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How can a key educational provider manage and maintain its facilities across its campus? Idox’s CAFM Explorer® provides the solution!
Maintaining a campus with multiple buildings facilities can be quite a challenge for educational institutions, especially when students, staff, and guests are present around the clock. With plant equipment and building maintenance jobs consistently arising, Idox’s CAFM Explorer® can make the job easier—just ask Yeovil College!
Yeovil College provides education and training in South Somerset and North and West Dorset, serving the community for more than 130 years. It supports around 5,000 full and part-time students across 14 buildings of different sizes and owns vehicles that require repair and maintenance from time to time for smooth running and safe functioning. To keep it organised, improve the quality of experience for students and faculty, and meet the statutory requirements for risk assessment across the campus, the college needed a reliable system in place to track, manage, plan and report facilities management (FM) activities. To improve maintenance activities, reduce operating costs, and maintain the college facilities in an optimal state, Yeovil College decided to invest in a Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) system.
The team at Yeovil College was introduced to Idox’s CAFM Explorer® at the Facilities Show in London over 7 years ago and they haven’t looked back since. According to the Technical Officer for Estates at Yeovil College, “There were many systems exhibited by different vendors, but we found CAFM Explorer® to be the correct match for our budget and requirement. The other products were either very new in the market and lacked the functionality we needed or came with too many complex features for our requirements. We wanted an easy-to-use solution that could help us transition from manual processes to a digitised FM system – which CAFM Explorer® did. The Idox team worked closely with our technical department to help set up the system within our IT infrastructure and ensure a smooth implementation.”
For Yeovil College, the biggest benefit of deploying CAFM Explorer® was being able to generate FM jobs – from tap flushing to planned maintenance – automatically. “Previously, as every task was generated manually, there were risks of data loss and backup failures. Our maintenance team wanted to be able to digitally record what jobs they were doing – whether they be servicing or related to risk assessment – in one place. With the CAFM software, all maintenance documents are now stored in an accessible, digital database instead of a pile of paper – which has improved the way we work because all the information now sits in one location,” the Technical Officer explains.
Monitoring all maintenance-related tasks within one centralised dashboard enables teams to effectively keep track of work progress and gain operational efficiency. It also streamlines operations and helps the workforce plan, manage, assign, and track jobs more effectively – thereby saving a significant amount of time. “I like the CAFM software because it is intuitive and simple to use. It helps me track my jobs as well as jobs that are assigned to my team members. The comprehensive reporting capability of the system also allows us to set, measure, and report on SLAs – which I find particularly useful,” they add.
By allowing people to log jobs under relevant categories such as breakdown, emergency repair, power outage, fault reporting, and more, CAFM Explorer® simplifies maintenance and repair processes. The Technical Officer highlights, “CAFM Explorer® has made it easier for staff to log maintenance issues that crop up across the college campus. While previously, they would have to telephone, email, or show up in the FM department to report issues, this has vastly reduced post-implementation of the CAFM system due to its online reporting capabilities. Besides, handwritten tickets were issued to Estates team staff to keep track of tasks but more often, they would lose the ticket or forget to update that the job’s been done. Using tablets has helped the staff strike-off completed tasks immediately – resulting in better work management throughout the college campus.”
On the overall experience of working with Idox, the Technical Officer says, “Anytime we’re stuck and need assistance, the help desk team at Idox is always there to guide us through. They offer immediate help whenever we need technical support; keep track of issues that we raise and aim to get them resolved as fast as possible. So overall, we’ve developed a great business relationship with Idox – the solution has transformed the way we work by allowing us to proactively monitor and manage all tasks related to maintenance, compliance, and safety across the college campus.”
As the education sector continues to advance technologically, facilities managers are challenged to keep pace with current working trends and solutions. Accessibility to work orders, maintenance requests, and resource inventory are now top priorities for facilities managers and users, especially in a hybrid working environment. The web-based software of CAFM Explorer® provides all users with the ability to access, send, and receive their requirements from their mobile devices and laptops, ensuring visibility, real-time response, and all-around efficiency.
CAFM Explorer® is more than just software, it is the essential partner for the innovative, forward-thinking facilities manager. Looking to deploy a CAFM system? Read Idox’s essential guide here.
