Guidance for people running buildings.
Practical writing on planned maintenance, statutory inspections and asset compliance, from the team building FacilityOptix.
Spreadsheets vs a facilities management platform: when to switch
A well-run spreadsheet can genuinely work for a small estate. The switch point is usually about scale and evidence, not about spreadsheets being inherently wrong.
PPM software: what to actually look for
Most PPM software looks similar in a demo. The differences that matter tend to show up only once real assets and a genuinely busy week are put through it.
How much does facilities management software cost?
Pricing in this market is genuinely varied and rarely published upfront. Here's what actually drives the cost, and the questions worth asking before a sales call.
Handing over a facilities role without losing institutional knowledge
A departing facilities manager takes an enormous amount of unwritten knowledge with them. Most of what makes a handover fail was always going to be hard to write down.
Seasonal maintenance planning for facilities teams
Heating failures in January and cooling failures in July aren't bad luck — they're the predictable result of maintenance that should have happened weeks earlier.
What happens when a statutory inspection finds a defect
A defect noted on an inspection report and a defect actually fixed are two very different things. The gap between them is where most compliance risk really lives.
Managing contractors on site without losing oversight
A contractor who's competent and fully accredited can still create a gap in oversight if nobody's tracking what they actually did while they were on site.
Why asset service history matters more than the PPM calendar
A due date tells you when something should happen next. Service history tells you whether it's actually worth doing again — or whether the asset is telling you something else.