Facility Management: Challenges, Best Practices, & Tips for Managers

Facility management is more than just overseeing buildings and maintenance—it plays a vital role in optimizing operations, ensuring compliance, and enhancing workplace efficiency.

As businesses grow and regulations evolve, facility managers face increasing challenges, from controlling maintenance costs to managing vast amounts of operational data and supervising regulatory compliance. Overcoming these obstacles requires strategic planning and the right technological tools.

This article delves into the common challenges in facilities management, best practices to streamline operations, improve compliance, drive cost-effective maintenance strategies, and how technology like facility inspection software can help.

The Importance of Effective Facility Management

Facilities management (FM) is crucial for ensuring that buildings and their services meet the needs of the people who work within them. It involves a strategic integration of people, processes, technologies, and physical spaces that directly impact a business’s services, productivity, and bottom line.

By maintaining a safe, comfortable, and efficient environment, FM enhances operational efficiency, supports business performance, and boosts employee satisfaction.

Facility Management Team Structure: Responsibilities and Challenges

Before diving into individual job roles, let’s look at what facility management entails:

Facility Management Area of Responsibilities

Facilities management covers all the essential work needed to keep buildings running smoothly and safely. Here’s what facilities management teams typically handle:

• Building Systems & Infrastructure: Taking care of plumbing, lighting, electrical systems, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), and elevators to ensure everything works properly day-to-day.
• Safety & Security: Managing access control, surveillance systems, fire safety equipment, and emergency planning to keep everyone safe.
• Space & Operations: Organizing office layouts, coordinating moves, overseeing cleaning services, and maintaining outdoor areas like parking lots and landscaping.
• Projects & Planning: Managing renovations, coordinating repairs, budgeting for facility needs, and ensuring all work complies with building codes and regulations.
• Sustainability Efforts: Finding ways to reduce energy use, manage waste effectively, and implement environmentally friendly practices throughout the facility.

Let’s look at the team members responsible for FM and the challenges they face in their job roles.

Chief Facilities Officer/Executive Job Responsibilities

The Chief Facilities Officer is at the top of the facility management leadership. Typically found in large corporations, complex healthcare systems, educational institutions, and government organizations, this executive-level position requires a strategic overview of an organization’s entire physical infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities of a Facility Executive Officer:

• Developing comprehensive facility management strategies aligned with organizational goals
• Creating long-term infrastructure and workplace investment plans
• Managing large-scale budget allocations for facility operations
• Ensuring compliance with complex regulatory requirements
• Representing facility management interests in executive-level discussions

The Chief Facilities Officer is constantly required to balance technological innovation with budgetary constraints, anticipate future trends, and adapt to rapidly changing regulatory environments. The role demands exceptional strategic thinking, as decisions impact not just immediate operational efficiency but long-term business sustainability. 

Facilities Manager/Supervisor Roles and Responsibilities

Facilities Managers occupy a critical middle-management position within the organizational hierarchy, typically reporting to the CFO or senior operations executives. They are the operational backbone that translates high-level strategic directives into day-to-day operational realities.

Key Responsibilities of a Facility Manager:

• Overseeing daily facility operations
• Coordinating multiple vendor relationships
• Ensuring compliance with organizational and regulatory policies
• Managing resource allocation and budgetary constraints
• Conducting staff training and development programs
• Coordinating cross-departmental operational requirements

The manual nature of paperwork and maintenance tracking creates a significant administrative burden for facility managers, consuming their time and resources. Additionally, they are required to coordinate with multiple vendors, manage cross-departmental operations, and maintain stringent compliance with internal and external regulations.

A digital facility audit software like GoAudits can significantly reduce the administrative burden for managers. These tools often come with a mobile app that digitizes and automates scheduling, performing, and reporting facility audits and maintenance inspections, reducing paperwork and saving resources significantly.

Facility Maintenance Manager Job Responsibilities

The Facility Maintenance Manager is tasked with maintaining the physical infrastructure. This includes managing aging infrastructure, balancing emergency preparedness with routine maintenance tasks, and making sure all systems are in optimal working condition.

Key Responsibilities of a Facility Maintenance Manager:

• Managing comprehensive maintenance programs
• Developing and implementing preventive maintenance strategies
• Coordinating emergency repair activities
• Budgeting for maintenance activities and equipment replacement
• Ensuring compliance with safety and technical standards
• Managing maintenance-related documentation and reporting

Maintenance Managers constantly battle the complexities of maintaining aging infrastructure while preparing for potential emergency scenarios. They must balance the financial constraints of routine maintenance with the unpredictable costs of emergency repairs.

Key Facility Management Challenges & Problems

Facility managers often face a range of challenges that can complicate their roles. Understanding them is crucial for developing effective strategies to overcome them. Here are the key challenges of facilities management.

Operational and Strategic Challenges of Facility Management

Staff face numerous operational and strategic challenges that impact the efficiency and effectiveness of their facilities.

• Managing Multiple Facilities: Each facility may have unique requirements and operational processes, making it difficult to implement standardized practices across all locations.
• Proactive Maintenance: This is essential for preventing equipment failures and extending the lifespan of assets. However, maintaining a comprehensive maintenance schedule and tracking maintenance activities is time-consuming and complex.
• Increasing Cost of Unplanned Maintenance: Unplanned maintenance expenses can strain budgets and disrupt operations. Maintenance personnel often find it difficult to manage these costs while ensuring that critical repairs are completed promptly. Moreover, unexpected breakdowns lead to significant downtime, affecting productivity and revenue.
• Lack of Real-time Data: Managers rely on historical data and manual reporting, which can be outdated and inaccurate. This makes it difficult to make timely decisions and allocate resources efficiently.
• Multitasking and Coordinating Teams: Facility managers communicate with multiple teams, including in-house staff and external vendors. Ensuring that all teams are aligned and working towards common goals can be challenging, especially when dealing with diverse stakeholders.

Data Management Challenges in Facilities Management

Data management is a critical aspect of facility management, but it often presents significant challenges.

• Ineffective Reporting Inaccurate or incomplete reporting can lead to poor decision-making and inefficient operations. Moreover, manual reporting results in lost time and resources, as well as increased risk of errors.
• Utilizing Data for Decision-Making: Managers must be able to interpret data and use it to make informed decisions about maintenance schedules, resource allocation, and operational improvements. This requires a deep understanding of data analytics and the ability to translate data into actionable strategies.

Compliance and Risk Management Challenges of Facilities Management

Facility managers must navigate complex regulations and proactively manage risks to ensure safety and compliance.

• Adhering to Regulatory Requirements: Facility teams must ensure that their operations comply with a wide range of regulations and standards. This includes health and safety regulations, environmental laws, and industry-specific requirements. Keeping up with changes in regulations and ensuring that all facilities comply can be a significant challenge.
• Managing Risks: Managers must identify potential hazards and implement measures to mitigate risks. Effective risk management requires a proactive approach and continuous monitoring to identify and address potential issues before they become serious problems.

Facility Management Problems Related to Staffing and Training

Ensuring that staff are adequately trained and equipped with the necessary skills is essential for effective facility management. Management must develop comprehensive training programs to address the specific needs of their teams.

Facility Management Strategies: Best Practices and Tips for Facility Managers

Here are key facility management best practices and tips that can help managers overcome the common challenges of FM:

Implement Checklists

Facility management checklists provide a structured approach to daily tasks, ensuring consistency and completeness. By requiring your staff to use checklists to perform their regular duties, you can systematically track maintenance activities, inspections, and compliance checks.

In the case of multi-site facility chains, like a fitness center, checklists allow you to standardize operations and deliver consistent quality of service. Moreover, they reduce the risk of human error and ensure that critical tasks are not overlooked, thereby improving operational efficiency and safety.

Implement digital facility management checklists that can be updated anytime to include regulatory and compliance changes. Also, you can save thousands in paperwork and documentation.

Here are some free operational checklists essential for facility management to help you get started:

• HVAC Inspection Checklist 
• Electrical Preventive Maintenance Checklist
• Escalator Maintenance Checklist
• Elevator Maintenance Checklist 
• Smoke Detector Inspection Checklist
• Parking Lot Safety Checklist
• Automatic Door Maintenance Checklist

Schedule Regular Maintenance Inspections

Maintenance inspections are crucial for identifying potential issues before they escalate into major problems. By scheduling regular inspections, you can proactively address maintenance needs, minimizing downtime. Furthermore, regular inspections provide you with real-time data on the condition of facilities, aiding in better time management and resource allocation.

However, operating on manual inspection schedules has its own problems. There can be delays, inspections can be missed, urgent repairs can take longer, and keeping track of things can become time-consuming. Using an inspection scheduling software like GoAudits can help.

While scheduling inspections, you can assign inspectors, add checklists to make sure they know exactly what needs to be checked and how, and set reminders to avoid delays. All the while, GoAudits allows you to monitor all the inspection activities and data in real time through the inspection Dashboard.

Implement Preventive Maintenance Plans

According to the Operations & Maintenance Best Practices Guide, setting up a preventive maintenance plan can help companies save 12% to 18% in maintenance annually. A proactive implementation of facilities maintenance best practices allows you to;

• Reduce operational downtime
• Extend the lifetime of the assets
• Cut down on reactive maintenance costs
• Track metrics KPIs that help you make data-driven decisions

However, tracking metrics for multiple facility buildings and across various departments might seem daunting. But it can be simplified with the right tools. Check out how facility management companies benefit from preventive maintenance software.

Include Corrective Actions in Workflows

Once an issue has been identified during maintenance inspection, it is important to have a clear workflow for its resolution. This ensures that problems are prioritized and addressed effectively, reducing the risks of further complications that can lead to compliance issues.

While designing a corrective action workflow, you need to be careful about two things:

1. Managing your resources effectively
2. Ensuring the on-time implementation of the corrective measure

With corrective action software, you can assign repair and maintenance tasks to your team members, set reminders, and monitor the progress in real-time. Moreover, you can automate follow-ups or reassign tasks to prevent delays.

Build Robust Communication Channels

Effective communication channels help facility managers coordinate teams, including external vendors. Regular meetings, clear documentation, and communication tools can ensure that everyone is informed and working toward common goals. Robust communication channels also facilitate better collaboration and problem-solving, improving overall operational efficiency.

Automate Reporting

As discussed earlier, manual paper-based reporting is one of the key challenges in facilities management. Compiling reports manually takes several hours and is prone to human error.

Reporting automation allows teams to generate instant reports and share them with all the stakeholders, keeping everyone updated about the condition of the facility building. These reports also include audit scores and historical data that allow management to identify trends and recurring maintenance issues.

Develop Staff Skills Through Training

Invest in staff training and development to ensure facility management teams have the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their duties effectively. Use checklists and templates for ongoing training and continuous improvement. Moreover, they can also be a great tool to train the newly hired staff.

Use Data Trends to Measure Performance

Analyzing trends provides valuable insights into facility performance and helps identify areas for improvement. By leveraging inspection data, managers can measure KPIs, track maintenance activities, identify patterns that may indicate potential issues, and make informed decisions regarding planning and operational improvements.

Leverage Technology for Automation

Technology can significantly enhance facility management operations by automating repetitive tasks, improving data accuracy, and providing real-time insights. Furthermore, they help managers address the challenges of managing multiple facilities, implementing proactive maintenance, and ensuring compliance.

Tools like facility audit software, mobile inspections, and automated reporting can streamline processes, reduce paperwork, and improve overall operational efficiency. Investing in the right technology can provide a competitive edge and drive better outcomes for facility operations.

Free Facility Management Checklists for Different Industries

Here are libraries of free inspection and maintenance checklists for various industries:

• Inspection Checklists for Fitness & Wellness Facilities 
• Hotel Facility Inspection and Audit Checklists
• Property Inspection Checklists
• Audit Checklists for Healthcare Facilities
• Warehouse Facility Management Checklists

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