FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
OLIVER SPIRES
PRODUCT SPECIALIST FOR IDOX’S CAFM EXPLORER
Over the last year CAFM systems have become ever more important to facilities managers dealing with changes in their estates planning. Incorporating additional cleaning, reduced occupancy levels, rotas and staggered entry and exit times are just some of the challenges that are now part of the day-to-day, while also maximising the potential of spaces.
As we start the gradual return to workplaces, social distancing remains a key priority to keep people safe. CAFM software can be configured to allow staff to book resources, desks, or meeting spaces before travelling to the office. Systems administrators can easily turn on or off spaces available to book, offering piece of mind, ensuring sufficient space is maintained and supporting other policies such as staggered start and finish times. Crucially, ‘check-in and check-out’ capability can provide details on where and when staff have been within facilities, supporting government guidance.
It can also provide data on space occupancy. You can also drill into the data to understand how frequently particular facilities are used to maximise efficiency.
In the current environment, by having access to CAFM analytics about all aspects of your facilities, such as work order response times, allows for more proactive planned maintenance and associated costs can be more accurately budgeted for to ensure tighter control. Risk assessments and action checklists can be set up for teams carrying out work to answer a defined list of questions, capturing essential and auditable data for reporting adherence to government guidelines.
With home working still the case for many office workers, CAFM can help keep track of IT equipment allocation. For those on site, it can track new equipment that has been purchased to support safety in the workplace – screens, automatic hand sanitising units, temperature gauges and air quality monitors.
Software will support efficient management of stock, giving real-time analysis and full details of stock, and supplier information and levels for automatically triggering restocking. For example, ensuring your business has optimum supplies of hand sanitiser, face masks and other PPE. It integrates with your help desk to allocate stock to both reactive and planned work orders, improving your efficiency and preventing overspend.
Using data and analytics from your CAFM system can help to plan and draw insights about any aspect of your facilities to make better informed decisions, plan ahead and increase operational success. With this kind of tool, you can design and maintain dashboards of your information for powerful business intelligence and easier reporting, pulling your most important data to the surface, ensuring you can put strategies in place to tackle the coming months.
