In this article we revisit the issue of KPI’s. Without measurement and analysis, we cannot understand the impact of having a specialized Facility Management (FM) team, or the advantage of outsourcing or having it in-house. Without measuring and allowing to benchmark, we cannot analyze our limits and what benefits we can achieve.

 

An asset or infrastructure facility management needs to analyze large amounts of data under control, namely:

 

Fast access to the information and data collected

 

• Are deadlines missed because the right information cannot be identified in time?
• Are decisions made frequently without supporting information?

 

Managing and recording changes

 

• When updates are made on-site, it is crucial to ensure that the correct documentation is recorded and stored, and that you can track those changes in a central system. It is also convenient to be able to access those changes or updates on a mobile device.

 

Supplier coordination

 

Processes for assigning work orders to providers, such as using messages or email, have numerous disadvantages, such as:

 

• Very difficult and time-consuming history to compile
• Unaccounted for provider delays
• Communication deficiencies
• Lack of cost, times and volumes monitoring in a centralized system
• Lack of spaces/equipment and location technical data and availability for service provider intervention
• Lack of audit traceability
• Lack of review and approval procedure

 

Observing the compliance guidelines

 

Organizations must comply with internal procedures to manage documentation, and processes are required to ensure that data is stored correctly. Keeping up with legislative changes is also important to maintain the compliance with management systems and quality benchmarks. Inadequate record keeping is a constant concern for all FM professionals.

 

Innovation and good facilities management is crucial to make a difference from the occupying organization’s perspective, and for the profitability and assessment of real estate assets from the owner’s point of view.

 

Creating value for the future

 

It is possible to conclude that the FM has its action centered on facility management and their handling and operation to ensure the Organizations’ business activities under functional and economically rationalized conditions, which is a very important subject within business management and a strategic area within the Organizations. It wasn’t very common to hear about profitability and competitiveness when considering facility, space, and workplace management, but that is what FM is all about nowadays.

 

On the other hand, improving the efficiency of these business support processes necessarily involves increasing the visibility of incurred costs and results obtained, in order to improve stakeholder satisfaction rates. The innovation of management processes and methodologies, such as the implementation of an applicational platform for facility management and service-desk, will be a structural operational improvement, in the medium and long term, aiming at process efficiency and service improvement.

 

In the last decade, three trends have marked the role of IT in organizations. First of all, we witnessed a shift from the back office to the front office. That is, from business applications to customer-centered initiatives.

 

Then, there was a shift from software as a support to software as a strategic resource. This involved directly relating revenue to software costs, rationalizing expenses, and no longer only thinking of software as a cost, but rather as a potential source of revenue, with a major impact on business results. Subsequently, there was a shift from technology to management, focusing on performance, quality, information safety, adoption of better methodologies, extension to other areas, such as maintenance, digital marketing, automation, Industry 4.0, and time to market.

 

Software is currently used as a strategic breakthrough, because it allows to identify and offer new sources of revenue, transform the customer experience, drastically reduce costs and response times, increase efficiency and the ability to generate business.

 

Energy rehabilitation and sustainability

 

The building, infrastructure or industrial facility owner or manager should assume as their primary goal, the optimization of facility energy performance, supporting the increase in energy efficiency of solutions and equipment, especially concerning air conditioning and lighting.

 

In detriment of the initial cost, we should prioritize the life cycle cost analysis. I remind you that this analysis is nothing more than a tool to determine the lowest cost solution, among the different alternatives, when considering all phases of the life cycle, from acquisition, installation, operation, maintenance and, finally, the recycling or disposal of an equipment or process. This analysis can help refute options based only on the intervention’s lowest initial cost and contribute to improving efficiency.

 

I am aware that there are obstacles to implementing this type of analysis, but the approach could focus more on evaluating your current performance, highlighting the savings achieved, while enhancing the public image in the energy/environmental areas when the efficiency gains occur.

 

Maintenance and operation are obviously very important to optimize the actual energy performance of a facility, and it is worth mentioning that the contracting of service providers could include clauses that reward efficiency gains, using a win-win situation logic.

 

Nowadays, we conclude that there are no intelligent buildings. There is intelligent building management, and in order to do this intelligent management, a set of technologies and tools that allow to continuous monitoring the building in real-time are required. In this regard, “sensing” and the Internet of Things (IOT) play an essential role.

 

The technology allows to control and monitor the energy consumption of all systems installed in the building, in real-time, while helping understand their energy consumption profiles, and significantly reducing their operating costs. It allows to receive information from the equipment, from sensors to actuators, network analyzers, all types of sensors (movement, temperature, humidity, among others), and to interact with all the controlled devices.

 

Finally, I wish to leave a message of the utmost importance for the change of behavior in reducing the consumption and using clean and renewable energies, aiming at economic and environmental sustainability.

 

Source: Pedro Ló, W. Space Facility Management – Valuekeep Business Partner