The Facility Services Outsourcing Advantage
When COVID-19 hit the U.S. in March 2020, office buildings, education institutions, retailers, and more took a pause and closed their doors to occupants. Few of us imagined then that we’d still be seeking to “get back to normal” one year later. Many people thought we’d quarantine for a few months, while workers and students went remote, and then start reopening up in late summer after the virus was under control. In the meantime, facility management teams went to work to find a way to make buildings safe so people could confidently return.
Today, while COVID-19 vaccinations are giving us hope, the truth is we still live in a world of uncertainty. Questions abound. How many people are likely to get vaccinated, and when? How long will immunity last? What effect will COVID-19 variants have? What percentage of people will want to return to buildings, arenas, and campuses? What will they—and building owners and facility executives—do if/when there’s another outbreak?
For facility executives, who are under the spotlight as never before, one thing is certain: putting concrete plans in place is not realistic. Stability is unlikely to return any time soon. Our “new-normal” will be with us for years to come. Organizations need to be able to adjust to any situational change, at any time, all the time.
That’s a tall order, even for a profession that is used to handling the unexpected, especially when you consider these challenges:
- Budgetary Challenges: Chances are your revenue has taken a hit or stalled because of the pandemic. Meanwhile, expenditures – such as IT infrastructure to support remote work and classrooms models, COVID-19 testing, high-frequency disinfecting, cleaning, and modifications to HVAC systems – have gone up. This means there’s often less money for overall facility services like operations and maintenance, just when it seems you need it most.
- Staffing Decisions: When it’s hard to know what tomorrow will bring in terms of occupancy levels, rooms that need extra cleaning, and spaces that suddenly close, figuring out staffing can be a nightmare. Who do you assign where, and when? How do you make sure employees and guests are not congregating in break or locker rooms, in defiance of social distancing? Do you suddenly have too many or too few staffers? Are you suddenly facing difficult furlough or layoff decisions? If more people are needed a few weeks down the road, can you quickly hire and onboard them, and should you?
- Expertise: Facility management teams have learned a lot in the past year about how to set-up spaces that are effectively distanced, and which products and technologies can be used to keep high-touch surfaces sanitized and air quality clean and refreshed. But knowing where and how to implement the right strategy is another issue. As is having confidence that your teams are operating the way they should. For instance, if they’re supposed to be working more independently to keep socially distanced, are they? And if they are, are they skilled enough to do so?
If these challenges can seem daunting, they are. They also need to be met and overcome in order to keep buildings and people safe. However, many facility management organizations simply aren’t equipped to do this on their own. That’s why they’re engaging facility services experts.
How Partnering Can Help
Proven Expertise
Facility services providers like UG2 have spent years planning for pandemic events, drilling emergency preparedness procedures and updating continuity of operations plans. In the past year we have learned a lot while researching, implementing, and refining best practices for keeping buildings and people safe from COVID-19. That’s on top of the decades of wide-ranging facility services experience we already have under our belts. We apply all this expertise to organizations like yours and put our team of experts to work, so you can effectively handle decisions that drive your core business.
Advanced Technologies
We use the latest technologies to make facility services more predictive, proactive and preventative, We drive the efficiencies needed to contain and reduce costs. Some of these we develop ourselves, such as UG2 Disinfection Log (UDL), an application for tracking when and where disinfection and cleaning services occurred. With UDL, when a UG2 employee finishes disinfecting a space or high-touch surface, they use their smartphone to tap an NFC device and a chip that’s embedded in their ID badge. Work function and location are recorded in an electronic database for disinfection reporting and tracking purposes.
We are getting more efficient with smart technologies that include sensors and heat maps for determining real-time occupancy and foot traffic—and informing where and when to clean and disinfect surfaces, refill hand sanitizers, remove trash, and more. Our HVAC & plumbing technicians are using similar web-based technologies and are able to log readings during rounds by scanning asset QR codes with smartphones. When these readings are automatically fed into an electronic system, engineers are immediately flagged if an air filter, for example, is out-of-range, so it can be quickly fixed or replaced.
Money Saving Assessments
COVID-19 related budget constraints make finding pockets for savings critically important. Facility service partners can help by conducting a variety of assessments, such as ASHRAE energy audits. These energy audits can help you understand operating costs, savings opportunities, calculate return on capital investment and in many cases look for funding sources or potential utility rebates. On the predictive maintenance side, vibration analysis and infrared testing are used to determine the status of an equipment’s components -without the need to tear down and rebuild- and help develop a plan to extend component useful life. In some cases, if buildings are being shut down or sold, some equipment may be better to run-to-fail. There are all small pieces and a detailed engineering economic analysis can help you understand and manage buildings as assets.
Built-in Flexibility
Finding the right business partner allows your business to focus on its core mission and is a model based on flexibility. In today’s pandemic and post-pandemic work that focus on partnership allows organizations to work together to make constant course corrections. We can quickly scale business levels up or down, and adjust different types of skill sets as budgets and situations change. We plan, manage and execute, then measure and adjust. This ensures we put the right people in the right place at the right time, and ensure they’re performing as needed.
In this time of uncertainty, when long term planning seems impossible, budgets are more constrained than ever, and the spotlight on facility services is more intense, you need all the advantages you can get.
Contact UG2 today to find out how facility service partnering can be used to your organizational advantage.