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Safe Facilities Maintenance
Facilities maintenance refers to the wide variety of disciplines that are part of maintaining a building or other property. This includes taking care of the electricity, plumbing, heating and cooling of the building, locks, working elevators, and anything else that comes up in ensuring that everything in the building works properly. Facilities professionals take care of the technical issues that the other occupants of the building don’t want to have to worry about. This makes it an extremely valuable service.
Many times in an office or residential building there will be a facilities manager on staff, who frequently will live on site for maximum availability. Facilities maintenance may be necessary at any time of day or night, if someone is locked out of the office or get stuck in an elevator. In a less dramatic turn of events, maintenance is also needed on a general level, such as daily cleaning of facilities.
If changes or renovations to a building are required, this can fall under the category of facilities maintenance. A building may need to be gutted and updated to meet safety requirements, or aesthetic changes may be wanted. This normally occurs with changes in flooring, such as the installation of new carpeting or the replacement of old carpeting in favour of hardwood or tiles floors. With changes in real estate trends, maintenance can make or break a sale and make more attractive for its current occupants.
It’s also important to stay one step ahead of facilities maintenance for health reasons. Especially in damper climates, mould and mildew can take hold of a home, thus creating a variety of health problems. Regular cleaning helps prevent this, but at times more drastic procedures will be required, like taking out mould-infested walls and redoing them with mould-resistant materials and drywalls for instance. The same can hold true for houses that have lead paint or asbestos. There is no need to live with these kinds of health hazards in the home.
In retail settings, facilities maintenance takes on an extra value, because in retail or office settings the occupants are trying to wow the clients or customers with a clean, modern, and inviting space. This requires the height of cleanliness and the security that everything in the building is in working order. For this reason, usually a retail store or similar type of building will have their own facilities manager as part of the working staff, similar to the facilities arrangement in an apartment building.
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