MasterLibrary Blog

With an EFRMS in place, your reporting capabilities grow tremendously. Your facility’s digital twin now puts you in a place to make better decisions, forecast into the future and keep tabs on the day-to-day workings inside of your buildings.
 
It is your virtual control center and it will make you much more efficient than you are today. It’s critical for a next-gen facility manager to have a good grasp on the business side of things. This includes making important decisions on your systems’ life cycle that will impact business decisions down the road. Many facility managers rely on third party consultants to determine when to make critical facility infrastructure decisions, however more of those decisions can be made in house when an EFR system is in place. Here are a few examples of the types of financial, operational and purchasing decisions you can make when you have reporting that scales across your facility and asset data.

• By using historical events, you can predict what will likely occur in the future and plan for budget impacts
• Procure service contracts with specific objectives and quantities which should allow contractors to be more aggressive with your quotes
• With aggregated information, bulk purchasing arrangements within and in conjunction with other districts can be considered
• Staffing can be better allocated through more efficient scheduling of maintenance tasks
• You will spend less time investigating issues and more time fixing them
• Run what-if scenarios for future capital project

Compliance with statutory regulations and reporting requirements with facility protocols is becoming more prevalent with school districts across the country, especially during and after the pandemic.
 
Because of this, having reliable reporting not only helps you make better decisions, it also helps you manage liability and risk. This, in itself, is extremely valuable for the next generation facility manager. Here are some real-life examples of how reporting builds better compliance and record keeping.
 

• Proof that spaces were cleaned and sanitized. Not only keeping building occupants at bay, there will possibly be state required audits in the future. We see the paper charts on the doors often, rarely filled in/probably not kept for records.
• Accountability of staff that work orders are properly completed, by whom, and when.
• Track your staff’s labor hours and efficiency. This helps keep staff on track without being a micromanager.
• Make sure your facilities do not fail important inspections
  • Can cost additional for return trips  
  • Could cause fines/building closure if a major inspection is failed
• Flooding due to failed pumps & tanks that are not regularly checked. Unchecked assets can get very costly.
• If a heating system fails in a portion of a building it can require a building shutdown.
• Safety items - stage rigging, lifts, equipment inspections. These all need to be checked, logged and dated on a recurring basis.
• Did a staff member move a fire-extinguisher out of its proper location? This could go unnoticed if the proper inspections are not happening. It’s easy to miss/forget some of the harder to find ones without an EFR system in place.
• Having to call a 3rd party for a repair/pump out rather than maintaining as you go. Adding PM protocols in your work order system for chemical treatments annually to grease traps is much more cost effective than this scenario.
• In the event of a real emergency, if a life safety system fails questions will be asked. Logging inspections and PM’s is very important so that you have a trail to prove they were completed.

In this blog post, we will examine the all of the elements that make up an EFR System. 
First, we refer to the suite or bundle of applications that manage these elements as the Electronic Facility Records Management System or EFRMS. An EFRMS enables a facility manager to securely store electronic facility data, graphically connect asset data to facility drawings, document work performed on assets, plan and budget for future facility projects and updates, and aid in decision making through robust reporting. Your EFRMS will help you manage data, drawings, documents and dollars. All of this information combined together will help you with the final “D”, decisions. Facility managers that implement and use an EFRMS give themselves a chance to make better decisions, more efficiently.

The first step in creating an EFR system at your district is to collect all of your existing data and documentation. 
​In many cases, this also means doing site surveys for your assets and converting hard copy documents into digital files. Data harvesting is easily the most labor and time intensive step in the EFR process, but it’s critically important. A good tip to remember when embarking on data harvesting is to start with the end in mind. Think of the project specifications and close out tasks you need to complete when you have a facility project. This also includes the budgetary side of things. Oftentimes, you will need input from business officials to provide you with original cost information. It’s important to draw the line in terms of information and data that will be useful and necessary and the minutia data that you will most likely never use or look at. This will help you develop the scope of data you want to collect. 

Our latest customer success story spotlights Jacksonville School District 117 in Jacksonville, IL. JSD117 made the switch to ML Work Orders a few years ago after experiencing frustration with the customer service and high prices of their previous vendor. Not only are they saving money with ML Work Orders, but they are doing more than ever in the system and are really enjoying the interactive customer experience.