What is Facilities-iQ, And How Does It Work? Features & Benefits Explained

If you’re struggling to stay on top of the latest laws and regulations that affect building maintenance, Facilities-iQ can help to keep you one step ahead.  

Facilities-iQ is a software solution covering a vast library of maintenance schedules that comprise the SFG20 standard which has been the industry standard for building maintenance in the UK for more than 30 years. 

Each SFG20 maintenance schedule in Facilities-iQ provides up-to-date guidance on which tasks need to be performed, by whom and how often, meaning there’s no guesswork involved. With more than 1000 schedules covering 70+ asset types including specialist equipment, it’s safe to say that Facilities-iQ is a very powerful tool for any facilities management professional.  

Read on to learn more about how Facilities-iQ works, discover the cost-saving and time-saving features and benefits and find out how you can use the software to achieve and maintain compliance. 

How Does Facilities-iQ Work? 

Facilities-iQ allows you to replicate the asset structure of your buildings in file and folder format known as a Maintenance Regime. To do this, you can easily select maintenance schedules from our library that are relevant to your site, and then place them into your Maintenance Regime(s). 

Our dedicated team of experienced and highly accredited technical authors create all SFG20 maintenance schedules in line with the latest guidance and keep them up to date as new legislation emerges. Each SFG20 schedule tells you the “what and when” alongside which tasks are statutory (a legal requirement), mandatory (business critical), optimal (function critical) and discretionary (non-critical). 

The legislative research and individual schedule information is all done for you, so all you have to do is select a maintenance professional to carry out the work in line with each task’s required skill set.  

Using our versatile, free-to-use API (Application Programming Interface), Facilities-iQ can be easily connected to your chosen FM software including CAFM, CMMS and IWMS which will allow both legislative updates and content from Maintenance Regimes to automatically populate in your system, saving you hours of manual data entry.  

What Are The Features Of Facilities-iQ? 

Modern, Intuitive Interface  

We've built Facilities-iQ to be as user-friendly as possible so that you can find everything you need in a flash.  

Using our smart search tool found on the homepage, you can quickly find any SFG20 maintenance schedule within seconds.  

There’s also the option to create your own personal Favourite folders as well as custom Tags to quickly find and identify schedules. 

There’s also a helpful “Actions” tab which acts as a reminders area to help you stay on top of everything that needs your attention.    

Maintenance Schedules 

A maintenance schedule is a collection of tasks related to maintaining a specific asset or building fabric. Each schedule contains the task criticality, frequency, skill set and links to relevant legislation and other supporting documents. Maintenance schedules save you the hours of time you would normally spend drawing up a legally compliant specification to maintain your assets. 

Tailored Schedules 

Facilities-iQ gives you the option to amend the introduction, duration, frequency, units, criticality and skill set of maintenance tasks so that they’re wholly bespoke to your business, improving efficiency and potentially reducing costs. 

 You can also add specific notes to a schedule that applies to a particular location or asset. This assists engineers in locating assets and specific parts, reducing the time they spend on the task and maximising efficiency.  

Custom Schedules 

With a Professional subscription, there are two types of customisable schedules: Derived and Custom. 

With a Derived schedule, you can create a schedule from a current/parent SFG20 schedule and add any additional tasks you wish. This is ideal if you have business-specific requirements or an SLA (Service-level Agreement) to fulfil.  

 There’s also the ability to create a Custom schedule which will give you a blank template to work from – this is useful for those who manage specialist assets.  

Please note: as Custom schedules do not have a parent SFG20 schedule, it’s important to make sure that you keep it up to date. 

Maintenance Regimes

A Maintenance Regime is an exclusive Facilities-iQ feature that allows you to organise schedules and tailor them individually. You can then share these regimes with colleagues, technicians or engineers out in the field via secure sharing links. 

Regimes can be used to organise schedules by specific factors, such as location, industry or client.  

You’ll also be able to see an audit trail of decisions made on Maintenance Regimes including who made the change as well as when, helping to build your organisation's Golden Thread of information.  

Whenever a schedule change is rolled out, we’ll send you automated update notifications which will allow you to choose when to implement updates. This is seamlessly connected to your FM system(s), removing the need for time-consuming manual imports and updates each time a schedule changes in line with new legislation. 

There are a whole host of benefits to Maintenance Regimes – so many in fact that we’ve put together Top 5 Benefits of Maintenance Regimes article which summarises everything you need to know. 

Secure Sharing Links 

Thanks to our secure sharing link feature, Facilities-iQ allows you to easily and safely share Maintenance Regimes with the likes of subcontractors, customers, subject matter experts and internal staff. 

Freely Available API 

Our freely available API links Facilities-iQ to your chosen FM software including CAFM, CMMS and IWMS providers. This means that any Maintenance Regimes you create will populate in your FM system automatically, saving you hours of manual data entry. Not only does this eliminate manual imports, but it also enables you to avoid double handling of data and empowers you to hit your compliance targets.  

To see if your FM system has already integrated with us, head on over to our Digital Partner Programme page. 

What Are The Benefits Of Facilities-iQ? 

Save Money and Time 

Time is money: Facilities-iQ comes with a whole host of additional time and cost-saving benefits that in many cases allow users to save more money than they invested! For a full breakdown of the return on investment you might expect from Facilities-iQ implementation, check out Is Facilities-iQ worth the ROI and Value for Money?  

In fact, one of our customers told us that we helped them save on the cost of hiring an additional compliance professional and are giving them an estimated 20% of their time back each week. 

Stay Compliant  

Facilities-iQ is your compass for compliance. 

We provide up-to-date guidance around what maintenance tasks need to be performed, by whom and how often, with each of our maintenance schedules ratified and updated by our highly skilled technical team. 

What’s more, every time a schedule is updated, we send out automated notifications to keep you in the loop. We also allow you to compare the old and new schedule side by side, with the choice to implement these updates at any time that’s best for you.  

Efficient And Tailored Way Of Working  

One of the other biggest benefits of Facilities-iQ is that it allows you to tailor the SFG20 standard to suit your own organisation and helps you improve your resource planning and allocation.  

Once you’ve created a Maintenance Regime, you can organise and tailor SFG20 maintenance schedules to suit your organisation’s way of working and provide a precise specification for tendering purposes or completion of works. There’s the option to adjust task timings, frequencies and more, or even remove tasks that aren’t relevant to your assets. 

Shareability  

With Facilities-iQ, you’re in complete control of who has access to your content.  

Our new sharing link feature ensures that you are able to share the latest, accepted (i.e. compliant) SFG20 content with your intended recipients (both internal and external), all while helping to reduce your carbon footprint. 

 Using the Admin section, you’re also given the option to add new users as well as create and assign appropriate licenses and roles to others. 

View The SFG20 Standard On Site 

Access Facilities-iQ from your pocket with our free-to-download companion mobile app integrated with FM systems via our API, ideal for external stakeholders involved in your maintenance management process such as contractors and internal staff. 

Those with a View license can be given read access to individual schedules and view task steps via Smart Words on the companion app.  

Total Visibility  

From the homepage, you’ll be able to see what schedules you have in use without having to scroll through hundreds of other schedules. 

Once you’ve created an effective Maintenance Regime, you’ll also be able to see all updates live on our updates page which can be immediately accepted or implemented at a time that suits you (we also send out emails to notify you that there are updates ready to view in the system).  

There’s even a handy Actions tab to help you stay on track of everything that needs your attention. You can also create Favourite folders to save time finding what you need and custom Tags to help quickly identify schedules. 

Accessibility  

We’ve made Facilities-iQ as accessible as possible with additional graphical support to help those with colour visualisation challenges, helping to save time in identifying task criticality levels. 

Facilities-iQ Features And Benefits Summarised 

Facilities-iQ Subscription Types Compared  

At SFG20, we recognise that every organisation is unique which is why we offer 3 subscription types for Facilities-iQ to choose from: Foundation, Advanced and Professional.  

Reach New Heights With Facilities-iQ  

Most Facility Managers and Building Owners don’t have enough time, budget or resources to manage their maintenance effectively. This often results in a “fix on fail” approach which lures FMs in with short-term savings, but costs far more in the long term when assets break down well before the end of their expected performance life. 

The SFG20 mission is to drive facilities excellence, a responsibility at the heart of everything we do. That’s why we developed Facilities-iQ. No more wasted time prioritising your assets and sorting between statutory and non-essential tasks - our intelligent, labour-saving software does this all for you.  

Want to see Facilities-iQ in action or learn about how much money the software can save you? Click the buttons below to organise a demo session with one of our dedicated product experts or read our return-on-investment breakdown. 

Further Your Knowledge