Anyone work in Facilities Management?

[pidsy]

We are looking at introducing some kind of software to help bring the estate here up to date in terms of asset registers, general management of our buildings and grounds as well as streamlining maintenance schedules. There seem to be several systems in the market but it's proving hard to make any concrete decisions.

Do any of you use/recommend a system? We have had the team from quad-pro in and it looks good but we really need to start from the bottom up. I.e plans of buildings renewed, CAD drawings, asset recognition and registering etc.

[Countdown]

I used to work for a Housing Association and we used Northgate. That was for 20,000 properties so it may be overkill for what you need.

[quinny100]

I work in IT but did a fair bit of work around facilities and asset management a couple of years ago using Technology Forge TF.Facility. Seemed to do everything we needed it to. They had just launched a cloud version which looked OK if you didn't want any infrastructure to run it, and they had apps for mobile devices for data collection.

[pidsy]

Thanks for your comments. I'll take a look at those that you have mentioned.

Bit more background- it's a 35acre estate with 21 buildings ranging from residential to agricultural to educational. Buildings aged between 150 years and 12 months.

The management of the buildings has been neglected over the past 15 years. We don't even have proper drawings for a majority of them. M&E manuals are pretty much none existent.

I've been tasked with righting all the wrongs, starting with plans of the site. Topographical surveys have been done but we haven't done a great deal with them.

First job is providing a meaningful numbering system or referencing system for the rooms and spaces here on site.
Gotta start somewhere.

[ruggedscotty]

maximo ?

[jaimiep]

Maximo would be good but maybe overkill depending on version and data available. From your post you probably need to do an asset vertification in the first instance, the estate doesn't sound that big so I would outsource and get them to provide the CAFM system and maintain the assets. Then start to look at lifecycle management with them to ensure the buildings are best utilised properly etc.

[pidsy]

thanks once again all. CAFM software seems to be a bit of a minefield.
i think the various systems will be easier to work with once we do the basics.

[SystemParanoia]

jaimiep said:

Maximo would be good but maybe overkill depending on version and data available. From your post you probably need to do an asset vertification in the first instance, the estate doesn't sound that big so I would outsource and get them to provide the CAFM system and maintain the assets. Then start to look at lifecycle management with them to ensure the buildings are best utilised properly etc.

Used maximo for 3+ years with Interslave..
( logging jobs, allocating works, closing and updating existing jobs et al )

Its a pile of slow steaming crap. avoid!

on the management side.. all the manages spent all their time massaging the figures and job times so that the client didnt see that jobs were completed outside of SLA on their access portal.. So i guess its good if you like to defraud your customers

Edited by SystemParanoia on Monday 6th March 11:28

[rufmeister]

If you need any of the estate cleaning, we can help on that front.

Software wise, we use a simple scheduling software, don't think it would be suitable for your needs.

[toon10]

pidsy said:

thanks once again all. CAFM software seems to be a bit of a minefield.
i think the various systems will be easier to work with once we do the basics.

We use CAFM http://www.cafmexplorer.com/ here and it does exactly what the Facilities guys want it to do and the support is really good. I'm in charge of IT so from my point of view, it was never the easiest to install, update or configure. The guys do a good job of supporting but I'd rather just get the software we can package up on SCCM and then have updates and patches handled.

[AMG01]

pidsy said:

Thanks for your comments. I'll take a look at those that you have mentioned.

Bit more background- it's a 35acre estate with 21 buildings ranging from residential to agricultural to educational. Buildings aged between 150 years and 12 months.

The management of the buildings has been neglected over the past 15 years. We don't even have proper drawings for a majority of them. M&E manuals are pretty much none existent.

I've been tasked with righting all the wrongs, starting with plans of the site. Topographical surveys have been done but we haven't done a great deal with them.

First job is providing a meaningful numbering system or referencing system for the rooms and spaces here on site.
Gotta start somewhere.

Would suggest getting an asset condition survey for the estate should be one of your initial things to do, with costs for the next 15 - 20 years to keep the estate in acceptable condition. Would also provide you with a full asset list for the estate. Sounds like a really interesting role to get stuck into, good luck.

[pidsy]

Do you have any recommendations for who could do that?

I'm really looking forward to getting started but it's the initial work that's difficult to quantify.

Thanks again all.

[rsbmw]

Take a look at TabsFM, I found it for one of our businesses recently and they have bought in, seems to be going well.

[AMG01]

pidsy said:

Do you have any recommendations for who could do that?

I'm really looking forward to getting started but it's the initial work that's difficult to quantify.

Thanks again all.

There are a number of building services consultancies out there, Capita, Cushman & Wakefield, Mott MacDonald etc, RICS can give you a full list