A Reality Check for Facility Professionals:e-FM and the Sustainability of the Built Environment

摘要

The purchase price of an asset typically accounts for only a fraction of its total cost. In addition to its procurement or acquisition costs, there are direct and indirect costs associated with the ongoing utilization, maintenance, redeployment, and disposal of an asset. Automated tools, benchmarks, and procedures derived from best practices should be utilized in the creation and development of Facilities TCO Frameworks that reflect the efficient management of an asset throughout its life cycle. Managing assets and their Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) effectively with Web-centric FM automation and infrastructure management solutions can be a productive and profitable activity for organizations of any size. Our clients have varied from organizations looking to manage only a few thousand feet in a single property to those with millions of feet in thousand of properties. A good basic working definition of FM Automation and Infrastructure Management is the ability to manage a single asset, a group of assets, or all the assets of an organization throughout their life cycles. This is accomplished by using procedures, FM Best Practices, tools, and technologies that reduce human interaction to a minimum by automating labor-intensive tasks and optimizing management processes. The ability to centrally survey, interact with, and/or effectively manage an asset (even from a remote location half way around the globe) can improve its ease of use, uptime, and ownership (TCO). Such activities can be facilitated by the facilities professional via a standalone, enterprise-based with concurrent access, and/or Internet/Intranet Web computing environment.