What is the Difference Between Facilities Maintenance Management and a CMMS?

If you work large commercial buildings like offices, hospitals, or universities, you know what happens when something goes wrong with high-maintenance equipment, a category-one disaster!

To make sure that everything runs like a well-oiled machine, each of these commercial establishments need facilities management services. Facilities maintenance relates to commercial buildings where no manufacturing takes place.

The tasks entail looking after capital assets like medical devices, research equipment, robotics, machinery in universities, HVAC units and boilers in offices, or imaging equipment in hospitals.

The facilities maintenance manager job description includes knowledge of the latest tools like CMMS to provide the services needed for a smart and digitally-enabled building.

This tool helps facilities maintenance managers improve their productivity and streamline daily responsibilities.

In essence, facilities maintenance management is a domain, and CMMS is the tool that helps managers excel in this domain.

What Is Facilities Maintenance Management?

Facilities maintenance management involves the upkeep of commercial buildings for higher efficiency and savings in cost. It must ensure that health and safety standards, along with legal requirements, are adhered to.

There are two major categories that facilities maintenance management takes care of: strategic and operational.

The goal of facilities maintenance is to increase the utility of the building by ensuring that capital assets, the inner and outer areas, and commercial appliances are serviced regularly.

The responsibility of facilities maintenance is divided between the facilities manager and the maintenance technician. The cleanliness, safety, and utility of the building for its required purpose is the responsibility of the facility manager.

Here are some noteworthy responsibilities of a facilities maintenance manager:

Overseeing Contracts

The contracts that the building enters into concerning catering, technology, security, or cleaning are sourced and overseen by the manager.

Cost Savings And Efficiency

The facilities maintenance manager needs to study and advise the organization about improving efficiency and reducing costs in various processes.

Compliance

The manager needs to ensure that the facility follows the protocol when it comes to compliance with statutory regulations.

Supervision

Any renovation or refurbishment in the building has to be supervised by the facilities manager. Supervision of teams from all divisions is part of the manager’s responsibility.

Schedules:

Whether it is the janitor’s cleaning schedule or the capital asset maintenance schedule, the manager is responsible for creating both.

Regular Checks

The manager has to check basic facilities like fire safety systems on a proactive basis to ensure they are adequately maintained.

Delegation

All work requests are sent to the facilities manager, who delegates them to the maintenance technicians.

It is the technician’s responsibility to perform preventive maintenance and repair HVAC units and capital assets. Technicians, in most cases, are HVAC certified.

Maintenance Reports

Proper records of all maintenance work must be looked after by the facilities manager. The manager will also need to draft a maintenance report so that the status of all facilities is up-to-date.

Planning And Budgeting

The facilities manager prepares a budget of all maintenance work being undertaken and must ensure there are no unnecessary deviations. All contracts are decided based on the budget.

Planning for future expenses is calculated based on the future needs of the building.

Handling Emergencies

The facilities manager needs to devise an emergency plan, including the evacuation of the occupants of the building. There are regular emergency fire drills to ensure minimal damage to people and property.

The facilities manager will not be able to stick to deadlines and perform their duties efficiently without modern technology like facilities maintenance software. This is where CMMS comes in.

The Role Of CMMS In Facilities Maintenance Management

The facilities manager can delegate work orders through a computerized maintenance management system, or CMMS.

This management system gets data from the orders that include parts required and their cost, asset repaired, wrench time, and completion time.

The information from the CMMS is then used for creating reports for the facilities manager and the different departmental heads.

The report is generated through a 4-step process:

  • The creation of the work order
  • The completion of the work order
  • The processing of data by CMMS
  • The analysis of data

The report helps the management determine labor-intensive assets, maintenance costs, and technical production.

Here are some key features of CMMS:

Work Order Management

The core input for CMMS is a work order, whether for inspection, breakdown repair, or preventive maintenance. It aids the facilities manager in assigning orders to maintenance technicians in the shortest possible time.

The orders are sent directly to the technicians’ accounts on the CMMS. The team gets notifications immediately, thus wasting no time in repairing the equipment.

Completed work orders are sourced for reporting and data analysis.

Work Requests

If any problem is faced by operators, staff, technicians, janitors, and other employees, they need to create work requests to inform the maintenance department.

Work requests can be created using a mobile device by any CMMS user.

All that needs to be done for creating a work request is taking a snap of the issue, describing it, mentioning the location or asset, and submitting the request.

An email and push notification are sent to the management regarding the request.

Enterprise Asset Management

The CMMS tracks the entire asset lifecycle that starts from the purchase date to the decommissioning of the asset.

It is possible to get a preventive maintenance schedule to find all the work orders associated with the asset. Depreciation and downtime can also be monitored.

The accounting and operations department can use this information to decide whether the asset should be retained or sold.

Mobile CMMS

Now, CMMS is available on a mobile app. Real-time notifications for work requests, sending in-app messages for better communication, and managing work orders are achievable in a pinch with the app.

Workflow Automation

Predefined rules can be created with CMMS so that the right technicians get assigned the new work orders.

An ‘if-then’ loop can be created where a work order assigned to an asset automatically goes to a specific technician. Purchase orders can also be automated, thereby enhancing the workflow of maintenance jobs.

Achieve Optimal Productivity With CMMS

If the health of the building depends on the facilities manager, then the productivity of the manager depends on the efficiency of the CMMS.

The facilities manager saves both time and money with this revolutionary software and can use it to meet operational deadlines or create enterprise strategies.

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