Richard Brayshaw, CAFM sales manager at Excitech, discusses the facilities management solutions which could help prevent or reduce the spread of disease.
pbctoday writes:
I’m not for a second going to sit here and write that properly adopted facilities management software can save the world from this awful pandemic, or that it is the solution to all the current problems. Sadly, it can’t and it’s not!
For those in the estates and facilities community looking to do their bit, there are however some technology solutions that can help prevent or reduce the spread of disease now and in the future. There are also some elements of facilities management software that will help manage the evolving workplace on the return to work.
Within a finely tuned facilities management solution, there are a large number of elements or modules designed to support all facets of estate management. These range from the traditional helpdesk, preventative maintenance, asset management, space management, lease management, room booking modules to the less widely adopted.
ARCHIBUS – one of the facilities management solutions provided by Excitech – provides a number of modules which can be used to increase control and minimise employee, client and public risk. These modules include environmental health & safety, compliance management, emergency preparedness, clean building, and actual space utilisation.
How do these facilities management modules help:
- Environmental health & safety – enables users to manage incidents, associating those involved with the location and potentially equipment needed. Employee training records and/or medical monitoring can be linked to these same incidents to give traceability and a full audit history. In an effort to help organisations provide safe working environments during the Covid-19 outbreak, ARCHIBUS has kindly offered our customers a free license of the ARCHIBUS environmental health & safety application over an 18-month period.
- Compliance management – helps users ensure a safe, productive work environment by implementing a structured process to comply with regulations, codes and/or best practices. With a wide range of compliance measures to adhere to, this solution allows for their management all in one place, with the ability to take quick action should anything arise.
- Emergency preparedness – allows users to plan for potentially disastrous situations and effectively respond and quickly recover in the event of an actual disaster. It helps provide rapid access to critical facility, infrastructure and occupant information to ensure life safety procedures are followed, property is protected, and disruption to normal operations is minimised.
- Clean building – allows users to ensure that all hazardous materials are quickly and accurately located, tracked, and dealt with. By managing risk in this way users can quantify and qualify scope, status, cost and risk of dealing with each hazard and proactively establish a safe working environment.
- Actual space utilisation – while the primary use may be to monitor the efficiency with which the estate is being utilised, this module will also allow users to identify where employees have been, where they have worked all day and as such potentially who they have come in to contact with. This will allow organisations to assist with tracking those within their organisation possibly at risk.
These modules will all increase control of the estate – even when working remotely – and ensure that risk, whether from infectious disease or another source is minimised.
The key is to adopt a facilities management solution capable of integrating with or providing these kinds of modules/systems as part of a complete estate management platform. There is enough risk in the world at the moment, with the help of these solutions you can help minimise it on your estate.
