Running a production or manufacturing business comes with a lot of moving parts. Whenever equipment is involved, maintenance and upkeep concerns need to be considered. However, so many facilities have massive gaps in their building lifecycle data that slow them down on a daily basis. It results in time and money that’s wasted — but that doesn’t have to be the case.
In this guide, we’ll explain why you need to bridge the building lifecycle gap, and we’ll teach you how you can do it. It’s a lot easier than you might think.
What Is a Building Lifecycle?
A whole building lifecycle tracks a building from its initial design all the way to its deconstruction. In simpler terms, it’s the full life of a constructed building.
It involves the design, construction, operation, and deconstruction of any building.
For anyone in a manufacturing or production facility, you’re likely focused on the design, construction, and operation phases of this lifecycle.
Understanding the Gap in a Building’s Lifecycle
Looking specifically at the construction and operation phases of a building, you’ll notice a lot of gaps. Many of these gaps are specific to your project, but there are plenty of more general options to think about:
Data Handover After Construction
If you’re dealing with new construction, there’s a lot of data you need to know about. Let’s look specifically at a sprinkler system. Do you know where the lines go, where the testing station is, and where each sprinkler is?
All of these details will be called out on the building plans, but what if the construction company had to make changes during the project? Out-of-date blueprints and drawings are worthless, and you need new data to mend the gap between expectations and reality.
Improper Use of Space
The production and operations phase of a building involves setting up equipment for your process. As your operation matures and bottlenecks are found, you’ll realize that you’re not using the space correctly. This is yet another gap that needs to be addressed.
You only have so many square feet in your facility to run your business, failure to utilize all of this space correctly results in wasted potential, which could lose you money in the long run.
Poor Data Regarding Maintenance Tasks
Every facility has certain maintenance tasks that need to be handled. These could be routine tasks, as-needed repairs, or steps required to upkeep your compliance in whatever industry you’re in.
If you forget about a maintenance task, there can be a wide range of repercussions. There can be gaps in communication between production teams which lead to these forgotten tasks.
Why You Need to Bridge the Building Lifecycle Gap
Now that you understand what gaps you might be facing, we should explain why it’s so important to bridge these gaps. The simple answer is that it optimizes your business, but here are some examples.
- Enhance your facilities management. Facilities management is an umbrella term that describes how you keep your buildings running. It involves maintenance, logistics, and the tracking of your products. Mending the building lifecycle gap gives you a more complete view of your building, therefore enhancing your overall facilities management.
- More effective startups. Every new operation line, building, or facility comes with countless headaches and worries. If the data is complete and tracked throughout the construction process, the initial startup will be a lot easier. You could save months of troubleshooting and hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout the startup process.
- Expedite any maintenance tasks. With incomplete building lifecycle data, every maintenance task is a potential pitfall for your company. You might not know where every fire extinguisher is, so when you have to check them to meet federal requirements, you’re wasting a ton of time searching for them.
- Get more value from contractors. Let’s say you need to install a new lighting system, so you bring in electricians. If they don’t have a complete map with data of your facility, they’ll spend hours at the beginning of the project learning the information for themselves. This costs you valuable money and time.
- Reduce upkeep and maintenance costs. With complete building lifecycle data, you can easily manage ongoing issues and maintenance tasks, since you know everything about your facility.
The Best Way to Bridge a Building Lifecycle Gap
The best way to bridge any building lifecycle gap is through a facilities management program like Archibus. Archibus is the industry-leading solution for a number of reasons, and you’ll quickly learn how powerful this tool is.
Archibus works well in almost any industry and application. You can optimize the space you use, expedite and track maintenance tasks, analyze the needs of your process, and centralize a ton of data.
From just one piece of software, you can eliminate dozens of gaps that you might notice in your company. When it comes to facilities management, it doesn’t get better than Archibus.
As a facilities management program, you can set up and automate routine maintenance tasks, so nothing gets skipped again. You can create a digital twin of your facility that includes all of your assets, locations of your equipment, and a full layout. This greatly reduces the time needed for troubleshooting or installing new parts.
In fact, every gap that we identified earlier can be corrected with Archibus. The best part? Once you fill in the information in Archibus’ software, it gets uploaded to a Cloud server so anyone who accesses your Archibus program will get access to this information. A maintenance tech can upload job details and specifics after a task is done, and then everyone on your team gets access to it.
This creates a living document that updates as work is completed. You can reference the software in the future, and share it with contractors or auditors to make your life easier.
Conclusion
You just learned why you need to bridge the building lifecycle gap, and you saw how powerful Archibus is as a tool to mend these gaps. Using Archibus can save you time and money, and help your team avoid headaches every day. If you want to learn more, give us a call. Our team at Robotech CAD Solutions will get your team using Archibus in no time, and you’ll start seeing results immediately. Request a demo to learn more.
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