The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for Facilities management companies to reconsider their approach towards the inspection of buildings and the environment within these buildings. Facilities management companies have always been inspecting and checking buildings to ensure compliance with certain standards or checklists. But now, the burden on Facility management companies is going up both in terms of the rigorousness and frequency of the building inspections as well as the safety of their field inspectors. As they now have to do more with the same resources, it is imperative that they adopt technology to help them cope with this added challenge.
In terms of checklists, Facility management companies do have their own inspection checklists but there are certain standards such as WELL and LEED certifications which highlight the need for strong building standards. While LEED certification has been around since 2014, David Hules puts it best in his article “How to prepare your facility for LEED certification”, where he goes through the substantial benefits of LEED certification. LEED-certified structures maximize occupant health and productivity, use fewer resources, decrease lifecycle costs and reduce waste and negative environmental impacts.
Today, we spend 90% of our time in the buildings where we work, live, exercise, shop and socialize. The WELL building standard is the first certification focusing on the health of people in these buildings. As Mike Ward succinctly puts it in his piece on the differences between LEED and WELL, LEED is designed to focus on buildings while WELL is designed to focus on people. There is some overlap between the two but the WELL standard ensures that the time people spend in buildings promotes their physical and psychological well being leading them to live healthier and happier lives. The WELL standard addresses categories such as Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Fitness, Comfort and Mind and has recommendations for each. The blog “What is WELL certification?” gives you more information on the WELL standard.
As facility management companies adopt standards like WELL and LEED or develop their own checklist, there is a massive operational challenge on how to go about implementing these standards in a way that does not require additional manpower or expense.
Solutions like allGeo’s mobile forms enables setting up checklists on mobile devices that field inspectors can use on site on their smart-phones to perform complex inspections with rich data collection including signature, photos, QR / barcode. In addition, conditional logic and validation can be added to the forms. See an example of an Electrical Inspection Checklist here. Using forms can reduce human errors, there is no paperwork required, you can stay compliant with regulatory requirements, geotag all field activities to create a system of record right from customer job sites, create reports (PDF, XLS etc) and route them to appropriate department and customers in real-time, trigger alerts based on form field data entries and even integrate with your CRM/ERP systems using API’s. This kind of comprehensive capability can enable field operations to be implemented, automated and managed to reduce cost and give businesses the tools to have control over their field activities.
Lone worker safety is another top concern for businesses as they want to make sure that field technicians are operating in a safe environment and can report back in real-time any emergencies or alerts based on what they see in the field.
As Facilities management businesses adopt standards or add to their existing checklists, they need a scalable system that can grow with their needs, meets compliance standards, supports all types of remote work, keeps data secure and ensures business continuity. As facilities management companies take on more responsibilities, they have a great opportunity to take advantage of technology like allGeo to assist them in this transformation.
About allGeo
allGeo helps SMBs and Enterprise businesses better manage mobile workforce and field operations with tools such as real-time location, GPS time and attendance, geofence visit logs, Lone worker safety, Mobile forms and more! All the tools can be highly customized to fit each use case. The platform features powerful rules engine and integrates with popular back-end CRM, HRMS, and Payroll systems to automate day-to-day operations.
allGeo serves customers from a wide range of industry including field service management, trade services, emergency responders, sales reps, transportation & logistics, oil & gas, home health care providers. These customers do report improvement in productivity and savings in payroll.
