The role of Facilities Management and its impact on our daily lives is underscored by many. In our routine walks of life, the necessary knowledge and awareness of Facilities Management can help in ease of our lifestyle.
This can help in saving money and tweaking the maintenance budgets. It is not just the maintenance quality aspect but the other aspects of FM that it empowers and influences, such as better health and sustainability.
Everyone’s must know that regular and effective maintenance regimes assure equipment longevity, increased building life span, and above all, helps to reduce the carbon footprint.
Keep utility costs in check.
Do you know that Utility costs form the highest proportion of our overall cost that we spent on the upkeep of our properties? These costs are directly proportional to their consumption and usage pattern. Most parts of this spent can be self-managed other than infrastructure that is usually managed by the third party.
About the self-managed aspect, people can significantly benefit from FM tips. Basic FM awareness can help end-users to contain these costs in many ways.
To achieve this, the maintenance domain needs to be strengthened. Such as the air conditioning and plumbing assets, including electric circuit boards, should be serviced at regular intervals. If there are any defective items, these should be repaired or replaced to reduce breakdown costs, and higher consumption cost.
If the air conditioning is serviced regularly as per the equipment’s OEM guidelines, its efficiency can surely reduce consumption by 5% to 7 %. Different preventive planned maintenance tasks related to these services are performed regularly.
The comprehensiveness of these tasks is critical to achieving the aforesaid objectives. These include filter replacements, cleaning of vents, gas refills. The health check on vents and ducts are also essential to add on tasks to maintain good air quality.
Each of these tasks is instrumental in saving costs as well as achieving asset longevity. Some of the benefits of a good FM is Its health and hygiene-related advantages. For instance, it helps in maintaining good air quality and automated temperature control to maintain requisite levels. Poor duct maintenance and filter conditions add to poor air quality that leads to breathing problems.
Excess cooling levels can add to many health issues that are time and again raise by doctors and health experts.
Costs add up
These maintenance issues also add up to an additional cost burden. Duct congestion and both excess cooling levels can influence costs. Anything 1 – 23 percent levels can increase air-conditioning costs as well undermines the pledge to lower the carbon footprint.
Our fixation with water usage in kitchens and bathrooms needs attention. A basic understanding of how to apply best maintenance practices that can help in water conservation as well in cost rationalization.
For instance, water heaters are big energy guzzlers, so these can be fitted with automatic sensors to ensure the automated temperature levels. For example, wastage and cost of water in gardening can be contained by understanding the actual moisture content and adjustment of irrigation systems based on weather cycles.
These are not complicated techno issues but a basic knowledge of FM that most property owners or occupants must-have. A common heath challenge from water that most people have is the water tank cleaning, as this could pose contamination issues due to the presence of bacteria.
Even in context to the usual cleaning, a common understanding of the use of chemicals can help to reduce costs, increase in a life span of building assets.
Indeed, an understanding of FM at the basic household level is a game-changer to build a stronger case for far-reaching sustainability.
Source: Gulf News