5 Traits of Successful Facility Managers

Taking on the responsibility of building facility management is a highly demanding, and also highly rewarding position. It is a role that requires you to have industry insight, mechanical expertise and business acumen – but there’s more. Developing or building upon the five skills below, will help you improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your daily operations.

1. Superior Communication Skills

While it is fair to say that superior communication skills are required in any management position, the ability to provide clear, specific and timely communication is a must for all building facility management professionals. In fact, poor communication can result in costly mistakes and a multitude of safety and security concerns.

2. Technologically Savvy

While all facility managers must have the mechanical knowledge required to effectively manage their school, hospital or building, they must also be technologically savvy from an electronics standpoint. Not only are more and more facility management solutions electronically automated, but understanding the crucial role facilities management software plays in your success is essential. Facilities management software will help you to identify areas of opportunity, to stay organized and can even be customized for your specific needs.

3. Both Proactive and Action Oriented

To be successful in building facility management, you must be both proactive and action oriented. Proactive enough that you are able to troubleshoot and identify areas of opportunity above and beyond what your facilities management software suggests. Action oriented in that you must be able to quickly identify the best solutions for the inevitable emergency and unforeseen situations that might arise. This could include your response to in-house mistakes, mechanical failure, power outages, or weather related emergencies. You must also be able to reevaluate your facility management solutions on at least a quarterly basis, with the intent of evaluating compliance and searching for more effective solutions.

4. Motivational

Whether your team is large or small, working in building facility management requires you to learn how to motivate your team to get their job done. There are many ways to motivate your team, a few of which include: recognizing a job well-done, communication clearly, ensuring your team has what they need to succeed, and providing the appropriate ongoing and recurrent training.

5. Fiscally Responsible

If all that’s not enough, you must also have the business acumen required to be fiscally responsible. This means that you must be able to accurately project your spending, to stay on budget, and to renegotiate vendor contracts in a matter that help you meet or beat budget for the line items you are responsible for. This means you must also invest time in exploring new short-term and long-term cost-saving solutions.

Building facility management is the ideal position for anyone with the traits above, who also enjoys a job that will present them with a multitude of daily challenges. While challenges will always arise, successfully managing each challenge—and implementing the changes required to reduce the likelihood of the same challenge in the future is highly rewarding.

Make sure your building’s facilities management is prepared to handle the present and the future with help from FASTTAC. Our facilities management software solutions keep all of your documents where you need them, allowing you to easily store and save all of your building’s information to keep your team on the same page. Discover what how the facility management solutions from FASTTAC can help you build your business and request your demo today!