We often think the most complex activity involved in the lifecycle of a building is its construction. But even if it takes several years to build, that’s a drop in the bucket when you think about how long a building will stand. Look around your own town. You can probably find examples that are well over 50 years old. In many cities, you can find plenty of buildings that are approaching a century in continuous operation.
If a building stands that long, there are going to be plenty of changes – in equipment, technology, tenants, renovations, materials upgrades, and on, and on. And that means a lot of complexity – maybe more complexity than constructing it.
Facilities Managers and Owners have to know everything about their buildings, from when and how it was built, to the inspections it passed, problems that were fixed, upgrades that were made, and tenant improvements that have taken place over the lifespan of the structure.
Thousands of documents have to be maintained, updated, and kept easily accessible. In many ways, these documents are the lifeblood for facilities maintenance.
When construction is finished, most Facilities Managers receive a “closeout” set of documents that reflects the building as it was constructed (usually referred to as “as-builts”), complete with operating and maintenance manuals for its new equipment, locations of key infrastructure, and emergency and life safety documents. Over time a lot will be added: maintenance documents, safety and upkeep records, new construction drawings, and more.
When faced with all these documents, facilities managers are often faced with several challenges, key among them are:
- Information is required to be continuously updated
- Documents and information are stored in multiple locations
- Documents are often found to be in different formats
- Vital information is often found missing
- Information is required for tenant improvement and maintaining health and safety conditions
- Good document and information governance is required for regulatory compliance and audits
A good document archiving and management system is crucial to address these issues…and SKYSITE was “purpose-built” for the task.
SKYSITE, drawing management software, makes it easy to receive and organize closeout documents at the end of the project. Once received, it’s even easier to build a whole operations workflow around the closeout documents. Building supervisors no longer need to hunt for information in traditional, paper-based facility plan-rooms. Instead, they can access the information they need on a mobile device when and where they need it.
SKYSITE for facilities includes features to manage document retention and document purging, automate information governance policies, and otherwise mitigate risks associated with outdated or irrelevant documentation.
SKYSITE provides owners and facility managers with the ability to store, sync, share and retrieve their documents and information from the cloud. Users can access and view more than 170 file types. It drives process improvement and a superior user experience with powerful features:
- Advanced search: fast document search due to SKYSITE’s ability to find information through customized search filters, including projects, folders and files, including Microsoft Outlook’s .msg files with attachments and even document metadata, generating precise results within seconds.
- Two-way sync between mobile device/desktop and cloud: touch-based access to information. Robust document synchronization enables real-time sync of specific documents or an entire folder. SKYSITE’s Sync has a unique ability to sync operations, maintenance, health and safety, and as-built documents with mark-ups, revision updates and annotation, keeping everyone on the team current and always using the right information to make decisions.
- Compliance, retention and information governance: SKYSITE eases the burdens of regulatory compliance by classifying documents required for compliance, making them available on demand and mitigating risk by extending a department’s ability to classify documents by type, as well as set a date to repose or purge. This enables an organization to implement a written retention policy with a solution that automates information governance digitally while mitigating risk.
- Data ownership and loss prevention: unlike alternative solutions, SKYSITE is account-based, so the organization’s content remains with the company, not an individual, resulting in the content ownership remaining with the company even after an employee’s departure. SKYSITE provides best-in-class cloud data infrastructure and security, with higher data availability, redundancy, security, and scalability when compared to generic information distribution tools.
So how long is your building going to stand? Is your document retention and management system up to the task?
If you think it might be time to re-evaluate (and get those boxes of drawings out from underneath the water mains in the basement!), join us for a deeper look into SKYSITE.
The next time a contractor wants to know if he can break through a wall to put a new door in (maybe next week?), an air conditioning unit goes on the fritz (maybe in the next six months?), or a water main breaks (maybe 10 or 15 years?), you’ll be glad you did.
