Facility Management Best Practices: 11 Ways to Improve Efficiency

Equipment Management

Workplaces are changing fast. Shifting work structures, continuous digitisation, and growing pressure around sustainability all push facilities to operate differently than they did a decade ago. Facility management has to keep pace, which means the practices behind it need to evolve too.

So what is facility management exactly? At its core, it covers every service and tool that keeps buildings, infrastructure, grounds, and other real estate safe, functional, and sustainable. That includes asset management, maintenance operations, and a good deal more. The people responsible are called facility managers or facilities managers. Their work runs from maintaining buildings and grounds to coordinating the maintenance team and gathering the asset and financial data needed to sharpen existing strategies.

For more background on the industry before you dig into the tips below, read our Facility Management Statistics article.

Key Takeaways

• Facility management includes all tasks that ensure the functionality, safety, and sustainability of a building, infrastructure, or other type of real estate.
• The employee in charge of facility management is called a facility manager or facilities manager.
• By following facilities management best practices, a facility manager can ensure that a building is perfectly equipped for the future.
• Some of the most popular best practices in the management of facilities are improving team structure, utilising IoT tools and data analytics, conducting preventive maintenance, and more.
• No matter which facility management strategy you choose, ToolSense – an asset management solution – can help implement changes, analyse machine data, and organise maintenance schedules and work orders.

To run a tighter operation and lift overall efficiency, facility managers can lean on these 11 best practices.

1. Communicate With Internal Teams and Vendors

Clear communication is what holds a facility management process together. That applies inside the building, between maintenance and facilities teams, and outside it, with vendors and suppliers. When everyone knows about upcoming changes, maintenance schedules, and procedures, work simply flows better. People spend their energy on the tasks that matter and skip the redundant steps that creep into any workflow. Strong vendor and supplier relationships pay off in other ways too, often giving you more room when you negotiate conditions and deliveries. How well you manage those contractor relationships has a direct line to how efficiently you can run the facility.

2. Set and Manage Team Structure

Every facility's organisational chart rests on a well-structured team. Each person should know their role and exactly what's expected of them. As a facility manager, you're responsible for making sure team members are trained properly and current on every process in motion. Give them a structured workflow and they can stay focused on the work in front of them instead of guessing at the next step. The same goes for collaboration: keep communication open between teams, and you build something strong, motivated, and genuinely efficient.

3. Manage Risks and Returns

Running a business sometimes means taking calculated risks to push productivity and profit higher. Smart facility management blunts a lot of that risk through data analytics, informed decisions, and careful planning. A solid preventive maintenance plan built on real data, better use of the assets you already own, and a well-trained team can shift the balance the other way, lowering risk while increasing returns.

4. Improve Space Utilisation in the Workplace

A large facility gives a company room to grow, but space comes with a bill attached: higher energy use and more building maintenance. That's why space management belongs on any list of facility management best practices. The rise of remote work makes it sharper still. With people in the office less often, you can offer flexible workstations and repurpose the space freed up by remote staff. Done well, smarter space management cuts costs and opens room for new projects and new technology.

5. Establish Asset Inventory

A full asset inventory is one of the foundations of good facility maintenance. It's simply a list of every asset, where it sits, and what condition it's in. Once you know what you own, where it is, and how it's holding up, you can put each asset to proper use. That same inventory feeds a better preventive maintenance plan, one that accounts for each asset's age, condition, and how it's actually used. And because you always know where the important assets are, an asset inventory saves no small amount of time.

6. Digitise and Automate Your FM Operations

How do you manage a building in a modern economy? Much of the answer comes down to digitisation, the same wave reshaping industries across the board. Innovation in facility management almost always means digitising and automating work, and that's exactly what a top facility management software solution like ToolSense is built for. The software keeps everything a facilities manager needs in one place, whether that's asset management, maintenance management, inventory management, work order management, or more. ToolSense automates routine tasks such as sending out scheduled maintenance reminders. And since it runs in the cloud, managers and staff can open any folder in an asset's lifecycle from a desktop, smartphone, or tablet, wherever they happen to be.

7. Implement a Preventive Maintenance Plan and Increase Your Assets’ Lifespan

Preventive maintenance

is a maintenance strategy built around regular, scheduled checks that head off asset failure. It belongs to facility management and the facilities industry, but it's just as central to maintenance management best practices.

Benefits of Implementing a Preventive Maintenance Plan in Your Organisation

Organise All PM Tasks

When facility managers build a thorough preventive maintenance plan and schedule, the whole team gains a clearer picture of what needs doing. A good schedule lays out a time frame, spells out the tasks, and names who's responsible for each one. The payoff is a tighter, better-organised workflow and more reliable building maintenance.

Extend Assets’ Lifespans

Wear and tear comes with the territory, especially for assets in daily use. Left alone, it shows up as worn parts, broken parts, and eventually downtime. Preventive maintenance keeps assets in better shape for longer by catching minor flaws during inspection and fixing them before they grow into major repairs, which stretches the asset's overall lifespan.

Reduce Downtimes

Downtime usually traces back to that same wear and tear, so it responds to the same fix. Inspect assets regularly against a solid schedule and you'll often spot small weaknesses and failure points early enough to keep downtime from happening at all. Across the facility, that adds up to far less time with assets out of service.

Reduce Reactive Maintenance Costs

Reactive maintenance is the mirror image of the preventive kind: you wait until an asset already shows flaws and failures, then fix it. That costs companies on two fronts. Unplanned downtime from a broken part stops production and drags productivity down, and the repairs themselves tend to be larger and pricier than fixing a small flaw on the spot. Preventive maintenance trims those costs, which is why it earns a permanent spot in maintenance management best practices.

Track Maintenance KPIs and Metrics

Tracking the right maintenance metrics and KPIs is how facility managers confirm their strategy is actually working. An asset management solution like ToolSense gathers the numbers that matter, from runtime and downtime to work orders and full maintenance history. With that data in hand, managers can refine their approach, find the bottlenecks, and understand the machines they're accountable for.

8. Leverage IoT Technology and Predictive Analytics

IoT – short for the Internet of Things – links sensors and trackers with smart technology to collect data and automate recurring work. Inside a facility management structure, IoT can capture the machine and maintenance data that feeds predictive analytics and, in turn, better operations. The clearer that picture, the more a manager understands how assets perform, how effective the operation really is, and where productivity can improve. Paired with the right sensors and machine data,

IoT technology

can even flag machine failures and breakdowns before they happen.

9. Enable Mobile Access

Work no longer stays put. As jobs shift from the stationary office desk toward flexible and remote models, mobile access stops being a nice-to-have and becomes a must on any facility management best practices list. Give employees the information they need from a phone or tablet, anywhere, and you've built a more flexible, modern workplace that runs more efficiently. Even on-site staff benefit: with the right information a tap away, they can fix issues faster no matter where they are in the building.

10. Make Use of Data and Analytics

Good maintenance starts with knowing your assets inside out. Collecting data and putting analytics tools to work gives facilities managers a deeper read on every critical asset. That understanding lets them push existing machines closer to their full capacity and run a tighter equipment maintenance operation overall.

11. Take a Customised FM Approach

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to how you manage a facility. Every company differs, every building differs, and the strategy has to suit the specific business in front of you. That means weighing a facility's use, size, headcount, and assets to develop a fitting strategy that holds up over time.

Managing your assets shouldn’t be hard. That’s why Excel, WhatsApp or Pen & Paper are not the right tools to efficiently manage your asset operations. No matter the manufacturer or type - with ToolSense you are good to go.

Conclusion

The ideas worth borrowing range widely, from rolling out modern IoT tools to reshaping team structure for better communication. Not every approach fits every business, so the move is to treat these best practices as a starting point and adapt them to your own situation. Get facility management right and the gains compound: higher productivity and efficiency, lower operating costs, happier employees and customers, and a facility that's ready for whatever comes next.

Not sure where to start? ToolSense can carry a lot of the load as you put better facility management and maintenance practices in place. Combine this asset management solution with the right hardware and you get real insight into every asset, from downtime to maintenance history. It pulls asset management, inventory management, work order management, and maintenance management into one platform, so the information that matters lives in a single, easy-to-reach place. And because it's cloud-based, your team gains the freedom to work where and how they want, with better accuracy and efficiency along the way.

FAQ

What are the best practices in facility management?

There are many important facilities' management tips, but some of the most popular best practices in facility management are the utilisation of IoT tools and data, establishing an asset inventory, and improving team structure and communication.

Which facility management practice is the most important?

The essentials of facility management lie in the ongoing digitalisation of many industries. Implementing modern sensors, collecting vital data, and automating repeating tasks are a must if you want to prepare your facility for the future.

How can facility management be improved?

Facility management can be improved from different angles. For example, working on creating a better team structure and improving communications is one of the surest ways to successful facilities' management. In addition, using trackers, sensors, and smart tools to collect and analyse asset data helps understand existing machines, improve maintenance strategies, and utilise these assets to the best ability.

How do you determine best practices in facilities management?

When trying to determine the best practices in facility management most suitable for your business, it is important to determine your needs first. Depending on existing assets, available facility space, and the number of employees, every company will have different priorities when it comes to good facility management.