In part one of What Makes a Facility Maintenance Manager, we went over a few of the aspects that helps make a better manager such as thinking strategically, looking at the big picture, knowing financial aspects, and more. Here, in Part Two, are a few other factors in making good decisions as a facility manager.
When it comes to communicating with others, you need to know what you are doing and that goes for conversations between more than just your employees. You need to know how to communicate with vendors, contractors, customers, and unless you are your own boss – good communication skills with the “higher ups” in your company. This also does not just include verbal conversations, knowing how to talk to people via email or even text message is integral to showing professionalism and making it easier to get communicate with those who help you do your job. This is why having a CMMS program is excellent because you can easily keep up with any notes or conversations that you need to notate.
In any type of work, putting out fires is harder than stopping those fires from getting started in the first place. It may be easy to put off preventative maintenance but there is a reason it is called "preventative" – it prevents things from getting worse if you stay on top of things. A CMMS program makes it a breeze to schedule your preventative maintenance in advance so you don't have to worry about it any longer and it is definitely not stuck on the back burner somewhere where it can turn into a bigger issue.
Keeping up with new information and knowledge is important so that you can always stay on top of things. This also gives you power over your employees in a good way – not power to feel better than them but power to be able to show them how to do something the right way or know the right way of doing something that is compliant to standards. You can only teach others if you know the correct way of doing things first.
Read More: Help in Avoiding Mistakes