Where facilities compliance is concerned, leading practice is to always be prepared for a visit from The Joint Commission or other accrediting or regulatory authority. However, it’s far more likely that compliance and accreditation preparation is a time-limited initiative. When the inspection date approaches, the FM team will focus on remediating items most likely to receive attention, while also juggling daily service requests.

Meanwhile, documentation of compliance activities is often available only in large paper binders, perhaps maintained by a single building engineer. Should that person retire or move to another organization, responding to regulatory inquiries will be very difficult and time-consuming.

Leading practice is to adopt always-on compliance and digitized compliance documentation that is accessible on a mobile device by authorized users. Ideally, the FM team will make regular rounds of key equipment and facility areas and maintain an always-current digital record of compliance-related checks. With the right tools and training, preparing for inspection authorities can simply become part of the daily routine for the FM staff.

Typically, about one-third of the energy used by buildings is wasted through inefficient or malfunctioning equipment. Wasted energy can be significant in healthcare facilities that house energy-intensive diagnostic and treatment equipment.

Leading practice is to apply next-generation preventative maintenance techniques with sophisticated monitoring tools to keep equipment operating efficiently and to prevent failures. These measures not only extend equipment life and help ensure that the patient is always safe and comfortable, but also significantly reduce energy costs.

With the growing sophistication of smart building technologies, FMs can take energy efficiency and sustainability to new levels. By automatically capturing data related to energy and water usage, as well as waste management, an FM team can create benchmarks for tracking sustainability goals over time.