What Makes A Good Facilities Management Company?
If your business is at the stage where it has recognised the need for full-time, dedicated facilities management, then you will have identified that there is an awful lot to balance within the remit of a facilities manager. Naturally this extends to the qualities you require from a facilities management service provider, whether your needs are temporary, part-time or permanent. It could be a costly mistake if you don’t commit to a partner who can provide an excellent standard of facilities management solutions, so here we have provided a run-down of the key qualities you need to be looking for in a facilities management partner.
Good people
A good facilities management company needs to provide you with good people. This is the sharp end of the service they provide and ultimately is the most obvious measure by which you will judge their performance. Regardless of the actual range of services you need, you will always want your people to be competent, reliable, trained and accredited. But on a wider level, you need a facilities manager to also have a range of skills which will suit your business and ensure the best level of service.
So in addition to basic competence and qualifications, you want a facilities manager to have:
- Strategic thinking – so they are able to plan and manage tasks accordingly
- People-focused – communication and delegation is crucial but they also need to be culturally aware of your business and your employees and so that you can build up trust and reliability
- A problem-solver – things change in a fast-moving business so you need a facilities manager who can act quickly and react to problems with composure and assurance and with decisions which are based on good foundations
- Analytically-minded – a facilities manager needs to change and adapt but based on good knowledge, so they need to be able to monitor performance and identify areas of improvement and quantify what performance improvements these changes can bring
Adaptable skills
As a basic requirement you want a facilities management company to bring a range of skills, whether that is technological knowledge, physical capabilities or a knowledge of equipment and machinery. But more than that, you need the service provider to understand your business and its culture and adjust to the needs of the operations, the people and the workplace. Embracing change is perhaps the most important feature of a facilities management company, so they can apply the same excellent standards in every workplace they partner with and so they can maximise their organisational effectiveness every time.
Knowledge
Of course knowledge comes in different forms, but as a bare essential you need assurance that a facilities management company has a sound understanding of:
- Best methods to use – for example for cleaning surfaces or repairing external grounds or structures
- Best materials to use – for example in terms of health & safety regulations as well as their effectiveness
- Best equipment to use – for example in terms of cost-effectiveness and environmental factors
- All safety and environmental requirements – for example where the facility is affected by fire safety, legionella risk management or requires PAT testing
Standards
When assessing the suitability of a facilities management company you can very quickly and easily look at their accreditations and get an immediate handle on their attitude to standards and compliance. However, there are other ways you can establish the likely quality of their work:
- Procedures – can they supply you with examples of their operating procedures for key tasks or a safe method of working? This gives a good indication of how organised, compliant and reliable they will be
- Dedicated management – are the personnel employed being directly managed by a dedicated manager?
- Continual improvement – are there regular patrols, performance checklists and quality checks to ensure performance is being monitored and areas for improvement are being identified and acted upon?
- Review – is there a mechanism through which you can meet with a facilities manager to discuss and review their performance?
Creative solutions
When you partner with a facilities management services provider, you want this to be a long-term arrangement and therefore you need to treat the contractor as part of your business. And as such you want them to play a part in improving the business and contributing to performance effectiveness. So can they bring new ideas and innovative solutions? Do they understand cost-effectiveness and how to run an efficient business? Have they got a good handle on new technologies and how they bring more dynamic solutions to improve the business? Ideally you want all these elements in a good facilities management services provider.
Contact Apardion for trusted and reliable facilities management
At Apardion we have successfully applied all these attributes listed above in partnering with businesses across all industry sectors and we have a proven track record of improving businesses and working to establish solid, long-term relationships. Contact Apardion today and find out how our facilities management services can help develop your business.
