Mobile Engineering services: Crucial support system to keep FM teams leaner

How much time does your core O&M team spend on analyzing data from your critical assets? Or Implementing new applications/ Practices? Or even planning for new energy benchmarking methodology? 

In short out of all the time and resources that are there at their disposal, how much of it gets spent on transformational activities, that involve strategic decision-making and implementing new initiatives rather than simply transactional ones such as mundane monitoring and reactive maintenance tasks.

If an O&M team consists of a number of technicians and operators then the repetitive tasks, as well as strategic ones, can be managed internally. Work can be assigned based on the skills, experience and capabilities of the engineer.  

But in recent times, Most of the FM teams are striving for leaner structures to maintain the low operational cost model and lesser dependencies. They can not afford to expand their maintenance teams or allocate their quality resources to do fail-check monitoring of less critical assets. Even existing O&M teams are upskilling or reskilling their staff, rotating subject matter experts (SME) across their facility portfolio. In such situations, they would need to explore ways to outsource less critical parts of the maintenance so that the core team can focus on transformational activities and drive digitalization faster and in a cost-effective manner. 

Well, such a concept of mobile engineering contracts are not new to the facility management fraternity but it is paving its way to mainstream maintenance practices. Integral, a UK-based FM service provider company has first started such services under the term ‘Mobile engineering’ in early 2012. After getting acquired by JLL global, it has expanded its network and started leveraging JLL’s in-house tech applications to strengthen its remote engineering services.

Currently, Integral’s mobile engineering team provides on-demand mechanical, electrical maintenance services which are built on the parent company - JLL’s Corrigo CMMS platform and utilizing a smartphone app or desktop portal, On-demand services can be delivered by the mobile engineering workforce nationwide in the UK. 

What makes On-demand services such a lucrative option?

Such on-demand services let the client (A facility management firm) control their maintenance tasks and expenditure, with flexible access to quality engineers on a pay-as-you-go model. 

1. Access to trained professionals: 

FM teams wouldn’t need to invest in recruiting, training, or maintaining a diverse set of technically skilled professionals at every facility. They can easily access trained technicians or engineers on a limited contract basis when needed.   

2. Lean teams:

As there is no excessive staff on a permanent basis, an FM team can better utilize its core resources by segregating critical and non-critical maintenance activities and achieve operational targets with minimum expenditure on human resources. According to the US dept of energy a typical building maintenance team spend 30 - 40% of their resources on reactive maintenance practices. With on-demand services, they can access technicians when needed and let the core team focus on critical tasks. 

While it is highly cost-efficient for a client to access such on-demand services for reactive or run to failure maintenance (RTF) it is equally beneficial to the service provider. 

It has been observed that most of these on-demand services leverage their own or partner's tech solution to gather operational insights while silently promoting their other products, ultimately creating opportunities for upselling.

An on-demand mobile engineering partner can take away the boring and less creative part of the maintenance, giving an FM team the opportunity to truly invest in their in-house maintenance team which is specifically relevant for mid-large size FM teams. 

How likely your FM team would go for such on-demand services in the future? Is your company using a real-time monitoring software? If you are already using mobile engineering services then share your experience with us.