Soft Landings And BFM At A Glance

• Content
• Facilities Management
• Soft Landings And BFM At A Glance

17 April 2019 | Updated 24 April 2019

BSRIA has launched a free to download topic guide on Soft Landings and Business-Focused Maintenance. The guidance gives readers a glimpse of the subject and recommends further reading.

The design and construction of a building should be carried out to allow it to perform at its optimum, says the guide which goes on to say that once a building is in operation, it is crucial to maintain the assets to ensure their effectiveness and efficiency in supporting the business as well as the occupants’ needs and wellbeing.

More than physical

The guide also states that in most buildings, maintenance is carried out to preserve physical assets through failure prevention schedules which contain generic tasks and frequencies. Creating such schedules 'without knowing which assets are critical for business continuity' can have consequences, such as overspending or creating disruption to the business dealing with emergency repairs.

Consequently, the guide recommends maintenance schedules should be customised to focus more on the requirements specific to the unique needs of the business in question. This type of maintenance approach is known as business-focused maintenance or BFM. It is a planned maintenance structure that supports business function by identifying critical assets and then shaping maintenance activities to support those functions.

BFM

This topic guide aims to inform those involved in the design, construction and operation of a building about how an effective BFM regime can be developed and achieved through the Soft Landings approach.

The guide’s co-author, Nick Blake, Principal Consultant – Facilities Management, BSRIA, said: “It is fundamental to involve facilities managers from early on in the design stage. The knowledge and experience of the FMs can inform better design of systems and make BFM more readily adoptable and easier in operation.

"Maintenance can have a major impact on the success of a business and, therefore, can deliver a competitive advantage. It shouldn’t be considered as an overhead – but as a way of adding value to the business. Each building, therefore, should have its own bespoke maintenance programme which can enable the FM to prevent asset failures through a more pragmatic approach."

Identification

Blake continued: "BFM can help the team to first decide which assets are crucial in achieving the business goals and the end users’ needs. Then, Soft Landings success criteria in terms of the availability, accessibility and manageability of those assets can be set. And the asset strategy and maintenance schedules should be gradually developed during the project and be completed and available at the Pre-Handover Phase."

Soft Landings and Business-Focused Maintenance is free to download from the BSRIA website - Click Here

Article written by Brian Shillibeer | Published 17 April 2019

Share

Related Articles