of paperwork and preparation that is needed for an audit. Maintenance administrators can simply create reports showing the maintenance work done on essential machinery. This makes conformity traceable and minimizes the risk of non-compliance penalties.

  1. Increase Safety                                                                                                    

Computerized facilities management software helps businesses in regularly maintaining and checking equipment and achieving safety standards to avoid critical malfunction and failures. This reduces the loss of work-time because of mishaps and makes your tools safer both for workers and for the environment.

  1. Reduce Overtime

Computerized facilities management software can trim overtime considerably by decreasing the need for emergency repairs and maintenance. By scheduling maintenance, repair staff can work more effectively and efficiently. The cost benefits that companies gain with the implementation of facilities software can be astonishing, but it’s crucial to pick a CMMS with the appropriate functionality by working with the right company to enhance your ROI (return on investment).

A seasoned vendor can give you the support you want today as your facility operation evolves. At FASTTAC, we have a long background of helping facilities managers accomplish their goals. To figure out more about our services and products, please call us today to schedule your live demo and discover how FASTTAC can keep everyone on the same page.

Tips for Better Blueprint Management

Are you looking for a better way, through either blueprint software or a blueprint app, to manage your blueprints? As an architect or engineer, you understand the importance of your blueprints to the success of your building project. Having access to architectural project management software can help you better manage your blueprints and gain greater control over your building projects.

Proper blueprint management helps improve efficiencies on-site and reduce costs. Access to blueprint software by your contractors means less time spent either communicating with you on the phone (or online) for important requirements and changes and keeps a project moving forward. Whether the blueprints you as an architect or engineer use are for a new building construction, tenant improvement project or other related activity, you should understand how vital blueprint management software is to you and the steps you should take to make it a part of your business solutions.

The Importance of Managing Your Blueprints

New construction, renovations, tenant improvements and other building activities require the creation and filing ofblueprints. Construction project documents are necessary to meet filing requirements for any federal, state or local building projects of all size and scope. The maintenance of your blueprints may also be required for legal claims or defenses that may arise. It is best to know how to best share your documents with those requiring access for easy access and utilization.

How Blueprint Management Software Can Help

An example of how important it is to manage your blueprints can be found in tenant improvement activities. Your contractors are delivered the blueprints related to the build-out, however, need access to the legacy plans in order todocument changes and make important notations for the facility manager, maintenance workers and emergency responders such as fire and police. Such changes can be seamlessly documented through the use of an effective IT solution that integrates the old with the new, providing your team with the important change information needed to function.

Making a Plan to Manage Your Blueprints

Blueprint software takes advantage of the technology available today in order to make your like easier. This includes provisions for storage, communication, collaboration and sharing. The advent of mobile-based apps takes the ability to create a central repository of your required blueprints and other construction related documents. This makes collaboration easy among the various stakeholders requiring access, all at the tip of their fingertips. Whether the solution for the management of your blueprints is cloud-based or maintained on your servers, providing access to these documents lessens the amount of time needed to hand courier them from location to location.

Taking the necessary steps to employ a blueprint software solution for you is as easy as making the decision to do so. You simply need to take the affirmative steps to investigate the solutions available to you and how they fit your business needs. Create a checklist of the requirements you need in blueprint software, including the requirements of your stakeholders who will access these critical documents. Take action to put in place the solution that allows you to better manage your blueprints.

Don’t let poor documentation management derail your project, change the way you access and store all your important paperwork, blueprints and markups with FASTTAC. Our construction documentation software makes access to critical construction documentation easier and faster than ever before. No matter if you’re on site, in the office or across the country, FASTTAC’s software keeps you on top of all your documentation changes and markups.

3 Project Management Solution to Boost Your Site’s Productivity

As a project manager or contractor, your profitability is directly tied to your productivity. According to McKinsey & Company, a research and business management consulting firm, the investment value in infrastructure projects worldwide will more than double from $6 trillion in 2012 to $13 trillion by the year 2030. The use of project coordination software, construction apps, and project document management software are just some of the tools that can aid your efforts to improve your bottom line.

There are at least three project management solutions to consider that will have a discernible impact on your site’s productivity. These solutions include tools designed to improve the planning, management, and organization of your projects, mobile-based apps and project document management software to manage the essential paperwork associated with your project.

Construction Project Coordination Software

Industry specific project management software is indispensable in the coordination of the elements related to the successful completion of your construction project. One important benefit of project coordination software is the streamlining of standardization of the processes related to construction. This allows others to quickly assess progress, move required processes and keep a client abreast of the work being done to complete the project on time and on or near budget.

Mobile-based Construction Apps

With more than half of Americans relying on a smartphone or tablet, according to a recent Pew Research Internet Project report, it is reasonable to assume that more and more construction sites also rely on mobile technology in order to complete required documents or management essential elements of the construction process. Mobile-based construction apps, therefore, are an important complement to the use of mobile technology for the management of your site project. Construction apps allow you, your supervisors and other site workers to effectively communicate with each other, provide real-time updates and status reports and cut down on the amount of time needed to transfer paper-based data into an electronic form in order to complete required documents.

Software for Project Document Management

The management of all of your construction related documents is easily accomplished through the use of project document management software. Project document management software allows you to upload the specifics of your project, link and index required documents and extract the required data from these documents to file oversight reports, manage timelines and determine productivity. This software, coupled with mobile construction apps and coordination software, gives you all of the tools you need to properly document, manage and complete your construction project.

Keep your entire team on the same page whether they are on or off the construction site with help from FASTTAC. Our construction collaboration software provides construction companies with tech level communication for improved productivity, management and workflow across the board. If you are looking for a way to improve your workflow, remove communication problems and lower your overall costs, contact FASTTAC today to schedule your live demo of our construction project collaboration software.