maintenance matters OUTSOURCING Facilities Support Some managers now depend on building service contractors for support functions. By: Kari Hus B Buildings have needs that go way beyond cleaning. While cleaning duties are routinely per-formed either by in-house custodial profes-sionals or contract cleaners, the provision of facilities support services doesn’t tend to be as predicable or streamlined as that of cleaning services. Facilities support services are sometimes performed in-house by a generalist, which can be a real issue when organizations downsize their in-house teams. We often see that the facilities support personnel are the first to go in a corporate layoff. Alternately, facilities support services might be outsourced to the construction, plumbing, electrical and other trades at the going rate, which is usually a high price. When the BSC can be the single point of contact for all maintenance and facilities support needs, it improves efficiency, safe-ty and security for the building managers and occupants. It eliminates the need to, for instance, go to multiple sources to find a plumber, hire a demolition and construction team or bring in a crew to set up cubicles. The scheduling and the quality assurance can be handled by the BSC’s facilities sup-port team. The existing BSC already has on-site famil-iarity, has a work order process in place and The Solution Image courtesy of incomible/iStock/Thinkstock Building owners can look to their building service contractors (BSCs) to provide facili-ties support services as part of the overall package. Outsourcing the facilities support func-tion is becoming more of a trend because it is cost effective for the building owner. BSCs with facilities support services in their portfolio are an obvious choice for building managers who need to have this function fulfilled. How It Works In a typical day at a commercial or industrial building, clients have all kinds of pop-up needs and urgencies. When a BSC can be the single point of contact for all maintenance and facilities support needs, it improves efficiency and safety for building managers and occupants. 40 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® July 2014
CMM – Archives July 2014: 40
