Encompass Insights

A common need across organizations and industries is to improve consistency in facility appearance and quality and drive down expenses, thereby doing more with less.

One of the best ways organizations can reduce operational expenses while driving organizational and operational efficiency is to invest in new facility equipment. 

This may seem counterintuitive, but new equipment can provide savings in several ways. 

Facility maintenance is a tough job. The ideal facility maintenance manager has to be a mixture of a number of different roles in order to run a facility smoothly and effectively.

So how do you spot a good facility maintenance manager? Here are some attributes of ideal managers so you know what to look for. 

These days, data is more ubiquitous and accessible than ever before. So are you using it to make informed business decisions when it comes to facility maintenance?

It’s time to start using the technology available to us and leveraging the information that’s at our fingertips to create value, reduce maintenance costs, and increase reliability.

If you haven’t looked into incorporating a lean facility maintenance initiative at your organization, now may be the time. But what is the principle of “lean” and how can it apply to facility maintenance?

Let’s take a look at the what, how and why of lean and why your facility maintenance contractor should be incorporating it.

If you’re hiring someone to manage your facilities, it’s incredibly important that they have and adhere to a formal facility maintenance plan.

Why is this so important?

Well, according to the Whole Building Design Guide Program (WBDG) of the National Institute of Building Sciences, “it is now widely recognized that Operation and Maintenance (O&M) represents the greatest expense in owning and operating a facility over its life cycle.” 

Your team is an integral part of your overall facility maintenance program. After all, they’re the ones you rely on to carry out day-to-day operations and ensure everything is up to snuff.

So how do you build a reliable team of facility maintenance supervisors? Here are some tactics we’ve found effective.

We spend a lot of time indoors, which means indoor air quality is paramount. So how do we recognize and eliminate pollution sources and create a facility maintenance indoor air policy?

Here are some ways to move from foul air to fresh air.

Have you ever hired an outsourced vendor based on a great proposal only to be slammed with additional costs and projects past due?

The problem could be your request for proposal (RFP).

It takes a lot of time and resources to find a vendor that’s a great fit for your organization. In order to get started on the right foot, you need to spend some quality time making sure your RFP covers all necessary bases. This way, the vendors you send it to will be crystal clear about what you expect from them, thereby building a foundation of transparency and clarity from the get go. 

We all dread them: crises. They pop up at the most inopportune moments, cause stress to your employees and impact your organization’s bottom line. 

Here are some unfortunate crises that have affected facilities recently as well as how you can prepare and protect your own facility.

Facilities maintenance typically has a big budget, which means finding savings can mean dedicating meaningful resources to other important projects. Whether you need to allocate precious resources elsewhere, or are under pressure to reduce costs, where can you find those savings?

Here are five ways to reduce your facility maintenance expenses and save vital budgetary resources.