Facility Issues
Providing Better Insights on Occupied Properties

Energy and utility companies constantly embrace smart technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and augmented reality to optimize their production and distribution networks, and customer operations. But understanding what’s happening inside their occupied facilities is equally critical to ensuring workplaces that support a quality workforce, enabling better service and effective operations for increased reliability, sustainability, and cost management.

Like most industries, utility workplace facilities have multiple dimensions of space, use, building systems, capital budgets, operating budgets, and sustainability goals. Balancing these complex and inter-related factors requires cutting-edge, intelligent analytics that stitches data together to enable more efficient facility management and planning. NY-based analytics provider Facility Issues assures just that.

“Our strategic planning services, facility benchmarking program and metrics training help facility managers make sensible decisions about their physical properties. Our close alliance with the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) Utilities Council helps us stay abreast of emerging issues to support utility facility leaders,” says Robert Lambe, owner and president of Facility Issues.

One of the biggest strengths of Facility Issues’ analytics is coalescing operational, corporate, and building management data from multiple systems into applicable facility centric metrics. Integration of this diverse data into easy-to-use scorecards enables better insight for data-driven facility management and planning. This facilitates appropriate capital investment in the properties needed for effective utility operations with lower operating costs and improvement environmental footprint.

The strategic planning process clarifies each facility’s long-term or short-term goals, including facility condition, suitability, cost, and location with respect to crew travel time. Then, by factoring in organization priorities and programs for mobile/remote workforce and anticipated operational/technology changes, Facility Issues draws up a plan of action. The strategy is to develop a multi-year roadmap of property investment allows the property management group to be more agile in response to changing business conditions. It is also helping utilities comply with changing regulations and cost or sustainability goals by considering decarbonization and smarter electrification of facilities.

Facility Issues’ benchmarking program is the foundation for this by providing a baseline of metrics on workplaces, space utilization, asset condition, capital investment, operating costs, utility usage, sustainability metrics, occupant satisfaction, and operating practices for occupied properties within the industry. Benchmarking is a proven technique for decision makers to cohesively address different business objectives and take proactive action toward improving their performance levels. The program has helped organizations experience a noticeable improvement in operations and cost savings through networking and sharing best practices.

Another important offering of Facility Issues is helping utilities develop the internal capabilities of their facility management group. This includes development of facility-centric scorecards that provide leaders a holistic view of their operations, whether internal or contracted. It also includes training or mentoring support staff to improve data skills. With increasing volumes of data and scarce talent, it is more important than ever that the facility group can make the most of their resources.

Exhibiting these analytic competencies in the utilities domain, Facility Issues has carved a niche in the industry. It aims to continue its trajectory and help more facility managers improve their operations with better insights.