FOCUS CAFM
OPERATIONAL ADVANTAGE
CAFM continues to help FMs meet the challenge of COVID, while the data produced
can be harnessed for the future monitoring and wellbeing of buildings, assets and
people. The experts tell us how
PAUL BULLARD
BUSINESS STRATEGY DIRECTOR, FSI
In March 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic became
a frightening reality as lockdowns became
prevalent across the world. The CAFM industry
went into overdrive, with vendors repackaging
their products as safety essentials that would
help bring organisations back to their workplace.
Many of these solutions addressed the
situation - with temperature screening, cleaning
schedules, and socially distanced space
planning. While these all provided immediate
solutions for a workplace, as time moves on
businesses are beginning to look at using smart
and sustainable technology to enhance their
facilities services.
Driving this requirement is a desire from the
industry to make use of data to make automated
decisions. With such a ra of information
available, we must ensure that we are using
the data to add real value to the operation.
Enormous volumes of data are collated in
28 MARCH 2021
CAFM systems, but the usage has traditionally
been retrospective reporting or perhaps some
dashboard rationalizing various KPIs. While
these can look very attractive the content is
always looking back, never forwards.
Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic to
discuss in recent years, however, there is still
much scepticism in terms of the e ort and
investment required to achieve the desired
results. This can be overcome by identifying
realistic outcomes and focussing on simple
achievable use cases that deliver value to either
the customer experience or in terms of reducing
costs. By identifying key pieces of data and
applying some basic algorithms we can do some
very simple things that can dramatically alter our
operational delivery.
For example, when a CAFM system is initially
set-up it is usual to set estimated time and cost
values against planned maintenance activities,
such as the servicing of a chiller. As time moves
on, the maintenance activity will be regularly
carried out on the chiller and from the mobile
workforce team employed we can collate
accurate time data on the time taken by the
engineers who carry out the work. So, if we had
estimated a planned maintenance task takes
eight hours, it may transpire it has never taken
longer than four hours. The CAFM system can
be configured to automatically update these
estimated times to better resemble the actual
time taken.
Now resource planners can prepare for a job
that takes four hours and not eight and have
recovered significant time. When we consider the
volume of tasks that are planned daily, we have
a great opportunity to dramatically increase the
e iciency of our workforce.
Next, we can think about the ways that our
CAFM system informs and escalates around the
contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
We may take a Priority 1 call, relating to a major
fault on a particular piece of plant. The CAFM
may be set up to provide a warning as we come