A lot of churches, nonprofits, and other organizations are doing their best to keep up with facility maintenance, but they don’t have a clear Facility Maintenance Plan.
Some routine tasks may be getting done. Other issues may only be addressed when something breaks, stops working, or becomes urgent.
There’s a big difference between responding to facility needs as they arise and having a long-term plan for managing the building. Both the daily work and the long-term planning are important, and your organization needs both.
The day-to-day work takes care of what needs attention right now. The big-picture plan helps you budget, prepare for the future, retain staff, support growth, and make more informed decisions about your building.
That’s where fractional facility management can help.
What Is Fractional Facility Management?
Fractional facility management means working with a facility management company to provide remote facility management for your organization.
Although most of the work is completed remotely, a strong fractional facility management plan should include on-site visits at least a couple of times each year. The company needs to know your building, understand your assets, and see how your facility operates.
From there, the fractional facility manager helps put together and oversee a complete Facility Maintenance Plan customized to your site and your available resources.
That customization is very important.
Someone can provide you with the best plan possible, with every detail included, but if you don’t have the staff, volunteers, vendors, technology, or budget to execute it, then it’s not a good plan for you.
Fractional facility management gives you access to senior-level facility management expertise at a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house facility manager.
Who Is Fractional Facility Management For?
Fractional facility management can be a good fit for churches, nonprofits, and other organizations that are in an in-between stage.
Maybe you don’t have room in the budget to hire a full-time facility manager, but you still need someone who knows how to build a long-term plan.
You might already have:
- Maintenance technicians
- Janitorial staff
- Volunteers
- Vendors or contractors who complete specialized work
Those people may be doing a good job handling the work assigned to them. What may be missing is the senior-level facility management leadership needed to organize the work, develop the systems, and create the long-term plan.
Here are a few signs that fractional facility management may be right for your organization.
1. You Need Better Long-Term Facility Planning
Maybe unexpected repairs or asset replacements have caused you to go over budget in the past.
Or perhaps you simply want to understand what your organization can expect over the next one, two, five, or ten years.
Fractional facility management gives you access to someone who can help you plan those needs out.
Instead of waiting for an asset to fail, you can begin identifying approximately when your roof, HVAC equipment, flooring, plumbing fixtures, and other building assets will need to be repaired or replaced.
That information helps you prepare your facility budget based on actual building needs rather than guesses.
2. Your Team Is Stuck in Reactive Maintenance
Another sign that fractional facility management could help is that your staff is working primarily from a reactive maintenance approach.
Reactive maintenance means that when something happens, your team reacts to it.
A lot of facility teams become very good at being firefighters. An issue comes up, and they quickly jump on it, address it, fix it, and move forward.
You want your staff to be capable of doing that. It’s a great asset for your team. But the problem begins when firefighting becomes your team’s constant way of operating.
Over time, that approach burns out your staff. It doesn’t allow time for big-picture planning or proactive maintenance. Eventually, the emergencies build up, your staff becomes stressed, and important things start getting missed.
Instead, you want a proactive approach built around inspections, preventive maintenance, asset tracking, and long-term planning.
Preventive maintenance won’t eliminate every emergency. This is facility management, and inevitably, emergencies will still happen. But you can drastically reduce them.
You can also reduce costs because emergency repairs generally cost more than planned maintenance.
What Fractional Facility Management Is Not
It’s also important to understand what a fractional facility manager does not do.
They Aren’t an On-Site Facility Manager
Your fractional facility manager won’t be in your building every day.
They’ll provide leadership, planning, systems, oversight, and support, but they won’t replace an on-site staff member who handles daily facility responsibilities.
They Don’t Physically Perform the Repairs
Your staff members, volunteers, contractors, or vendors will still complete the hands-on work.
The fractional facility manager helps identify what needs to be done, assign or organize the work, establish the appropriate schedule, and help your team follow through.
They Aren’t Your 24-Hour Emergency Service
Your fractional facility manager can help you develop an emergency response plan, identify who your team should call, and organize your emergency vendor information.
However, they aren’t the person your organization calls at 2 a.m. to perform an emergency repair.
Your on-site team and emergency vendors would still handle that response.
They Aren’t an Architect or Engineer
A fractional facility manager doesn’t replace the specialized expertise of architects, engineers, or licensed contractors.
They should be a qualified and preferably certified facility manager who can help you create a Facility Maintenance Plan that your team can follow and execute consistently.
What Does Fractional Facility Management Include?
The exact services will depend on the company and your organization’s needs, but a strong fractional facility management program should help you build a complete system for managing your facility.
1. A Customized Facility Management Plan
One of the most important things you’ll receive is a Facility Management Plan built specifically for your building, team, budget, and available resources.
Your plan shouldn’t be copied from another church or organization.
You may have more resources than the church down the road, or you may have fewer. That doesn’t matter. Your plan needs to be realistic for you.
The goal is to create a plan that is detailed enough to provide direction but practical enough that your team can actually follow it.
2. A Building Asset Inventory and Condition Assessment
You need to know what building assets you have and their current condition. That usually starts with a complete asset inventory and an assessment of the building and its major systems.
Your inventory may include:
- HVAC systems
- Roofing
- Plumbing equipment
- Electrical systems
- Doors and windows
- Flooring
- Lighting
- Fire and life-safety equipment
- Parking lots and sidewalks
- Kitchen equipment
- Other building components that require maintenance or replacement
This information becomes the foundation of your Facility Maintenance Plan. You can’t have a preventive maintenance plan if you don’t know what you’re maintaining.
3. Asset Lifecycle and Replacement Planning
Every facility asset has an expected lifecycle.
Your roof, air conditioning condensers, water heaters, flooring, and other assets all have an estimated amount of time they’re expected to remain in service.
The exact lifecycle will depend on factors such as the asset type, climate, use, condition, and maintenance history.
For example, an asphalt roof and a metal roof will have different expected lifecycles. An HVAC unit in one geographic area may also experience different conditions than the same type of unit somewhere else.
Your Facility Maintenance Plan should show when each asset is expected to reach the end of its lifecycle. That allows you to see which assets may need replacement next year, two years from now, five years from now, or further into the future.
Assets can fail before their expected lifecycle, and they can also last longer. When an asset fails prematurely, poor or inconsistent preventive maintenance is often one of the contributing factors. When an asset exceeds its expected lifecycle, consistent maintenance may have helped extend its useful life.
However, simply keeping an old asset running isn’t always a good thing.
Sometimes an organization keeps pouring money into an asset and celebrates that it has outlived its expected lifecycle. But when you look at the repair history, you may discover that the organization has spent enough over the last several years to purchase a new asset.
That’s why maintenance history matters. The data helps you decide whether repairing an aging asset is still a good use of your resources or whether replacement would be the better long-term decision.
4. A Preventive Maintenance Plan
Fractional facility management should also help you develop a complete preventive maintenance plan based on your actual building assets. This plan is made up of recurring work orders scheduled according to what each asset needs.
Depending on your building, tasks may be scheduled:
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Biannually
- Annually
Examples might include changing HVAC filters, clearing air conditioning condensate drain lines, inspecting roofing, pressure washing concrete, soft washing roofing when appropriate, testing safety equipment, or completing other recurring tasks.
The work orders should populate at the proper time so that your staff, volunteers, or vendors know what needs to be completed.
Once the work is finished, it should be marked as complete and added to the asset’s maintenance history.
5. An Asset and Work Order Management System
Your organization needs a central place to store its asset information and maintenance history. A Computerized Maintenance Management System, commonly called a CMMS, is generally the best option. However, the appropriate system depends on your organization’s resources.
Some organizations may use a spreadsheet. Others may use a task management system such as Asana as an in-between step. The most important principle is that you maintain an accurate inventory and history, no matter where you keep it.
When an asset reaches the end of its lifecycle and is replaced, you shouldn’t simply delete it from your system. Instead, move it to a deactivated or disposed status so you can still access its history.
Several years later, you may want to know which HVAC condenser had the fewest problems or which type of equipment didn’t work well for your building.
Keeping the old information helps you make better purchasing decisions in the future.
The replacement asset should then be added to your active inventory so that its maintenance schedule and history can begin immediately.
6. A Capital Replacement Plan
A capital replacement plan helps reduce surprise replacements that repeatedly blow your facility budget. Instead of suddenly discovering that several major assets need replacement at the same time, you’ll be able to look ahead and see which ones are expected to reach the end of their lifecycle over the next several years.
As your team continues inspecting and maintaining those assets, the replacement timeline can be adjusted.
You may determine that one asset isn’t likely to reach its expected lifecycle. Another asset may be performing well and could remain in service longer.
That updated information helps you spread replacement costs across multiple years more accurately.
7. A Vendor Management Plan
Fractional facility management can also help establish a vendor management process.
A lot of organizations have contracts with vendors who perform ongoing maintenance. Many of those vendors are outstanding and become a valuable addition to the facility team.
However, there are also times when vendors, either accidentally or intentionally, don’t perform everything included in the agreement.
A vendor management system helps you:
- Track vendor performance
- Review contract requirements
- Maintain regular communication
- Document when vendors enter and leave the building
- Record which tasks they completed
- Gather professional recommendations about the assets they service
- Rate vendors based on their performance
You’re paying a professional, so you should receive professional insight from them.
You want to know not only that a task was completed, but also what the vendor is observing about the equipment they’re maintaining.
You should also know when vendors are entering and leaving your building. Having them sign in and out provides documentation and makes it easier to confirm what work was performed.
8. A Better Workflow for Staff and Volunteers
A fractional facility management plan creates a clearer workflow for your staff, volunteers, and vendors.
The quickest way to lose volunteers is to invite them to help but fail to provide clear directions or a list of what needs to be done. They arrive, stand around, and feel as though they aren’t needed.
The same issue can affect employees. When you see staff sitting or standing around, it may not be because they don’t want to work. They may simply not know what they’re supposed to do next. They may be used to waiting for something to break and then responding to it.
A preventive maintenance system creates recurring work orders, inspections, assessments, and assigned tasks. Your team knows what’s expected of them, and they no longer have to guess what to do each day.
That’s better for leadership because you can see that work is being completed. It’s also better for staff and volunteers because they have clear direction and can see how their work fits into the larger plan.
A Temporary Solution or a Long-Term Partnership
Some organizations may use fractional facility management as a bridge. You may need senior-level facility leadership for the next year or two while your organization grows and prepares to hire an in-house facility manager.
Other organizations may decide that they can handle the day-to-day tasks but want to continue partnering with a professional who maintains the larger system and long-term plan.
Either approach can work.
The important thing is that you have someone helping your organization build, implement, and maintain a facility management system rather than continuing to depend only on reactive maintenance.
What Should You Look for in a Fractional Facility Manager?
You want to work with a company that views the relationship as a partnership. Even though they aren’t in your building every day, they should feel like an integral part of your team. If their primary goal isn’t your success, they’re probably not the right fit.
This relationship shouldn’t be transactional.
You don’t want someone who hands you a plan and says, “Complete this and call me if you have questions.” Instead, you want an ongoing, back-and-forth relationship. You should feel comfortable reaching out for advice, asking questions, and getting their opinion about facility decisions.
For example, perhaps your church is considering an addition. You may want help estimating the maintenance cost per square foot so you can plan for the long-term effect on your budget. You may also want guidance on which assets have performed well in your current building and could be considered for the new addition. There are many questions that come up over time.
You want a fractional facility manager who feels like part of your team and has a vested interest in your organization’s success.
Is Fractional Facility Management Right for Your Organization?
Fractional facility management may be a good fit if:
- Your organization can’t yet hire a full-time facility manager
- Your team handles daily maintenance but lacks a long-term plan
- Unexpected repairs and replacements keep affecting your budget
- Your staff is constantly reacting to emergencies
- You don’t have an accurate inventory of your building assets
- You need a preventive maintenance schedule
- Your volunteers, staff, and vendors need clearer direction
- You want senior-level facility management expertise without the expense of a full-time position
Fractional facility management gives you the opportunity to move beyond simply taking care of what breaks today.
It helps you understand your facility, plan for the future, create a better workflow for your team, reduce unexpected expenses, and provide a safe, comfortable, secure, and well-maintained building for the people you serve.
If you’d like to learn more, schedule a free consultation with Foundational Facility Management Consulting. We’ll answer your questions, learn more about your organization, and help you determine whether fractional facility management is the right fit for your team.
