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The facility management plan is the formal planning instrument used by the organization to manage the current and future operations of the club facility. The plan is to put together to make sure the efficiency of operation is increased, saving them money over the life of your facility and even expand the overall lifespan of your facility. The quality, safety, and sustainability of the plan must be in the facility management plan. And, the plan to achieve these strategies.

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Complete Guide to Facilities Management

“Keep your team safe and working faster,” they said. “And let’s make sure to keep that all under budget, too.” No big deal, right? Wrong. When it comes to Facilities Management , you’ve got a lot of juggling to do to keep everybody happy.

In this post, we’ll cover how you can make your department work more efficiently, serve the company better, and get more influence with the people that matter so you can keep being awesome at your job.

What if Facilities Management didn’t exist? 

As humans, we occupy space, and we are accustomed to our spaces working for us, not against us. We need these areas to be safe, functional, and comfortable. And there’s a lot to that. 

When everything goes to plan, this means that your job as a facilities manager is less stressful. No emergencies, easy-to-manage workloads, and fewer incidences.  A boost in productivity and reductions in absenteeism, downtime and wastage, not to mention the lack of accidents. 

It’s clear how important it is to have a well-maintained facility, but what if you don’t? What happens if you don’t have the resources you need to make it happen: adequate staffing, budget, training, equipment, etc.?

The impact on the Company

Your facilities management team is responsible for the overall well-being and functioning of the entire facility. You touch each and every department. Without you, equipment lifespans are reduced, inventory controls can fall by the wayside, bulbs can burn out, machines can overheat. Even worse, problems can get so bad that they bring your revenue-generating activities to a screeching halt. Facility safety also becomes an issue. You manage the security systems, fire systems, ventilation systems, and tricky and often risky elevator systems. If something is out of order, people’s safety is at risk. If someone gets hurt, that bill the company receives is going to hurt.  Depending on the situation, that bill could come in the form of a lawsuit, an expensive settlement, fines from a regulatory agency, and a whole lot of bad PR….or all of the above. It’s not worth the risk. The workspace becomes a non-working space very quickly. 

The impact on the Employee

No employee wants to feel unsafe or uncomfortable at work. Imagine working in an organization that has recurring equipment failures, or worse yet, extremely high incidents of injury at work. That would be terrible, but the same is true If employees can’t do their jobs because there is no space to work, the building is too hot or too cold, and the network keeps failing.  If these issues go on for long enough the company would have a hard time keeping employees too.

The impact on the Customer

Employees are not the only ones who suffer from poor facility management. Customers notice things, too. If buildings are in bad shape, equipment breaks down more often than it works. Orders can get delayed, the quality of your products and service decreases. Injuries become a regular occurrence. Your customers are going to pick up on this.  Their user experience will not be as good as it should be. Your brand, your reputation, and your source of income will be destroyed very quickly. Get it right, and your customer satisfaction jumps up too.

The scope of Facilities Management

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• Real estate management: Your role here intersects with the property manager. You keep the building safe, repairs up to date, and oversee the teams that keep it running.
• Occupancy management: You use data and analytics to balance operational costs, effective use of space, employee well-being, productivity, and energy saving.
• Maintenance management: You and your team plan and carry out the maintenance for all assets in the company. You also deal with any unplanned work that comes up.  
• Asset management: The lifecycle of all assets falls under you. You are responsible for the installation and training to maintenance and repairs and ultimately working with senior management and Finance to determine the best time to replace assets. 
• Financial and performance management: Using the information gathered in your CMMS, you can manage your inventory, budgets and have a clear line of sight into how each asset is performing and the costs incurred each month. With Limble, you’ll get automatically generated maintenance reports for the most important data you’ll ever need. If you want to take it a step further, you can generate custom reports based on the criteria you choose.
• Building systems: Each building is unique. The majority of buildings come with fire systems and security systems, as well as HVAC. Some may have elevators, while others have been specially designed to suit your company’s needs. The management, condition assessments , and maintenance of these systems are up to you. 

Another popular way to look at facility management roles is to split them into two groups: Hard Facilities Management (Hard FM) and Soft Facilities Management (Soft FM) .

Hard facilities management services (space and infrastructure)

Hard FM services focus on the physical components of the work environment and infrastructure. Most of them fall under the maintenance department. Here is an overview of hard facilities management services:

• The plumbing system: This system plays an essential role in bringing water to a building and removing waste. Over time, blockages can occur, pressure builds up, and fixtures/piping must be replaced. As the Facility Manager, it’s your job to ensure that the plumbing system is regularly maintained and that the possible issues are fixed as quickly as possible. 
• Lighting and HVAC systems: You will work with your team to see if the lighting and heating fixtures need repair or replacement. It’s up to the team to decide the best solutions for cost and energy savings, comfort, and functionality. 
• Fire safety regulation compliance: Fire safety systems are required in most countries and must be regularly maintained and checked for compliance issues.
• Mechanical & electrical systems: Keeping the electrical system running well to keep up with other building operations. The same goes for mechanical systems like elevators and water pumps. You and your team ensure they work properly and do not cause safety incidents. 
• Structural maintenance: Regular usage or even poor design can lead to structural issues over time. When it comes to buildings, weather and other elements can start to take a toll on the structures. Wind, sun, salt, and extreme temperature changes all play their part. As a part of facility management, there should be a structural maintenance plan to identify, classify, and deal with possible structural problems. 

To successfully schedule, track, and manage all maintenance activities and work orders , facility management teams will often seek the help of computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) or Computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) software. We will discuss available software solutions in more detail towards the end of the article.

Soft facilities management services (people and organization)

On the flip side, soft facility management focuses on people and organizations. It includes services that create a more comfortable, healthier, safer, and visually appealing environment.  Common examples include:

• Waste management: If waste is not managed, garbage bins become overloaded, and things become smelly. This is never a good thing. Waste management gets the garbage into the correct containers. It sends it away to make sure that you stay within regulatory requirements and prevent trash overcrowding.
• Cleaning services: Custodial teams come in to clean common areas and perform other janitorial duties. Many companies will have their own janitorial staff, while others will choose to outsource.
• Space planning: Space planning and management is an important part of facilities management. Whenever your company hires more people, expands to a new floor, buys new assets that take a big chunk of space, and wants to remodel the existing space, they will turn to you to help organize the space so that it remains comfortable, safe, and functional. 
• Landscaping: Well-maintained grounds improve curb appeal and signal top-notch property management. Your team takes care of the seasonal and non-seasonal changes, such as planting flowers in the spring, trimming the grass during the summer, removing falling leaves during the autumn, or removing excess snow from the walkway in the winter.
• Pest control: These fall under your domain, be it scheduling seasonal pest controls or managing pest outbreaks if they ever happen.
• Building security: Having control of people going in and out of the facility is something that almost every building these days requires. It can also involve the management of restricted access areas inside the facility.
• EHS compliance: Defining and maintaining acceptable standards of comfort that might include temperature, noise, seating standards, and visual cues is imperative in every company. For example, selecting specific chairs that guarantee employee comfort for desk workers. Depending on the industry, EHS standards can differ widely. In a typical office setting, they may seem relatively tame. Still, in a pharmaceutical company where employees may be handling dangerous substances, standards will be different. EHS standards will change from business to business depending on the needs of the company. 

Free Building Maintenance Checklist

13 simple steps to improved productivity and reliability.

What do Facilities Managers do?

You have to be a jack of all trades to do this job well. The support of a great team and the right software will help take you to the next level of your career.  A facilities manager can have a dozen balls up in the air on any given day. As a facility manager, you touch so many areas: 

• Property strategy: What’s the current property portfolio of the company? Do you lease or own? As the world turns, more and more companies are adopting remote work policies where employees can work from home at least some of the time. How your company approaches this major shift in the culture of work will also impact your needs for employee-occupied space into the future.
• Space management: To piggyback on what was said above, are employees required to be in office? If not, there’s room for some creativity in space management. Perhaps changing to an “open office” layout where employees can “check out” a workspace as needed is a solution your company considers if employees work in a hybrid format.
• Communications infrastructure: We’re talking phones (no pun intended), network cabling, server storage, and beyond.
• General building maintenance : Depending on if your company leases or owns the building, maintenance responsibilities may shift. Many commercial building owners push a lot of maintenance responsibilities to the lease-holder, not everything and not all the time.
• Testing and inspections: This is a part of routine maintenance . You regularly check in on assets and alarms to ensure that everything is up to code and working correctly. You also need to make sure that you are compliant with OSHA and other regulatory agencies (like FDA, if applicable to your industry).
• Contract management : You have several service providers, and those contracts and relationships need to be managed. It’s your job to make sure these are kept up. Using Lmble makes managing vendors and their contracts easy!
• EHS(environment, health, safety): Health and safety live with you, and it’s your job to make sure that the workplace is safe for everyone in it. 
• Security: Be it the locks on the doors, the security monitoring team or cameras, and any other part of security, these all fall under your jurisdiction. 
• Facility Maintenance planning : Predictive and preventative maintenance are best practices to keep your organization’s assets in working order. The planning of these is a crucial part of your role. Using Limble, you can plan, schedule, and report on your maintenance and use this information to collaborate with Finance on budget forecasting.
• Managing renovations and refurbishments: The workplace is ever-changing. Offices get bigger or smaller, paint colors change, boardrooms are built. Renovations and refurbishments sit squarely with the facility professionals to manage. The same is true for capital projects. You will work with teams to build new facilities and expand the campus.
• Inventory management: Knowing what you have and what you need, and the value of your inventory is an integral part of maintenance and cost management. Limble makes it possible to see the value of your stock at the click of a button, and the customized reporting helps you break it down any way you need to.

And in case you wanted more, you’re not done yet! You are also responsible for: 

• Advising businesses on measures to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the facility.
• Supervising teams of staff across different divisions.
• Dealing with emergencies as they arise.
• Managing budgets; Planning for the future by forecasting the facility’s upcoming needs and requirements.
• Helping with office relocations.
• Drafting maintenance reports.

Should you bring FM in-house or outsource? 

Making the decision to outsource or keep your facilities management in-house is a complex one. It depends on the factors like the type of facility you run, the size of your maintenance budget, and existing team.

In-house Facilities Management 

Advantages:

• Oversight : You have complete oversight of everything happening and can make split-second decisions about how you and your team react. 
• Cost control : you can control the costs (to an extent) of the repairs by keeping inventory in stock or shopping around for preferred pricing when you need something. You are also paying your team at your rate, not contractor rates. 
• Planning ahead : You can use preventive maintenance to manage upgrades and cut back on unexpected breakdowns. Ideally, this helps with budget forecasting too. Having an in-house team can help connect the dots between systems across the company, so everything is accounted for when budgeting.
• Collaboration : Keeping your team in-house means that you can work with Finance to decide when the best time to replace equipment is based on performance and depreciation. This minimizes unnecessary spending and maximizes tax credits.  

Disadvantages:

• Specialized skills : As technology advances, maintenance work becomes more and more specialized. It’s hard to build a team with the right set of core competencies precisely because you will not have a guy for every little thing. This makes some outsourcing almost a necessity.
• Waste : You can potentially wind up having a ton of unused equipment and expertise in your team just to fix a few highly specialized assets. Seeing expertise and equipment not being used doesn’t bode well for you. 
• Lots of management : Building the right team and hiring the right people to do the job takes time and needs constant oversight. You are no longer just a Facility Manager. You are now a people manager, expected to lead and develop others. You’ll also be responsible for contractor relationships and management, not to mention the possibility of additional insurance needed. 

Outsourcing Facilities Management

• Cost savings : Cutting costs is often the biggest benefit of outsourcing facilities management. When you outsource, you are not paying for round-the-clock employees on your team who may not be needed daily. 
• Less risk : Reduce your risk and liability if something goes wrong. Outsourcing puts the risk on another organization. Make sure that you do your homework and partner with a team you can trust. 
• Flexibility : Bringing in the experts with their hyper-specialized equipment as and when you need them instead of trying to do it yourself and potentially causing more damage or having expensive resources on your budget. You save time and money. 
• More expensive than you think : Ironically, outsourcing can cause costs to get out of control. You can run into situations where you have multiple vendors working on the same problem. You have little oversight of the work, who’s delivering on what, and you are left with multiple invoices to pay. If the impetus behind outsourcing is cost-saving, it may not work out that way. Having great partners with solid communication is your best line of defense here. 
• Still requires internal management : There are vendors to manage — lots of them! Someone on your internal team will still have to keep track of the work that needs to be done, who the right vendors are, inventory, etc. It’s almost like you can’t get away from FM no matter what you do!

Some say that the best approach is a hybrid of in-house to manage the day-to-day with outsourcing for highly specialized projects. For example, your team can change the bulbs and fix the heating, cooling, and electrical issues that crop up. Still, you’ll bring in a plumber or machine repair technician for the big stuff. 

What could your facilities management department look like? 

Software solutions that make Facility Management simpler, better, and faster

There are a lot of software solutions out there to help you plan and execute facility management. Let’s walk through some of the better options out there so that you can make an informed decision about the one that’s right for you, your team, and your organization.  Don’t be worried if you do not see a clear difference between some of them at first sight. They do have a lot of overlapping features.

As with every other software on this list, different software vendors offer different levels of functionality. It makes more sense to look at the exact features you need than to focus on labels like IWMS, CMMS, or CAFM.

CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System)

A CMMS is at the top of the list.  Using a CMMS like Limble can be a great way to help keep all your ducks in a row. You’ll be able to track workflows, report on repairs, easily keep an eye on the budget and find ways to cut costs if you need to.  Imagine how great it will be to be called into a meeting last minute and easily give feedback on the FM team’s work. It makes maintenance vastly easier by streamlining and automating all maintenance processes.  Use your CMMS to: 

• Streamline your work order management
• Schedule and monitor all maintenance work
• Track spare parts inventory and forecast future inventory needs
• Effectively manage your assets
• Easily manage vendors and contracts
• Run any report you need or can imagine from your custom dashboards 

CAFM (Computer-Aided Facilities Management)

CAFM is software that helps facility managers execute core functions. CAFM technology combines business administration, behavioral science, architecture, and engineering concepts to optimize the functioning of your organization. It can be helpful to think of computer-aided facility management as a comprehensive commercial facility or building maintenance tool with many different facets and functions. It uses several different models to cover:

• information management
• maintenance management 
• physical building administration
• floor plans and space management
• leasing and real-estate management
• asset lifecycle management
• and administrative support

The core difference between a CAFM and CMMS is that a CAFM focuses on the physical space and things. In contrast, a CMMS focuses on the management of maintenance.  If you need more from your CAFM, you can combine it with a CMMS to give your team more support. 

EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) software

EAM software sits somewhere in between CMMS and CAFM. It gives a broader range of features than a CMMS, but most of them are focused on the maintenance department:

• work management
• labor management
• MRO inventory management
• contract management
• financial management
• reporting and analytics 

Enterprise asset management can be used by production-oriented organizations to plan, optimize, execute, and track all maintenance activities with the associated priorities, skills, materials, tools, and cost. And EAM software is designed to support that idea.

IWMS (Integrated Workplace Management System)

The easiest way to describe it is that it usually offers everything you can find in a CAFM software, and then some. You can think of it as an all-in-one solution for facilities management. Aside from the CAFM features listed above, IWMS can also include:

• flexible real estate and lease management features
• project management features
• environmental management features
• mailroom management features
• visitor management features

On its own, this software solution would be lacking. But when paired with another more comprehensive tool, implementing an IWMS has the potential to be powerful.

BMS/BAS/BEMS 

Let’s first explain the acronyms:

• BMS = building management system
• BAS = building automation system
• BEMS = building energy management system

BMS and BAS are often used interchangeably because they serve the same purpose. They combine hardware and software solutions to control different building systems like lighting, heating, HVAC, access control, etc. They can also be used to measure the performance and energy consumption of HVAC systems and other assets.  Facility managers have to keep an eye on energy consumption because it accounts for a big chunk of their facility’s operational costs. Building energy management systems help them measure energy consumption across the whole facility and find problematic systems and assets.  While BEMS and BMS can come together, they are usually standalone systems, implemented separately. That being said, they do work very well together. BMS/BAM primary function is to control building systems and assets. BEMS’ primary role is to collect and analyze energy consumption data (it can track everything from device electricity usage to water, gas, and steam consumption). Want to know more? Here is an article that discusses the differences between these systems in more detail. 

Building security systems

Security systems also come in different forms and offer a lot of diverse functionalities. You can use them to detect risks, record incidents, and perform risk analysis. They offer visitor management features ranging from facial recognition and badge scanning to video surveillance and capacity and occupancy tracking. As with most things, different software offers different functions. Rather than looking at the labels, think about the exact features you need and use those to help you decide what’s best for your team and organization. 

Moving your career in Facilities Management forward

Professional development in FM is just as important as it is in any other career. More now than ever, facilities professionals need an evolving set of skills to keep them sharp in a modern workforce.  Consider seeking out further training with online certification and degree programs to keep you competitive in today’s job market.  The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) offers training programs that are widely recognized by employers across the United States that have helped facilities managers get raises, promotions, and move their career forward. (For what it’s worth, Limble’s helped our customers get promotions too).

Facilities Management for today: Why it’s more important than ever

As the world continues to evolve, so does the need for better facility management. People don’t just go to an office with a desk and a chair; they go to a workspace focussed on employee well-being, automation, sustainability and impact, and evolving real estate models.  While all this growth and change occurs, software and other technologies are being developed to optimize building operations and create hyper-connectivity, regardless of where employees are.  Facility management for the modern world is now responsible for our spaces, physical and cyber security, well-being, resource consumption, and risk management. The work you do as a facility manager is vital to our future success.  COVID-19 has further proven the point of how essential it is. Facility management means that you need to be dynamic and flexible enough to install home offices remotely, set up workspaces that promote healthier lifestyles, or give enough space to distance from one another safely. You need to understand your organization’s sustainability requirements and environmental impact and find ways to reduce them.  The demand to be greener, safer, and more cost-effective trickles straight down to facilities management. Your ability to be agile and show your value will help bridge the gap between the C-suite, Finance, and Facilities. (We know you can do it)!

Before you go

We know that facilities management is one of the biggest and most critical roles in any company. You touch every department and more. Without you and your team, buildings could break, the equipment could fail, and employees and customers would be unhappy and at risk. Even though much of your work is behind the scenes, it is the lifeblood that keeps organizations running.  You really are our MVP! Want to know more about Limble CMMS ? Find out how it can support you and the work you do? Get in touch with us to set up a demo or start your free trial .

I am interested, pls whattsapp me 00971558984428

Good presentation. I want to start a career in facility management after retirement from a microfinance bank at 60,what steps do I need to take?

That is a really specific question 🙂 I’d suggest you read the following guide to get you started: https://limblecmms.com/blog/facilities-manager-roles-and-responsibilities/ . Good luck!

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How to Develop a Successful Facility Management Plan

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Published March 3, 2023.

Facility management refers to planning and overseeing all the physical resources of your organization, such as buildings, equipment, furniture, and more. To ensure good facility management, you first need to create a plan to design, construct, maintain, and upgrade your facilities to maximize their value and achieve your business goals.

A facility management plan is a specific document that outlines the strategies and goals for managing your organization's physical resources.

A successful facility management plan can help you minimize costs and efficiently manage your physical resources. For example, a facility management plan can help in real estate decision-making by providing insight into your planning, design, and space management operations.

What Should You Consider for Your Facility Management Plan?

Developing a good facility management plan is easier said than done, as the factors around it can differ based on your company's goals. Nevertheless, you should consider these universal tips:

Provide Safety and Security

The safety and security of your employees, visitors, and assets should be your top priority when developing a facility management plan. You can achieve your organization's safety goals by implementing access control measures such as key cards, alarm systems, and CCTV cameras throughout the facility.

Another important element of creating a safe and comfortable workspace is adhering to safety regulations such as having fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, and wayfinding maps to exits in case of emergency.

■ Create an efficient wayfinding system with these best practices

Improve Communication

It's essential to ensure open communication between occupants, stakeholders, and other parties involved in your facility management. This can help clarify everyone's objectives and establish an open dialogue so that everyone's informed of any changes or improvements to the facilities.

In addition to boosting employee satisfaction , open communication will also allow your collaborators to express their concerns and doubts so you can address them before they turn into bigger issues.

Ensure Maintenance and Business Continuity

Planning for preventative maintenance, analyzing the elements that need maintenance or repair, creating budgets for these tasks, and preparing for unexpected problems are all key aspects to ensure your operations are uninterrupted.

To plan for maintenance and potential issues, you should consider implementing advanced maintenance management systems to better track and manage your assets. This will help to reduce costs and unexpected breakdowns to keep your business running smoothly.

■ Regular maintenance can allow for better facility management reports 

Optimize Space Utilization

 Space utilization is an important factor to consider when developing a facility management plan because optimizing space usage within your facility can boost employee productivity and reduce costs. Important space usage factors you should consider include:

• Office layout : Choose either an open or closed office layout based on your specific business needs.
• Design choices : Ensure your design creates an inviting environment within your facility while making the most out of the space.
• Eco-friendly spaces : Green workspaces can lower costs with more efficient energy use .
• Furniture and equipment : Make sure these elements are placed in the best positions where employees can easily access them and actually use them.
• Space flexibility : Opt for flexible workspaces that can easily be changed depending on your needs.

Taking these factors into account when calculating your space utilization rate can help ensure all areas of your facility are used to their full potential.

■ Ensure maximum space utilization using these key metrics 

4 Basic Steps for a Successful Facility Management Plan

If you're not sure where to start, take a look at these four basic steps for creating a successful facility management plan:

1. Identify the Current State of the Facility

By identifying the current state of the facility first, you create a baseline from which you can make decisions about budgeting, repair needs, and space utilization. It also provides insight into areas that need improvement, enabling you to focus your efforts on these critical points and maximize efficiency.

2. Prioritize Objectives

When developing a facility management plan, it's important to ensure it aligns with your overall business objectives to prevent wasting resources and halting progress.

If your business goal is to become more energy efficient, any facility improvements you make should reflect this goal. This could involve changes to the facility layout and implementing green workspaces.

By prioritizing your objectives, you can make sure your organization's efforts are focused on the right areas and your facility management contributes to your goals.

■ Improve your facility management with these essential KPIs 

3. Create and Implement a Plan

Once you've identified your objectives, you should conceive an actionable plan and set achievable timeframes.

If one of your goals is to switch to an open layout due to the benefits of open-space offices , your plan should outline the design choices, budgeting requirements, and furniture and equipment placement while specifying the expected completion dates for each point.

Once you have a plan in place, you should communicate it to everyone involved so they can perform their duties mindfully and with clear direction, thereby maximizing productivity and ensuring your objectives are met within the established timeline.

4. Monitor the Plan

Regularly monitoring the facility management plan is important to identify any shortcomings or inefficiencies and establish a success rate. This should involve regular check-ins with employees, creating maintenance reports, and changing the layout as necessary.

These steps will ensure that you can identify any issue early on and take corrective action quickly and efficiently while allowing for better decision-making in the future.

Automated Software Can Assist In Your Success

POC System: Office Space Management

When implementing a facility management plan, automated software like POC System's Space Management Software can be an invaluable asset. This useful tool offers the following features:

• Visual simulations to help with floor plan design 
• Streamlined booking of desks and meeting rooms
• Creating custom seating plans for maximum employee productivity
• Advanced analytics to evaluate the success of your objectives
• Real-time tracking of your current seating and office layout

These features can provide you with the tools you need to maximize space utilization and ensure your objectives are met within the set timeline.

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Easily Create a Successful Facility Management Plan

Creating a successful facility management plan that aligns with your overall business objectives can be highly beneficial to your organization's bottom line. This process should involve prioritizing objectives, creating and implementing an actionable plan, and regularly monitoring the facility space usage.

While this can be a daunting task, automated software like POC System's Space Management Software can make it a whole lot easier. With this tool, you can quickly develop an effective facility management plan and ensure your resources are being used in the most efficient manner.

■ Book a demo to explore POC's features

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Facilities Management Plan Template

What is a Facilities Management Plan?

A Facilities Management Plan outlines processes and procedures for managing a facility. It outlines strategies and goals for improving the efficiency, safety, and security of a facility and the people who work in it. It is important for facilities managers and teams to have a plan in place to ensure that the facility is managed in the most effective and efficient way possible.

What's included in this Facilities Management Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Facilities Management Plan template for?

This Facilities Management Plan template is designed for facilities managers and teams in all industries who are looking for a way to create a plan for managing their facilities. This template provides a structure for creating a plan that can be adapted to fit the needs of any facility. It can also help facilities managers and teams stay organized and on track to achieving their goals.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

Focus areas are the primary goals that the Facilities Management Plan is designed to achieve. These focus areas can vary depending on the goals and needs of the facility, but some common examples include enhancing facility management, optimizing maintenance processes, and enhancing facility security. It is important to clearly define these focus areas as they will serve as the foundation for the rest of the plan.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Objectives are the specific goals that need to be achieved in order to accomplish the focus area. For example, under the focus area of enhancing facility management, objectives could include improving communication between Facility Managers and staff and increasing the efficiency of facility management. Objectives should be specific and measurable.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are measurable targets that are designed to track the progress of an objective. For example, an objective of increasing the efficiency of facility management could have a KPI of decreasing the time spent on daily tasks. KPIs should be measurable, achievable, and relevant to the objective.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Projects, or actions, are the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the KPIs. For example, if the KPI is to decrease the time spent on daily tasks, a project could be to implement a facility management software. Projects should be specific and achievable.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

Cascade Strategy Execution Platform helps teams create, execute, and measure their strategic plans. Cascade makes it easy to create a plan and keep track of progress, and helps teams identify areas for improvement and take action quickly. With Cascade, teams can see faster results from their strategy.

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What Is Facility Management and When Should a Business Start Thinking About It? Maintenance cost escalating? Trouble tracking assets? Who ya gonna call? Maybe facility management is for you.

By Bryan Christiansen • Apr 19, 2019

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When you're running a business so small it fits into one tiny office, facility management is not something worth losing sleep over. But as your business grows, that one office of yours may turn into a building and a single machine transform into a production line.

Before you know it, you'll have a bunch of assets that need to be taken care of on an ongoing basis.

Related: How can entrepreneurs effectively manage their business inventory?

This is where facility management enters the scene: It ensures you a well-organized environment in which both your business and employees can thrive.

Facility management: the basics

At its core, facility management is a profession that focuses on the efficient maintenance of an organization's buildings and equipment in a way that offers the best value to the building owner and users alike.

It's also a multi-disciplinary support service that can be applied in any niche or industry. Among its many applications is that it can ensure safety, functionality and comfort in the built environment as well as compliance with existing legal requirements.

In North America, the facility management market is experiencing increased patronage from a wide variety of businesses: The Transparency Market Research 2017 report estimated a compound annual growth rate of 13.6 percent between 2017 and 2024.

Still, if you have never used professional facility management services before, you may be wondering if, or when, it should become the next step for your business. Here are the signs that it's time for a business to start thinking about adopting facility management:

1.Your maintenance cost is escalating.

It's an accepted fact that maintenance costs money, but these costs should not run down your business.

When you notice that repairs and servicing costs are rising inexplicably every year, some common money-wasters to check include abuse or under-utilization of existing equipment, wasteful stocking of inventory and spare parts and unused office space. Wired reported in 2013 that over the previous 30 years, the United States had added about 2 billion square feet of office space to its existing stock, which is not something today's highly mobile workforce needs. Having more space to maintain automatically increases your maintenance costs.

Another factor that quickly adds to your bottom line is poorly managed maintenance personnel and other staffing expenses. Over a 30-year period, while the operating and maintenance costs of a building account for 6 percent of total costs, personnel costs alone account for a staggering 92 percent, according to a British study reported on by Researchgate.

If you're running a system where you frequently call on independent plumbers, electricians, heating engineers and other technicians , the costs quickly pile up. Not to mention the fact that engaging these contractors also carries the risk of quality control issues, especially if:

• You have a very large facility.
• You are managing multiple locations.
• You have no real way to track whether tasks are being carried out properly.

One of our clients, Joe Romero from Myriad Genetics, had this exact problem. He had been hired as a facility manager and noticed that his predecessor had been tracking everything manually, which meant the company had no clue whether maintenance tasks were actually being completed.

When Romero implemented facility management software, he could see whether outside contractors were doing the work they were billing for. Long story short, he had to replace his primary maintenance vendor because he found out that that vendor was not doing the work he had been contracted to do.

Related: Top 3 Upcoming Trends in the Indian Facility Management Industry

Because of these problems, some businesses form an internal team or look for a single vendor to take over their back-office responsibilities. A good example is GoDaddy, which was able to realize 10 percent cost savings by employing integrated facility services . Another interesting note in that success story was how one reason GoDaddy went with integrated facilities services provider ISS was because ISS was already operating in all geographical regions GoDaddy was planning to expand to.

2. You're having difficulties in asset management and tracking.

Knowing that over 40 percent of small business track their assets manually or don't track them at all is concerning. While this practice causes minimal problems early on, real issues will start popping up as soon as you start to scale.

Facility management can help you manage and track assets and inventory better if you are experiencing any of the following:

• Asset register is inadequate or doesn't exist at all.
• It's becoming increasingly difficult to track the assets owned by the company.
• The organization cannot confidently declare its asset position.
• The current condition of any asset and its location is unknown.
• If any equipment, machine or tool were to go missing, no one would notice.
• You keep buying replacements for equipment only to find out later that you already had them.

Stanley Healthcare reported that a mobile solution for inventory tracking can reduce search times for needed equipment by 90 percent, as well as help a company realize significant cost savings by avoiding unnecessary inventory purchases (improving inventory invisibility) and equipment loss (shrinkage control).

3. You're seeing a rising backlog of uncompleted maintenance tasks.

Multiple research sources, like this one from Steelcase Global, confirm how employee engagement positively correlates with workplace satisfaction. In other words, happy employees are productive employees. Without a designated facility management service, however, it is only a matter of time before they become frustrated and distracted because of leaking taps, broken light bulbs or an air conditioning unit in the staff canteen that isn't working properly.

Even if these tasks are instructed to call appropriate services, these tasks are often put off untll later -- so they start piling up. Soon, the business is faced with a considerable deferred maintenance list and very little hope of resolving everything. Research from Rick Biedenweg and his colleagues at Pacific Partners Consulting Group discovered that every $1 deferred in maintenance costs results in $4 of capital renewal needs in the future, so this is something you definitely want to avoid.

Preventing the creation of a backlog of uncompleted maintenance tasks is just one of many responsibilities of a facilities manager .

4. Recurring safety issues

Recurring safety issues are an indication that you are operating in a potentially dangerous environment. The simple truth is that improving safety at your facility is not a matter of choice -- it is required by law. Every year, OSHA issues over 40 000 citations , with the most common repeated offenses being:

• lack of personal protective equipment (PPE)
• absence of a hazard-communication program for chemicals
• failure to maintain logs of accidents and injuries
• lack of safety training

Facility management takes these factors into accounts and can help you reach and maintain the highest levels of operational safety using a combination of technology and human expertise and following these extensive Environmental, Health, and Safety Guidelines .

Related: 5 HR Strategies To Promote Employee Health And Safety

When it's time for a change

If any of the above situations describes the current situation in your business, it's clear that time and valuable resources are being wasted. It doesn't matter if you are going to form an in-house facility management team or outsource everything to an independent contractor. The point is that you understand how facility management can result in significant cost savings, improved safety performance and better overall service delivery for your company.

Founder and CEO, Limble CMMS.

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Facility Management Strategic Plan Template

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Effective facility management is crucial for organizations to ensure smooth operations and maximize the use of resources. But developing a comprehensive strategic plan for facility management can be a daunting task. That's where ClickUp's Facility Management Strategic Plan Template comes in!

With ClickUp's template, facility managers and management teams can:

• Set clear goals, objectives, and strategies for facility management
• Streamline communication and collaboration among team members
• Track progress and make data-driven decisions to optimize facility utilization

Whether you're responsible for maintaining a single building or managing a portfolio of facilities, ClickUp's Facility Management Strategic Plan Template will help you streamline your processes and achieve your facility management goals. Start planning for success today!

Benefits of Facility Management Strategic Plan Template

When using the Facility Management Strategic Plan Template, you can experience a range of benefits, including:

• Improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness in facility operations and maintenance
• Increased productivity and satisfaction among facility users and occupants
• Optimal utilization of resources and assets, leading to reduced waste and improved sustainability
• Enhanced safety and compliance with regulations and standards
• Clear communication and alignment of facility management goals and strategies with overall organizational objectives

Main Elements of Facility Management Strategic Plan Template

Streamline your facility management strategic planning with ClickUp's Facility Management Strategic Plan Template.

Key elements of this template include:

• Custom Statuses: Track the progress of different tasks with statuses such as Cancelled, Complete, In Progress, On Hold, and To Do, ensuring transparency and accountability throughout the planning process.
• Custom Fields: Utilize 8 custom fields like Duration Days, Impact, Progress, and Team Members to capture relevant information about each task, enabling you to make informed decisions and track the impact of your strategic plan.
• Custom Views: Access 6 different views, including Progress, Gantt, Workload, Timeline, Initiatives, and Getting Started Guide, to visualize and manage your facility management projects in a way that suits your needs.
• Collaboration Tools: Leverage ClickUp's collaboration features like assigning team members, adding project leads, and organizing tasks into departments to ensure effective communication and coordination within your facility management team.

How to Use Strategic Plan for Facility Management

When it comes to managing facilities efficiently and effectively, having a strategic plan in place is crucial. Here are five steps to help you make the most of the Facility Management Strategic Plan Template in ClickUp:

1. Assess the current state

Before diving into the strategic planning process, it's important to assess the current state of your facilities. This includes evaluating the condition of the physical infrastructure, identifying any maintenance or repair needs, and analyzing the utilization of space.

Use the Dashboards feature in ClickUp to gather data and visualize key metrics related to your facilities.

2. Define your goals and objectives

Next, determine the goals and objectives you want to achieve through your facility management strategic plan. These could include improving energy efficiency, enhancing safety measures, optimizing space utilization, or reducing maintenance costs.

Create tasks in ClickUp to outline specific goals and assign them to the relevant team members.

3. Develop strategies and action plans

Once you have defined your goals, it's time to develop strategies and action plans to achieve them. This may involve implementing preventive maintenance programs, investing in smart building technologies, optimizing workflows, or streamlining procurement processes.

Use the Gantt chart feature in ClickUp to create a visual timeline and allocate tasks to team members based on priority and dependencies.

4. Assign responsibilities and resources

To ensure the successful implementation of your facility management strategic plan, it's important to assign responsibilities and allocate necessary resources. Identify the team members or departments responsible for each strategy or action plan, and provide them with the resources they need to execute their tasks effectively.

Utilize the Workload view in ClickUp to manage and balance workloads across your team, ensuring that everyone has a clear understanding of their responsibilities.

5. Monitor progress and make adjustments

Once your facility management strategic plan is in motion, it's crucial to regularly monitor progress and make adjustments as needed. Keep track of key performance indicators, such as energy consumption, maintenance costs, and customer satisfaction, and compare them against your defined goals and objectives.

Set up Automations in ClickUp to receive automated notifications and reminders for progress updates, and use the Dashboards feature to visualize real-time data and identify areas that require attention.

By following these five steps and utilizing the Facility Management Strategic Plan Template in ClickUp, you can streamline your facility management processes, improve efficiency, and achieve your desired outcomes.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Facility Management Strategic Plan Template

Facility managers and management teams can use this Facility Management Strategic Plan Template to create a comprehensive roadmap for effectively managing and maintaining facilities.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a strategic plan for facility management:

• Use the Progress View to track the progress of each task and ensure that the strategic plan is on track
• The Gantt View will help you visualize the timeline and dependencies of each task in the plan
• Use the Workload View to balance the workload and resources among team members
• The Timeline View will provide a clear overview of the project timeline and milestones
• Use the Initiatives View to list and prioritize key initiatives and projects within the plan
• The Getting Started Guide View will provide step-by-step instructions and guidance for implementing the strategic plan
• Organize tasks into five different statuses: Cancelled, Complete, In Progress, On Hold, To Do, to track the progress and status of each task
• Update statuses as you complete tasks to keep stakeholders informed of progress
• Monitor and analyze tasks to ensure the successful implementation of the strategic plan

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Facility planning: A strategic approach to a better office

Facility planning is essential for the modern office, especially given the rapidly changing landscape of today’s workplace. With more and more companies embracing remote work , hybrid work , and more flexible working in general, they need strategic solutions that come from good facility planning in order to maintain structure and productivity. 

In this article, we explore why and how facility planning can help companies stay profitable and better support their workers. Even in the midst of new and changing realities on the ground. 

Panel Discussion

Top strategies for hybrid office space planning with CBRE’s Susan Wasmund

What is facility planning?

Facility planning is the systematic process that smart organizations use to ensure they have the facilities and related resources necessary to meet both their short and long term goals. Sometimes referred to as strategic facility planning, it’s the key decision-making that companies use to future-proof their workspaces. 

The reality is that simply following space management best practices isn’t always enough for your facility. Without good strategic planning and foresight, companies often stay stuck in problem-solving mode, instead of anticipating new problems before they arrive. 

On the other hand, when companies realistically assess their current and future space and facility needs, they can put themselves in a much better position to weather any new storms. 

In other words, facility planning is what helps companies take a proactive approach to their workplace strategy and real estate management , instead of a reactive one.  It’s about bringing business goals in line with facility goals. It’s also about ensuring both the business and its facilities are ready for the future. 

Who is responsible for facility planning?

The facility planning process is complex, requiring a high level of collaboration in the workplace .

That said, facility needs are typically handled by a facility manager (FM), or a facility management team. FMs make great planners, because they typically have both the data and resources at hand to make smart decisions for the office. And because keeping things running smoothly and anticipating needs is ultimately their main goal. 

FMs are responsible for all aspects of facility management, including ensuring employees have the tools and space they need to do their jobs properly.  As such, they are in the best position to understand facility goals. This is especially true when they collaborate with either an executive or growth team to stay up to speed on overarching business goals as well. 

Moreover, the roles and responsibilities of FMs have been evolving since the pandemic, so that they are more and more becoming leaders in their organizations—again, priming them to be in the best position to make good facility plans. 

This is also one of the main reasons why facility management services are usually best handled in-house—either by a dedicated FM, or by using facility management software to disperse these tasks among invested team members.  

What are the four steps in facilities planning?

No matter who manages facilities planning for your organization, this process works best when it follows the following four steps.

1. Understand your goals

As we’ve mentioned, facility planning is about bringing business goals in line with both current facilities and any planned expansions. So before any planning actually takes place, the planning task force needs to identify what demands are being placed on them from the business, coupled with the realities of their existing facility.

Thankfully, these two perspectives often dovetail. 

For example, cost-effective sustainability is quickly becoming a goal of virtually every business. 

Improving space utilization —which can dramatically cut back on the amount of corporate real estate needed—can therefore keep everyone happy. 

Remember, business drivers will vary from company to company. This ranges from responding to changing markets or demographics, adopting new information technology, preparing for potential mergers, or opening new offices or storefronts, just to name a few.

And of course, virtually every company is concerned with growth. 

Identifying which goals are most important now is the critical first step to planning. To make this process work, everyone on the facility planning team needs to understand the mission, vision, and company culture. 

FMs should therefore be given the tools and access they need to evaluate the entire real estate portfolio . Then, they can then understand how the business plan and other items coming down the pipeline will impact their space needs.

Only when they are armed with this critical data can they understand if current facilities will meet demand, or whether construction projects—or maybe just a better desk booking system—should be planned for the near future.

2. Analyze and set benchmarks

Of course, planning doesn’t stop with simply understanding your goals. You also need to understand how to actually make those goals a reality. 

To properly plan a facility, FMs need to leverage any and all existing data about the organization’s existing space management.

This isn’t just about knowing what your square footage is; it’s about figuring out how those square feet interact with staffing concerns and long term goals. 

Specifically, FM need three tools to strategically analyze their existing workspace and make plans for change:

• Comprehensive reports and analytics that provide actionable insights into the existing needs of employees and real-time use of existing space, including occupancy and portfolio reports
• Scenario planning software, which makes it easy to virtually test out the impacts of reconfigurations before having to manually implement them
• Stack plans , which provide a high-level picture of how space is currently being used

Of course, this assumes there is already an existing strategy in place to maximize the three basic elements of space management —effective space planning, effective office use, and effective space tracking. 

When these systems are in place, and the right data is being collected, FMs can use them to perform gap analysis and set benchmarks. This will guide future facility management in the best way possible. 

3. Start planning

Once FMs understand both their goals and their benchmarks, they can begin the actual work of creating their master plan. This is when the challenging work of translating a facility plan into a business plan happens. It will look different, depending on the business drivers for your organization. 

To plan properly, FMs should first document their primary objectives, and then conduct a risk assessment of any plans. This assessment should include cost analysis, which can be done using scenario reports. 

At this stage, FMs can also benefit immensely from move management software . They will also need to develop a method for both gaining approval and reporting on results. 

Especially if their plans will include new working policies (such as implementing flexible seating arrangements like hot desking or office neighborhoods ), they may also want to seek input from both human resources and the employees themselves. 

In fact, companies should look to include all stakeholders in all aspects of the strategic planning process. 

4. Start acting

The more FMs are able to maximize the first steps of facilities planning, the easier acting on their plan will be. 

This is also where the right tools become essential. The best way to implement any new changes to a workplace or facility is with the right facility management software. Ideally, this is one that can integrate with your company’s existing integrated workplace management system (IWMS).

Finally, remember that strategic facility planning isn’t a ‘one and done’ occurrence. 

This is an iterative process. Any plans will need to be assessed, adapted, and maybe even rewritten on an ongoing basis. This will include continually relying on real-time data and comparing it against financial reports and other benchmarks. This will provide a picture of what’s working and what isn’t. 

What is the importance of facilities planning? 

There is a rise in types of work environments , the growing reliance on the digital workspace , and greater competition. As a result, we can only expect facility planning to become more and more important. 

When managed properly with the right tools, companies can expect to see the following benefits from strategic facility planning:

• Cost savings and improved sustainability, usually in the form of requiring less office space
• Improved employee experience and engagement, derived from new working arrangements that make better use of office space and enhance the digital workspace as well—critically important now during the Great Resignation
• Greater efficiency, thanks to the thoughtful analysis of how resources can optimized

Better still, these new changes will likely benefit other departments, potentially improving all aspects of using an office. For example, when FMs bring in better wayfinding systems to support any of the hybrid work models we’re currently seeing, they’re actually making the office easier to navigate for anyone who walks through its doors. 

In other words, when organizations are planning their facility, they are actually planning to future-proof their facility.

What are the dangers of not having a plan? 

Like Benjamin Franklin famously said, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Winging it is simply not an option. Especially when you’re managing something as complex as even a small company—let alone complete enterprise facility management . 

As the pandemic taught us, things don’t always go to plan. But the companies that had a system in place for making and implementing plans were the ones that were able to more quickly adjust to the new reality. Companies that have the right approach to facility planning will always be more nimble and resilient than those that fail to plan in the first place. 

See OfficeSpace in Action

Get a personalized demo and create a hybrid workplace that works for everyone

OfficeSpace offers a software solution that makes facility planning easy. Reach out for a free demo. 

Photos: Thirdman , Sora Shimazaki , ANTONI SHKRABA production , Mikhail Nilov

How to write a business plan for a facility maintenance company?

Putting together a business plan for a facility maintenance company can be daunting - especially if you're creating a business for the first time - but with this comprehensive guide, you'll have the necessary tools to do it confidently.

We will explore why writing one is so important in both starting up and growing an existing facility maintenance company, as well as what should go into making an effective plan - from its structure to content - and what tools can be used to streamline the process and avoid errors.

Without further ado, let us begin!

In this guide:

Why write a business plan for a facility maintenance company?

• What information is needed to create a business plan for a facility maintenance company?
• How do I build a financial forecast for a facility maintenance company?

The written part of a facility maintenance company business plan

• What tool should I use to write my facility maintenance company business plan?

Understanding the document's scope and goals will help you easily grasp its structure and content. Before diving into the specifics of the plan, let's take a moment to explore the key reasons why having a facility maintenance company business plan is so crucial.

To have a clear roadmap to grow the business

It's rarely business as usual for small businesses. The economy follows cycles where years of growth are followed by recessions, and the business environment is always changing with new technologies, new regulations, new competitors, and new consumer behaviours appearing all the time...

In this context, running a business without a clear roadmap is like driving blindfolded: it's dangerous at best. That's why writing a business plan for a facility maintenance company is essential to create successful and sustainable businesses.

To write an effective business plan, you will need to take stock of where you are (if you are already in business) and where you want the business to go in the next three to five years.

Once you know where you want your facility maintenance company to be, you'll have to identify:

• what resources (human, equipment, and capital) are needed to get there,
• at what pace the business needs to progress to get there in time,
• and what risks you'll face along the way.

Going through this process regularly is beneficial, both for startups and existing companies, as it helps make informed decisions about how best to allocate resources to ensure the long-term success of the business.

To anticipate future cash flows

Regularly comparing your actual financial performance to the projections in the financial forecast of your facility maintenance company's business plan gives you the ability to monitor your business's financial health and make necessary adjustments as needed.

This practice allows you to detect potential financial issues, such as unexpected cash shortfalls before they escalate into major problems. Giving you time to find additional financing or put in place corrective measures.

Additionally, it helps you identify growth opportunities, like excess cash flow that could be allocated to launch new products and services or expand into new markets.

Staying on track with these regular comparisons enables you to make well-informed decisions about the amount of financing your business might require, or the excess cash flow you can expect to generate from your main business activities.

To secure financing

Whether you are a startup or an existing business, writing a detailed facility maintenance company business plan is essential when seeking financing from banks or investors.

This makes sense given what we've just seen: financiers want to ensure you have a clear roadmap and visibility on your future cash flows.

Banks will use the information included in the plan to assess your borrowing capacity (how much debt your business can support) and your ability to repay the loan before deciding whether they will extend credit to your business and on what terms.

Similarly, investors will review your plan carefully to assess if their investment can generate an attractive return on investment.

To do so, they will be looking for evidence that your facility maintenance company has the potential for healthy growth, profitability, and cash flow generation over time.

Now that you understand why it is important to create a business plan for a facility maintenance company, let's take a look at what information is needed to create one.

Need a convincing business plan?

The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

Information needed to create a business plan for a facility maintenance company

Drafting a facility maintenance company business plan requires research so that you can project sales, investments and cost accurately in your financial forecast, and convince the reader that there is a viable commercial opportunity to be seized.

Below, we'll focus on three critical pieces of information you should gather before starting to write your plan.

Carrying out market research for a facility maintenance company

As you consider writing your business plan for a facility maintenance company, conducting market research becomes a vital step to ensure accurate and realistic financial projections.

Market research provides valuable insights into your target customer base, competitors, pricing strategies, and other key factors that can significantly impact the commercial success of your business.

Through this research, you may uncover trends that could influence your facility maintenance company.

Your facility maintenance company may discover that customers are increasingly expecting personalized services tailored to their specific needs. Your facility maintenance company may find that customers are increasingly looking for eco-friendly services or products that could reduce their environmental impact.

Such market trends play a significant role in forecasting revenue, as they offer valuable data about potential customers' spending habits and preferences.

By incorporating these findings into your financial projections, you can present investors with more accurate information, helping them make informed decisions about investing in your facility maintenance company.

Developing the sales and marketing plan for a facility maintenance company

As you embark on creating your facility maintenance company business plan, it is crucial to budget sales and marketing expenses beforehand.

A well-defined sales and marketing plan should include precise projections of the actions required to acquire and retain customers. It will also outline the necessary workforce to execute these initiatives and the budget required for promotions, advertising, and other marketing efforts.

This approach ensures that the appropriate amount of resources is allocated to these activities, aligning with the sales and growth objectives outlined in your business plan.

The staffing and capital expenditure requirements of a facility maintenance company

Whether you are starting or expanding a facility maintenance company, it is important to have a clear plan for recruitment and capital expenditures (investment in equipment and real estate) in order to ensure the success of the business.

Both the recruitment and investment plans need to be coherent with the timing and level of growth planned in your forecast, and require appropriate funding.

A facility maintenance company might incur staffing costs such as wages for laborers, electricians, plumbers, and other specialized craftsmen. They may also have to pay for equipment such as ladders, power tools, and vehicles for transporting personnel and supplies. Additionally, they may have to pay for protective gear, cleaning supplies, and other materials necessary to perform the job.

In order to create a realistic financial forecast, you will also need to consider the other operating expenses associated with running the business on a day-to-day basis (insurance, bookkeeping, etc.). 

Once you have all the necessary information to create a business plan for your facility maintenance company, it is time to start creating your financial forecast.

What goes into your facility maintenance company's financial forecast?

The financial forecast of your facility maintenance company will enable you to assess the profitability potential of your business in the coming years and how much capital is required to fund the actions planned in the business plan.

The four key outputs of a financial forecast for a facility maintenance company are:

• The profit and loss (P&L) statement ,
• The projected balance sheet ,
• The cash flow forecast ,
• And the sources and uses table .

Let's take a closer look at each of these.

The projected P&L statement

Your facility maintenance company forecasted P&L statement enables the reader of your business plan to get an idea of how much revenue and profits your business is expected to make in the near future.

Ideally, your reader will want to see:

• Growth above the inflation level
• Expanding profit margins
• Positive net profit throughout the plan

Expectations for an established facility maintenance company will of course be different than for a startup. Existing businesses which have reached their cruising altitude might have slower growth and higher margins than ventures just being started.

The forecasted balance sheet of your facility maintenance company

The projected balance sheet of your facility maintenance company will enable the reader of your business plan to assess the overall financial health of your business.

It shows three elements: assets, liabilities and equity:

• Assets: are productive resources owned by the business, such as equipment, cash, and accounts receivable (money owed by clients).
• Liabilities: are debts owed to creditors, lenders, and other entities, such as accounts payable (money owed to suppliers).
• Equity: includes the sums invested by the shareholders or business owners and the profits and losses accumulated by the business to date (which are called retained earnings). It is a proxy for the value of the owner's stake in the business.

Analysing your facility maintenance company projected balance sheet provides an understanding of your facility maintenance company's working capital structure, investment and financing policies.

In particular, the readers of your plan can compare the level of financial debt on the balance sheet to the equity value to measure the level of financial risk (equity doesn't need to be reimbursed, while financial debt must be repaid, making it riskier).

They can also use your balance sheet to assess your facility maintenance company's liquidity and solvency:

• A liquidity analysis: focuses on whether or not your business has sufficient cash and short-term assets to cover its liabilities due in the next 12 months.
• A solvency analysis: takes and longer view to assess whether or not your business has the capacity to repay its debts over the medium-term.

The cash flow forecast

A projected cash flow statement for a facility maintenance company is used to show how much cash the business is generating or consuming.

The cash flow forecast is usually organized by nature to show three key metrics:

• The operating cash flow: do the core business activities generate or consume cash?
• The investing cash flow: how much is the business investing in long-term assets (this is usually compared to the level of fixed assets on the balance sheet to assess whether the business is regularly maintaining and renewing its equipment)?
• The financing cash flow: is the business raising new financing or repaying financiers (debt repayment, dividends)?

As we discussed earlier, cash is king and keeping an eye on future cash flows an imperative for running a successful business. Therefore, you can expect the reader of your facility maintenance company business plan to pay close attention to your cash flow forecast.

Also, note that it is customary to provide both yearly and monthly cash flow forecasts in a business plan - so that the reader can analyze seasonal variation and ensure the facility maintenance company is appropriately funded.

The initial financing plan

The sources and uses table or initial financing plan is a key component of your business plan when starting a facility maintenance company.

It shows where the capital needed to set up the business will come from (sources) and how it will be spent (uses).

This table helps size the investment required to set up the facility maintenance company, and understand how risks will be distributed between the business owners, and the financiers.

The sources and uses table also highlights what the starting cash position will be. This is key for startups as the business needs to have sufficient funding to sustain operations until the break-even point is reached.

Now that you have a clear understanding of what will go into the financial forecast of your facility maintenance company business plan, let's have a look at the written part of the plan.

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The written part of a facility maintenance company business plan plays a key role: it lays out the plan of action you intend to execute to seize the commercial opportunity you've identified on the market and provides the context needed for the reader to decide if they believe your plan to be achievable and your financial forecast to be realistic.

The written part of a facility maintenance company business plan is composed of 7 main sections:

• The executive summary
• The presentation of the company
• The products and services
• The market analysis
• The strategy
• The operations
• The financial plan

Let's go through the content of each section in more detail!

1. The executive summary

The executive summary, the first section of your facility maintenance company's business plan, serves as an inviting snapshot of your entire plan, leaving readers eager to know more about your business.

To compose an effective executive summary, start with a concise introduction of your business, covering its name, concept, location, history, and unique aspects. Share insights about the services or products you intend to offer and your target customer base.

Subsequently, provide an overview of your facility maintenance company's addressable market, highlighting current trends and potential growth opportunities.

Then, present a summary of critical financial figures, such as projected revenues, profits, and cash flows.

You should then include a summary of your key financial figures such as projected revenues, profits, and cash flows.

Lastly, address any funding needs in the "ask" section of your executive summary.

2. The presentation of the company

The second section in your facility maintenance company's business plan should focus on the structure and ownership, location, and management team of the company.

The structure and ownership part provides an overview of the legal structure of the business, who the owners are and how much each has invested and owns. If you are seeking financing it is important that the reader gets a clear picture of which legal entity is receiving the funds, and who controls the business.

The location part should give an overview of the premises from which the company is operating, and why that location is of particular interest (catchment area, accessibility, amenities nearby, etc.).

When describing the location of your facility maintenance company, you may want to emphasize the potential customer base that could be accessed by the company. You could emphasize the proximity to major population centers and the access to transportation networks that could make it easy for the company to reach its customers. You might point out the availability of skilled labor in the area, as well as the potential for new business opportunities in the future. Additionally, you may want to discuss the potential for cost savings that your company could enjoy in the area due to lower overhead or tax incentives.

Finally, you should introduce the management team. Explain each member's role, background, and experience.

It is also important to emphasize any past successes that the members of the management team have achieved, and how long they've been working together, as this will help potential lenders or investors understand why they should trust in their leadership.

3. The products and services section

The products and services section of your business plan should include a detailed description of the offerings that your company provides to its customers. 

For example, your facility maintenance company may offer customers a range of services such as maintenance and repair of lighting and plumbing, cleaning and janitorial services, as well as landscaping and snow removal. These services are important to keep a facility running smoothly and in good condition for those who use it. Additionally, your company may also offer preventative maintenance services to ensure that all equipment and systems are running optimally and efficiently for the long term.

When drafting this section, you should be precise about the categories of products or services you sell, the types of customers you are targeting and how customers can buy them.

4. The market analysis

When outlining your market analysis in the facility maintenance company business plan, it's essential to include comprehensive details about customers' demographics and segmentation, target market, competition, barriers to entry, and relevant regulations.

The primary aim of this section is to give the reader an understanding of the market size and appeal while demonstrating your expertise in the industry.

To begin, delve into the demographics and segmentation subsection, providing an overview of the addressable market for your facility maintenance company, key marketplace trends, and introducing various customer segments and their preferences in terms of purchasing habits and budgets.

Next, shift your focus to the target market subsection, where you can zoom in on the specific customer segments your facility maintenance company targets. Explain how your products and services are tailored to meet the unique needs of these customers.

For example, your target market might include businesses that need regular maintenance on their property. This could include restaurants, office buildings, retail stores, and other commercial properties. These customers will have a need for regular services such as cleaning, repairs, and preventive maintenance.

In the competition subsection, introduce your main competitors and explain what sets your facility maintenance company apart from them.

Finally, round off your market analysis by providing an overview of the main regulations that apply to your facility maintenance company.

5. The strategy section

When writing the strategy section of a business plan for your facility maintenance company, it is essential to include information about your competitive edge, pricing strategy, sales & marketing plan, milestones, and risks and mitigants.

The competitive edge subsection should explain what sets your company apart from its competitors. This part is especially key if you are writing the business plan of a startup, as you have to make a name for yourself in the marketplace against established players.

The pricing strategy subsection should demonstrate how you intend to remain profitable while still offering competitive prices to your customers.

The sales & marketing plan should outline how you intend to reach out and acquire new customers, as well as retain existing ones with loyalty programs or special offers. 

The milestones subsection should outline what your company has achieved to date, and its main objectives for the years to come - along with dates so that everyone involved has clear expectations of when progress can be expected.

The risks and mitigants subsection should list the main risks that jeopardize the execution of your plan and explain what measures you have taken to minimize these. This is essential in order for investors or lenders to feel secure in investing in your venture.

Your facility maintenance company could face financial risks. If the company experiences a downturn in the economy, it might not have the resources to continue providing services. Additionally, your company could face operational risks. For example, if a key piece of equipment malfunctions, it could lead to a disruption in services and may cause customer dissatisfaction.

6. The operations section

The operations of your facility maintenance company must be presented in detail in your business plan.

Begin by addressing your staff, specifying the main roles and your recruitment plan to support the anticipated growth. Outline the qualifications and experience needed for each role and discuss your recruitment strategies, which may involve using job boards, referrals, or headhunters.

Next, clearly state your facility maintenance company's operating hours, allowing the reader to gauge the adequacy of your staffing levels. Additionally, mention any considerations for varying opening times during peak seasons and your approach to handling customer queries outside regular operating hours.

The key assets and intellectual property (IP) required to run your business should also be highlighted. If you rely on licenses, trademarks, physical structures like equipment or property, or lease agreements, ensure they are well-documented in this section.

You could have key assets such as the maintenance tools used by employees and the vehicles used to transport them to the job sites. You might also have intellectual property such as the company’s logo and the maintenance protocols and processes that your employees use to complete their work.

Finally, provide a comprehensive list of suppliers you intend to collaborate with, along with a breakdown of their services and main commercial terms, such as price, payment terms, break clauses and contract duration. Investors often seek insight into the reasons behind your supplier choices, which may include a preference for higher-quality products or established relationships from past ventures.

7. The presentation of the financial plan

The financial plan section is where we will include the financial forecast we talked about earlier in this guide.

Now that you have a clear idea of the content of a facility maintenance company business plan, let's look at some of the tools you can use to create yours.

What tool should I use to write my facility maintenance company's business plan?

In this section, we will be reviewing the two main solutions for creating a facility maintenance company business plan:

• Using specialized online business plan software,
• Outsourcing the plan to the business plan writer.

Using an online business plan software for your facility maintenance company's business plan

Using online business planning software is the most efficient and modern way to create a facility maintenance company business plan.

There are several advantages to using specialized software:

• You can easily create your financial forecast by letting the software take care of the financial calculations for you without errors
• You are guided through the writing process by detailed instructions and examples for each part of the plan
• You can access a library of dozens of complete business plan samples and templates for inspiration
• You get a professional business plan, formatted and ready to be sent to your bank or investors
• You can easily track your actual financial performance against your financial forecast
• You can create scenarios to stress test your forecast's main assumptions
• You can easily update your forecast as time goes by to maintain visibility on future cash flows
• You have a friendly support team on standby to assist you when you are stuck

If you're interested in using this type of solution, you can try The Business Plan Shop for free by signing up here .

Need a solid financial forecast?

The Business Plan Shop does the maths for you. Simply enter your revenues, costs and investments. Click save and our online tool builds a three-way forecast for you instantly.

Hiring a business plan writer to write your facility maintenance company's business plan

Outsourcing your facility maintenance company business plan to a business plan writer can also be a viable option.

Business plan writers are experienced in writing business plans and adept at creating financial forecasts without errors. Furthermore, hiring a consultant can save you time and allow you to focus on the day-to-day operations of your business.

However, hiring business plan writers is expensive as you are paying for the software used by the consultant, plus their time, and their profit margin of course.

From experience, you need to budget at least £1.5k ($2.0k) excluding tax for a complete business plan, more if you need to make changes after the initial version (which happens frequently after the initial meetings with lenders or investors).

You also need to be careful when seeking investment. Investors want their money to be used to grow the business, not spent on consulting fees. Therefore, the amount you spend on business plan writing services (and other consulting services such as legal services) needs to be negligible relative to the amount raised.

The other drawback is that you usually don't own the business plan itself: you just get the output, while the actual document is saved in the consultant's business plan software - which makes it difficult to maintain the document up to date without hiring the consultant on a retainer.

For these reasons, outsourcing the facility maintenance company business plan to a business plan writer should be considered carefully, weighing both the advantages and disadvantages of hiring outside help.

Ultimately, it may be the right decision for some businesses, while others may find it beneficial to write their business plan using online software.

Why not create your facility maintenance company's business plan using Word or Excel?

I must advise against using Microsoft Excel and Word (or their Google, Apple, or open-source equivalents) to write your facility maintenance company business plan. Let me explain why.

Firstly, creating an accurate and error-free financial forecast on Excel (or any spreadsheet) is highly technical and requires a strong grasp of accounting principles and financial modelling skills. It is, therefore, unlikely that anyone will fully trust your numbers unless you have both a degree in finance and accounting and significant financial modelling experience, like us at The Business Plan Shop.

Secondly, relying on spreadsheets is inefficient. While it may have been the only option in the past, technology has advanced significantly, and software can now perform these tasks much faster and with greater accuracy. With the rise of AI, software can even help us detect mistakes in forecasts and analyze the numbers for better decision-making.

And with the rise of AI, software is also becoming smarter at helping us detect mistakes in our forecasts and helping us analyse the numbers to make better decisions.

Moreover, software makes it easier to compare actuals versus forecasts and maintain up-to-date forecasts to keep visibility on future cash flows, as we discussed earlier in this guide. This task is cumbersome when using spreadsheets.

Now, let's talk about the written part of your facility maintenance company business plan. While it may be less error-prone, using software can bring tremendous gains in productivity. Word processors, for example, lack instructions and examples for each part of your business plan. They also won't automatically update your numbers when changes occur in your forecast, and they don't handle formatting for you.

Overall, while Word or Excel may seem viable for some entrepreneurs to create a business plan, it's by far becoming an antiquated way of doing things.

• Having an up-to-date business plan is key to maintaining visibility on your future cash flows.
• A business plan has 2 parts: a financial forecast highlighting the expected growth, profitability and cash generation of the business; and a written part which provides the context needed to interpret and assess the quality of the forecast.
• Using business plan software is the modern way of writing and maintaining business plans.

We hope that this guide helped you to better understand how to write the business plan for a facility maintenance company. If you still have questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

• How to write a 5 years business plan
• Business plan myths

Know someone who owns or wants to start a facility maintenance company? Share this article with them!

Founder & CEO at The Business Plan Shop Ltd

Guillaume Le Brouster is a seasoned entrepreneur and financier.

Guillaume has been an entrepreneur for more than a decade and has first-hand experience of starting, running, and growing a successful business.

Prior to being a business owner, Guillaume worked in investment banking and private equity, where he spent most of his time creating complex financial forecasts, writing business plans, and analysing financial statements to make financing and investment decisions.

Guillaume holds a Master's Degree in Finance from ESCP Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management from Paris Dauphine University.

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Facilities management helps ensure the functionality, comfort, safety and efficiency of buildings and grounds, infrastructure and real estate.

Facilities management includes:

• Lease management, including lease administration and accounting
• Capital project planning and management 
• Maintenance and operations
• Energy management
• Occupancy and space management 
• Employee and occupant experience 
• Emergency management and business continuity
• Real estate management

Types of facilities management:  There are two basic areas: Hard facilities management (Hard FM) and soft facilities management (Soft FM). 

• Hard FM deals with physical assets such as plumbing, wiring, elevators and heating and cooling.
• Soft FM focuses on tasks performed by people such as custodial services, lease accounting, catering, security and groundskeeping.

This guide summarizes what sustainability-forward organizations look for in their ESG software platform to help achieve their goals.

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For people to do their best work and feel engaged in their environments, they need to be in buildings that are safe, welcoming and efficient. Facilities management has a hand in everything that surrounds the people in facilities and on the grounds. Where they work, play, learn and live should be comfortable, productive and sustainable.

Superior facilities management will contribute to your organization’s bottom line, impacting the short-and long-term value of property, buildings and equipment. Your efforts can be crucial to:

• Space optimization
• Guiding capital projects
• Energy management and maintenance
• Lease accounting
• Workplace experience

People spend 87% of their time in buildings. See how to improve your operations to make their lives more comfortable and maximize efficiencies.

In its first worldwide integrated workplace management system (IWMS) MarketScape report, market research firm IDC highlights TRIRIGA for its innovation, flexibility, functionality and industry expertise.

Real estate is the second-highest cost for an organization and effective space management can result in cost savings up to 30%. ¹

The average capital project is 80% over budget and 20 months behind schedule, but adopting capital project management technology can lead to up to a 45% reduction in overall project costs. ²

Companies that rank high in employee engagement have 59% less turnover, 17% more productivity and 41% less absenteeism. 3

A smart building with integrated systems can realize 30–50% savings in existing buildings that are otherwise inefficient. 4

The technology in facilities management includes both software and systems. Vast amounts of data are generated by built environments through Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, wifi, meters, gauges and smart devices.

The most effective solutions enable facilities management departments to make good use of this data by infusing analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) into an integrated workplace management system (IWMS). These technologies deliver cognitive capabilities that make computer-aided facilities management possible—so you can analyze and learn from data, enabling you to achieve real-time visibility, perform predictive facilities maintenance and create more productive, cost-efficient environments.

Across numerous industries and company sizes, facilities managers have a wide range of important day-to-day responsibilities. These managers need to both plan ahead and also be ready for various tasks within any given day. While the manager’s responsibilities often include:

• real estate management
• capital projects and planning
• occupancy and space management 
• lease administration and accounting
• workplace experience

There are also ways to improve the performance of each responsibility that will fill the manager's schedule:

• deliver operational efficiencies
• create an environment conducive to productivity
• find and adopt technological solutions 
• guarantee regulatory compliance
• minimize risks to facilities and employees
• reduce energy consumption costs
• reduce the carbon footprint of the real estate portfolio

As many enterprises return to their offices, the workplace ideally becomes a destination where employees want to gather and collaborate—connecting safely with each other.

The new workspace in the post-pandemic world must to satisfy even more needs. Does productivity mean keeping face-to-face working or saving employees commuting time? Have a look at the advantages and challenges of building a hybrid workspace model.

Give employees a better workplace experience. “A great place to work” is being redefined by COVID-19, employee expectations and technology. That experience can still mean the difference between engaged, productive employees and a company facing turnover and even more disruption. Learn how to create that new experience .

See how ISS is transforming the facilities management of more than 25,000 buildings worldwide using TRIRIGA. Specific facilities management examples show the value of IoT as buildings and environments become more personalized, intuitive and easy to use.

With the onset of COVID-19, GRE was able to move 95% of IBM’s global employees from the office to home by using our own solutions. Now we’re preparing for the move back to the office, with the ability to monitor adherence to pandemic-related protocols and to verify health credentials.

Learn how an integrated workplace management system (IWMS) can increase the operational, financial and environmental performance of facilities and real estate.

Use data to make better-informed and data-driven decisions for intelligent real estate and facilities management.

Get intelligent asset management, monitoring, predictive maintenance and reliability in a single platform.

Read how as artificial intelligence gets integrated with building management systems and IoT devices, it has the potential to improve occupant experience, increase operational efficiency and optimize space management and asset utilization.

Explore how the workplace as a destination is changing the way facilities managers are optimizing space for safety, productivity and improved experiences.

Data and AI are increasingly critical tools in how organizations are evolving their facilities management. Simple, fast and flexible, IBM TRIRIGA is an integrated workplace management system that has the right mix of applications in one modular solution to maximize your building lifecycle while preparing you to meet future needs.

¹  Research and Markets  (link resides outside ibm.com)

²  McKinsey & Company  (link resides outside ibm.com)

³  Gallup  (link resides outside ibm.com)

⁴  American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy  (link resides outside ibm.com)

Business Continuity Planning for Facilities Managers

Facility Management should play a crucial role in Business Continuity – they manage the 2nd largest and most consequential business “assets” (after IT) on which day-to-day business operation rely.

Yet many Facilities Management (FM) departments are often excluded from the planning process, either because BIA surveys skew a focus toward IT dependencies and financial impacts, or because Recovery strategies lean toward alternate site configurations (under the assumption that a damaged facility will be a total loss).  Both of these perspectives ignore the fact that ‘total loss’ of a facility almost never occurs.

Then there are Facilities Managers who perceive little value in planning for potential disruptions – either under the assumption that response and recovery are part of their existing job duties (and don’t require planning), or that they can’t plan for what they can’t anticipate.  Both are short-sighted.

Having spent more than a dozen years as a Facility Manager (I began my involvement in Business Continuity in that role), I’ve learned that there is a great deal Facility functions can do to plan for recovery from disruptions; and FM can play a vital role in Response and Recovery activities – but only with advance planning and coordination with overall BCM objectives.

First, the typical “Loss of Building” scenario which many organizations use as a foundation for BCM Planning is an exaggeration: damage to facilities (other than small buildings and stand-alone facilities – like branch banks or retail stores) almost never results in a total loss.  Damage may occur, but the facility is seldom rendered useless.  (See our earlier blog for more on this subject).

There are things the Facilities Team can do to plan for a ‘total loss’, but they are limited.  I’ll touch on those planning requirements later.  Meanwhile, Facility Managers can plan the logistics in the event of building damage (a water or sprinkler leak, broken windows, an isolated power outage, small fires and other partial disruptions).

Prioritized Internal Relocation

Facilities Managers plays a vital role in helping to devise a Recovery Strategy for ‘partial loss’ (damage to a floor, quadrant or other portion of a building).  A sound BIA will enable the organization to determine their most critical business processes.  Facility Managers hold the key to determining where critical business process participants can move if their portion of a building is damaged.

Using the BIA’s prioritization results, the least critical process participants can move out (work from home, or just go home) and be replaced by more critical players.  Armed with floor plans designating the occupied space for each business process, Facilities Managers can work with the BCM team (or Incident Managers) to shuffle employees within the facility to reduce the impact of damage on those most critical processes.

Repairing Building Damage

Although overlooked as part of their day-to-day job, knowing whom to contact – plumbers, electricians, restoration companies and similar skilled trades and suppliers – is critical to responding quickly and effectively to facility damage.

A good Facilities Manager is adept at responding to day-to-day ‘crises’; they can be invaluable in during any disruption because they also know (or are responsible for) critical support functions:

• Physical Security (including access controls and security guards)
• Mail and overnight deliveries (and internal distribution)
• Adds, moves and changes of furniture and equipment
• Vending, catering and food services (IM and Recovery Teams can’t work on empty stomachs)
• Coordination with local Emergency Services (they should be on a first name basis with the Fire Marshall)
• Logistics (shipping, receiving, inventory and suppliers)
• Interaction with landlords and building owners.

Capturing that knowledge in a Business Continuity Plan assures access to those contacts under all circumstances (including damage to the Facilities Management Department, or absence of their staff!).

Temporary Facilities

Some impacts may render a facility temporarily uninhabitable (or off limits).  If only a day or two, work-from-home strategies may suffice – but they begin to lose their effectiveness in 3-5 days.  Knowing where local, alternate space may be available (workspace sharing or hoteling vendors, neighboring buildings or other tenants with extra space, for example) may provide better long-term temporary solutions.  Having a good working relationship with a landlord or building owner can pay big dividends in a disruption.  Having quick access to those contacts – within the Business Continuity Plan – will ensure adequate time to make phone and network connections to make such spaces usable.

In the unlikely event that a building is destroyed (a ‘total loss’) those same contacts will enable the organization to begin sourcing replacement facilities quickly.

Risk Mitigation

Electrical outages can be annoying (and costly) disruptions.  Adding a backup power generator can help mitigate the impact of those outages.  And FM can help determine not only the siting (where) but also the capacity (what) of generators – to serve both the primary objective (keeping the data center running) and secondary objectives: providing emergency power at the desk of critical business processes (like Customer Service or Order Fulfillment).

Need to shelter-in-place?  FM should have the best understanding of the most structurally safe areas of the building.

Planning evacuation gathering points?  FM can coordinate with other tenants or neighbors to make sure everyone isn’t planning to meet up in the same locations.

Flooding a problem?  There are as many ways to divert water as there are budgets to pay for them.  If you understand the financial impact of a possible flood, FM can help find a permanent or temporary means to mitigate some or all of the potential damage.

These are just a few of many areas where FM can help reduce the potential risks an organization faces – if they’re included in the planning process.

Decision Support for Incident Managers

Facilities Managers – often overlooked as a purely ‘administrative function’ – can be a highly valuable participant in Incident Management.  They have access to knowledge that no one else possesses.  They have established contacts with suppliers, vendors and trades that may be needed following a disruption.  And they have an understanding of the capacity (for people, electrical loads and HVAC) that may be crucial to determining long- and short-term recovery strategies.

Every Business Continuity Management program should include Facilities Management.  A smart Business Continuity Manager works hand-in-hand with their FM team to help build both their high-level strategy, and their Incident Management plans.  Just like the technical support provided by IT, FM possesses a set of skills and a wealth of knowledge that BC Managers can leverage both before and during a disruption.

• Business Continuity
• Business Impact Analysis
• Disaster Recovery
• Uncategorized

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Threats, Impacts, BCPs

Steps in Building a Business Continuity Strategy in Facility Management

Put on your risk goggles, crunch the numbers and reveal the true impact of disruptions, perfect your evacuation skills, identify your key allies, restore critical functions to bounce back, don’t leave any vulnerabilities unchecked, train like there's no tomorrow, spot threats before they strike, keep your plan supercharged, promote a culture of preparedness.

Ever had that sinking feeling when you realize your facility’s critical systems can fail, leaving you in a state of panic? Or that knot of anxiety that tightens when you discover a major equipment malfunction that brings operations to a grinding halt?

It’s like being in a high-speed car chase, but you’re driving with a blindfold on. You’re determined to keep your facility running smoothly, but all the while, you anticipate the looming disaster around the next corner.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s where a business continuity strategy comes into play.

It’s your lifeline during times of crisis, outlining the procedures and guidelines you need to follow to keep your organization afloat.

But here’s the thing: many facility managers underestimate the importance of having a solid strategy in place.

You might think, “I can handle it when the time comes. I’ll deal with it on the fly.”

But that’s a risky mindset. Without a well-thought-out facilities business continuity plan, you’re putting your staff, resources, and even profitability at stake.

In this article, we’ll delve into the next-gen steps in building a business continuity strategy in facility management, exploring best practices, key considerations, and real-world examples.

Imagine you’re managing a corporate office building. You need to consider various risks such as fire hazards, power outages, natural disasters, or even cybersecurity threats.

Each of these risks has the potential to disrupt your facility and affect business operations. By conducting a comprehensive risk assessment, you can identify these potential risks and their potential impact on facility management.

Once you’ve identified the risks, it’s time to put on your detective hat and uncover the critical functions that are essential for your facility’s smooth operation. These critical functions can vary depending on the nature of your facility, but they often include security, HVAC systems, electrical infrastructure, and communication networks.

Prioritizing the continuity of these functions ensures that even in the face of disruptions, your facility can continue to operate efficiently.

For example, if a power outage occurs, identifying the critical function of electrical infrastructure will prompt you to have backup generators or alternative power sources in place to keep the lights on and essential systems running. Similarly, understanding the potential impact of a cybersecurity threat will lead you to prioritize the continuity of your facility’s data security measures.

Understanding the potential impact of disruptions is crucial for building a robust business continuity strategy.

That’s where the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) swoops in to save the day.

Think of it as your trusty sidekick, helping you crunch the numbers and reveal the true impact of disruptions.

First, you embark on a thorough analysis of your facility’s operations and processes. You leave no stone unturned, examining every nook and cranny to identify the critical functions that keep your facility running smoothly.

Whether it’s HVAC systems, security protocols, or maintenance procedures, you assess their significance and prioritize their continuity.

But it doesn’t stop there. The BIA dives into the financial and operational implications of potential disruptions. You put on your detective hat, investigating the potential consequences of a power outage, a cyber attack, or even a natural disaster. By quantifying the impact in terms of downtime, revenue loss, and customer satisfaction, you gain a clear understanding of the risks at hand.

Furthermore, the BIA uncovers the intricate web of dependencies and interdependencies within your facility. It reveals the domino effect that disruptions can trigger, highlighting the interconnectivity between various systems, departments, and stakeholders. For example, a failure in the electrical infrastructure can disrupt not only lighting and equipment but also impact security systems and employee productivity.

When unforeseen disasters hit, you want to be the expert who swiftly guides everyone to safety, creating a sense of security and preparedness.

Your emergency response plan is the ultimate playbook for handling various situations, from evacuation to sheltering and even lockdown scenarios. It’s like having a superhero team ready to leap into action, ensuring the safety and well-being of everyone within your facility.

For example, imagine a facility manager responsible for a large office building. He creates a comprehensive Emergency Response Plan that outlines the evacuation routes, designated assembly points, and roles for each team member during emergencies. They also set up communication channels, ensuring quick and efficient dissemination of critical information.

When an unexpected fire breaks out on one of the floors, His well-prepared response plan springs into action. Employees follow the clear evacuation procedures, emergency response teams act promptly, and communication channels keep everyone informed about the situation. Thanks to the well-rehearsed plan, everyone safely evacuates the building, and the fire is quickly brought under control.

By developing a top-notch emergency response plan, facility managers like you can instill confidence, protect lives, and safeguard the continuity of business operations, making them the real heroes in the world of Facility Management.

Key allies could include facility staff, tenants, vendors, local authorities, and emergency services. By involving them in the crisis communication plan, you create a united front to tackle any emergency head-on.

For instance, imagine a scenario where a major water pipe bursts in a commercial building, flooding several floors.

In this case, your key allies might include facility staff to coordinate immediate evacuations and shut off water supplies, tenants to inform them about the situation and safety measures, vendors to assist with repairs, and local authorities or emergency services to manage the overall response.

By integrating digital platforms for real-time communication, like mobile apps or group messaging systems, you ensure rapid dissemination of critical information during the crisis.

This approach enhances the facility’s responsiveness, minimizes disruptions, and showcases a coordinated effort that builds trust among stakeholders.

When the unexpected strikes and disrupts critical functions in facility management, it’s time to put our recovery strategies into action.

The goal? To bounce back stronger than ever and restore normal operations swiftly. Developing these strategies is a crucial step in building a robust business continuity plan for facility management.

First and foremost, we analyze the impact of the disruption and identify the critical functions that need immediate attention. With a clear understanding of what needs to be restored, we devise comprehensive strategies to get things back on track.

For example, if a facility is damaged due to a natural disaster, we might establish alternate facilities or activate remote work capabilities to ensure uninterrupted service delivery.

Collaboration is key in the recovery process. We work closely with our trusted vendors and suppliers, leveraging their expertise and resources to expedite the recovery. By forging strong partnerships, we can access necessary equipment, materials, and services promptly, minimizing downtime and ensuring a timely recovery.

When it comes to building a business continuity strategy in facility management, one crucial step is implementing preventive measures to ensure vulnerabilities are not left unchecked. This proactive approach helps safeguard critical systems and functions from potential disruptions.

To begin, it is essential to establish preventive maintenance programs for critical systems. Regular maintenance and servicing can prevent unexpected breakdowns and identify any underlying issues before they escalate. By staying ahead of maintenance needs, facility managers can minimize the risk of system failures and ensure smooth operations.

Another vital aspect is integrating redundancy and backup systems for key functions. Having backup systems in place provides an additional layer of protection against potential failures. Redundancy ensures that if one system fails, there is a backup ready to take over, minimizing downtime and maintaining continuity.

Conducting regular inspections and audits plays a significant role in identifying potential vulnerabilities. By regularly assessing the facility’s infrastructure, equipment, and processes, facility managers can detect any weak points or areas that require improvement. This proactive approach allows for timely corrective actions and mitigates the risk of unexpected disruptions.

Train Like There’s No Tomorrow

When it comes to building a solid business continuity strategy in facility management, one crucial step stands out: training and testing the plan. In this stage, we embrace the motto “train like there’s no tomorrow” to ensure our emergency response teams are prepared for any situation.

Regular training sessions are the backbone of our preparedness efforts. We gather our teams, share knowledge, and sharpen their skills in handling emergencies. Through interactive sessions, we empower our team members with the confidence and expertise to navigate challenging scenarios.

But training alone is not enough. We go a step further by organizing drills and simulations that put our plan to the test. These real-life scenarios allow us to assess the effectiveness of our strategies, identify areas for improvement, and fine-tune our response procedures. It’s like a dress rehearsal, preparing us to perform flawlessly when the spotlight is on.

Training and testing the plan are not just checkboxes to tick off. They are ongoing processes that ensure our facility management team is always prepared and ready to handle any disruption that comes our way. With each training session and simulation, we become stronger, more resilient, and better equipped to safeguard our operations.

By exploring technology solutions like facility management system software , organizations can gain a competitive edge in maintaining business continuity in facility management.

Automation and monitoring systems take center stage, allowing for early detection of potential issues. These systems can monitor critical functions, equipment, and infrastructure, providing real-time insights and alerts.

They act as a watchful eye, ensuring that any deviations or anomalies are promptly identified and addressed before they escalate into major disruptions.

Moreover, leveraging data analytics becomes a game-changer in proactive risk management. By collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data, facility managers can uncover patterns, identify trends, and predict potential risks.

This data-driven approach enables them to make informed decisions, implement preventive measures, and allocate resources effectively.

Integrating technology solutions not only enhances operational efficiency but also empowers facility managers to take a proactive stance in managing risks.

You’ve created a business continuity plan that’s your trusted companion in times of crisis. But here’s the secret to staying ahead of the game – keeping that plan supercharged through regular reviews and updates.

In the world of facility management, change is the only constant. That’s why maintaining business continuity in facilities management requires establishing a regular review process for your business continuity strategy.

Take a step back, gather your team, and evaluate the effectiveness of your plan based on real-life scenarios.

Did it hold up when faced with challenges? Were there any gaps or areas for improvement?

But don’t stop there. Embrace feedback from your team, stakeholders, and even external experts. They bring fresh perspectives and insights, helping you address emerging risks that might have flown under the radar. Their input can be invaluable in making updates and enhancements to your plan.

Let’s say your facility experienced a recent power outage that lasted longer than anticipated. During the review process, you realized that your plan lacked sufficient measures to handle extended power disruptions.

With this feedback, you can update your plan to include backup power solutions or alternative work arrangements to keep operations running smoothly.

Remember, a supercharged plan is a living document – one that evolves and adapts to the ever-changing landscape of facility management.

When it comes to building a business continuity strategy in facility management, engaging stakeholders and promoting a culture of preparedness is essential. It’s not just about having a plan on paper; it’s about fostering a mindset of resilience within the organization. This involves engaging facility management staff in the planning and implementation process.

By involving your team in the development of the business continuity plan for facility management, you create a sense of ownership and responsibility. Their input and expertise can uncover valuable insights and ensure that the plan reflects the unique needs of the facility. Through training sessions, drills, and regular communication, you can empower your staff to become active participants in building resilience.

But it doesn’t stop there. Collaboration with external stakeholders is equally crucial. This includes partnering with local authorities and emergency services. By establishing relationships and open lines of communication, you can tap into additional resources and expertise in times of crisis. They can provide guidance, support, and coordination during emergency situations, enhancing the effectiveness of your business continuity efforts.

Overall, engaging stakeholders and building resilience is about creating a shared commitment to preparedness. It instills a sense of confidence and readiness within the organization, ensuring that everyone is prepared to respond effectively to any disruption that may come their way.

As facility managers, it’s crucial to recognize the importance of building a solid business continuity strategy. By taking proactive steps such as implementing preventive maintenance programs, integrating redundancy systems, and conducting regular inspections, you can ensure smooth operations and minimize disruptions.

With FieldCircle , you can streamline preventive maintenance tasks, automate inspection processes, and stay ahead of potential risks. By embracing a proactive approach and leveraging technology, you can effectively manage your facility’s maintenance needs, identify vulnerabilities, and address them before they escalate into major issues.

These measures not only protect your business from unexpected downtime but also contribute to long-term cost savings and increased productivity. So, whether you’re a startup founder or a seasoned facility manager, understanding the difference these strategies can make is key.

Embrace a proactive approach, invest in preventive measures, and stay ahead of potential risks. By doing so, you’ll build a resilient facility management system that can weather any storm and keep your operations running smoothly.

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How to Create a Marketing Plan for Facilities Management

Though many facility managers may think marketing doesn't fall within FM's core competencies, the facility management team must consider how it markets facility services in its contact and conduct with customers. In this respect, customer service is vital. The terms marketing and customer service are not synonymous, however. While customer service provides opportunities to reinforce positive images of a facility management department, marketing involves first researching who the customers are and then selling and promoting facility services to them. The main responsibility falls on the shoulders of the facility management department leader.

All facility managers should understand the following basic concepts of marketing:

• Know the market. Each type of customer, what their needs are, and how they perceive facility management. Know and anticipate their needs.
• Know the facility management department’s strengths and weaknesses. What is done well, and where does it fall short? To do this, facility managers should identify what skills are involved in marketing, which of these skills are performed, and how well they’re performed.
• Develop a marketing plan that serves as a road map.
• Recognize the importance of quality customer service. Every facility staff member must realize how every interaction with a customer can serve marketing objectives and foster a positive image of the facility management department.

Know the market

If a facility management department is one of the administrative services supporting the core business departments, it is unlikely that much thought has been given to marketing the facility management department. Instead, the market was guaranteed: Corporate customers had to get facility services through the department. Today, many facility management customers are given the option to outsource facility management. Facility managers now compete with contracting firms that have developed considerable marketing skills.

As the struggles for market share intensify, workers in all companies have been besieged with entreaties from their leaders to be sensitive to their customers. This issue has particular urgency for facility managers, whose customers have become increasingly aware that they have choices of where and how to obtain facility services. In many companies, executives openly permit departments to shop for facility services, putting corporate facility management departments in direct competition with outsourced providers.  

In recent years, facility management customers have become quite sophisticated. They are smarter, better informed, and far more cost conscious. Many have substantial experience in marketing their own products and services and expect others to market their goods and services similarly. They may know as much as the facility management team does about topics such as indoor air quality or accessibility for the disabled.

Facility managers must also understand that their customers are not people whose needs, motivations, and objectives are identical. Most companies have several different types of customers. From the facility manager’s perspective, each one constitutes a niche market — a particular population with certain characteristics and needs that are distinct. For example, top management has needs unlike those of administrative support units or core business units.  

Facility managers should also know the skills of their staff. Every staff member makes an impression on a customer in every transaction, whether it is by email, telephone, in person, or in a report. For marketing purposes, every worker should understand the customer. Mechanics, custodians, and housekeepers who make contact with customers may exert more influence on them than higher-ranking facility management employees who are seldom seen. 

Develop a Marketing Plan

To develop a marketing plan, it is important to identify the marketing elements already in place. The greatest asset is the range and magnitude of customer contact. There is a fundamental maxim of customer service that applies particularly well to facility management marketing: “If you’re not serving the customer, you’d better be serving someone who is.”  A marketing plan can be organized around the following basic steps.

• Conduct market research — Know the characteristics and needs of your customers; know about the service of your competitors.
• Promote services — Devise a marketing plan that matches services with the right customers. A marketing brochure explaining facility services can be customized for different customers.
• Keep customers informed — Talking to customers directly provides an opportunity to inform them of upcoming developments that may affect them, such as new regulations. This enables you to apply another basic marketing maxim: “Prepare the market for change.” Eliminating surprises, helps facility managers and their customers become allies.
• Evaluate service delivery — Ask customers for feedback on service delivery. In doing so, potentially damaging misunderstandings about facility services are diffused. That’s especially regarding sensitive issues such as indoor air quality.
• Create a website — A website can allow users to download standards, post construction schedules, obtain standards forms, and post surveys or questionnaires for research or benchmarking purposes.

To implement the steps mentioned above, an overall marketing strategy is needed. This strategy incorporates several key elements that form the backbone of an effective marketing plan.

This article is adapted from BOMI International's Fundamentals of Facilities Management course, part of the FMA designation program. More information regarding this course or the BOMI-HP™ credential is available by calling 1-800-235-2664. Visit BOMI International’s website, www.bomi.org .

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