With more than 20 years of work experience, Vincent Cicchino, CFM, is a facilities management professional specializing in health care facilities. He recently served as Deputy Chief for Health Facilities Development for Hamad Medical Corporation in Doha, Qatar. There he was a member of the Executive Management Committee and had responsibilities for all healthcare sites in Qatar.

As an FM pro, he has overseen $12.2B in construction worldwide. He is an expert in asset management, operational optimization, and compliance management. We recently chatted with Cicchino about how facilities managers can save money, reduce risk, and find the right technology. Here are Cicchino’s top 7 tips for facilities managers:

1. Keep Your Facilities Management Documents Current and Accurate: If you’re a responsible facilities manager, you have to know what you’re responsible for. You cannot do your job properly without the correct information. If you don’t have proper records on the state of your facilities, you can’t do your job as a facilities manager. Without accurate documentation, you can’t even get a good bid from a vendor for work on your building. The first thing they will ask is, Where are the As-Built drawings? Without the As-Builts, the bid could be much higher.

2. Ensure You Can Easily Find Your Building Documents During an Emergency: You can more effectively handle tough repairs during an emergency situation, if you know your building’s documents are correct. But having to troubleshoot to find the problem could mean unnecessary demolition, greater inconvenience, and higher repair costs.

3. Do an Asset Assessment and Document Those Conditions: If you’re trying to get a handle of your documents, the first thing you should do is an asset assessment. Detail the condition of all the main equipment and systems, and document those conditions. No technology can help you unless you document what you have. After the assessment, you should create and begin a proactive maintenance program, as well as an equipment replacement plan—that should be a 3-year to 5-year plan. Even if the piece of equipment is 30 years old, you need to know when you need to replace it.

4. Use Facilities Management Technology from a Company with Extensive Industry Experience: When looking for a facilities management app or software solution do your homework. Check with professional organizations, trade organizations, and industry magazines and see what’s out there. And when considering a company to help with managing your records, check their history because track records do matter.

5. Get Your Finance Team to Back Up FM Software and App Purchases: As a facilities manager, you’re always fighting to replace pieces of equipment, and you often need to justify the expense. But if you’ve got a capital improvements program and your finance people are aware of it, they realize a certain amount of money is going to be spent on capital improvements.

6. Find a Company That Can Digitize Your Documents and Show ROI: A lot of firms can help with digitizing records, but it’s not going to be cheap to digitalize plans and put together an organized system—it costs money. People want a tangible ROI for that. After assessing the client’s needs, the consultant must provide that ROI.

7. Convince Your Boss or Company to Invest in a Mobile and Digital Facilities Document Storage System: Find a vendor with proven experience and client references. You won’t get my attention unless you’ve proven you already can do the work.

Want to see how you can accomplish these goals and more with SKYSITE facilities management solution? Click here.