Understanding Maintenance Regimes In Facilities-iQ: Your Complete Guide

Operational systems such as CAFM (Computer Aided Facility Management) are effective at telling you what maintenance work has been done and who has done it, but how do building owners and facility management professionals know what to do in the first place? 

SFG20’s intelligent new software tool Facilities-iQ helps users to define and organise their maintenance strategy and allows teams and operational systems to manage tasks from both a statutory and non-statutory level in line with the SFG20 industry standard. This puts Building Owners, Facilities Managers and Compliance Managers in complete control, enabling them to complete all required tasks with ease and achieve compliance. 

To take advantage of this, you’ll need an active SFG20 Facilities-iQ software license where you’ll be able to access Maintenance Regimes, a new feature unique to Facilities-iQ which we’ll be explaining in more detail below. 

Please note that your Facilities-iQ subscription type will determine the functionality available to you when building your Maintenance Regime(s) and tailoring content. 

Key Terminology Definitions

Asset 

An asset is any piece of equipment, property or other physical item that allows a building to operate. 

Maintenance Task  

A maintenance task is any task that is performed to ensure the proper functioning, safety and longevity of a building and/or its assets In Facilities-iQ, each task contains step-by-step guidance in line with the SFG20 industry standard for building maintenance specification. 

Maintenance Schedule  

A maintenance schedule is a collection of tasks related to maintaining a specific asset or building fabric. Each schedule contains the task criticality, frequency, skillset and links to relevant legislation and other supporting documents.  

Maintenance Regime

A Maintenance Regime is a Facilities-iQ feature that allows you to organise and tailor schedules to suit your way of working. You can then share these regimes out to colleagues or technicians or engineers out in the field via sharing links. Regimes are often used to organise schedules by specific factors, such as budget, location, or contract.   

Regimes can be shared with others via secure sharing links for the purposes of providing a specification for a tender or for completion of works. They are an excellent solution for maintaining a Golden Thread of information about a building. 

Maintenance Plan 

A maintenance plan is your overarching maintenance strategy which may include content and responsibilities unrelated to SFG20.  

What Is A Maintenance Regime in Facilities-iQ? 

A Maintenance Regime acts as a repository for all of your maintenance operations, allowing you to organise schedules and tailor them to accurately reflect your site.  

Within this section of Facilities-iQ, you’ll be able to create different folders and sub-folders pertaining to Facilities, Floor, and Space (i.e. buildings, rooms or outdoor areas).  

You can also add Systems folders (for e.g. fire and water systems) as well as general Groups folders which can house additional important information you often refer to. 

 Once you have built your Maintenance Regime(s), Facilities-iQ integrates with FM (Facility Management) systems such as CAFM so that you can build your maintenance plans.  

If anything changes within the SFG20 standard, you’ll receive automatic updates via our API which allows all content to flow through seamlessly, giving you hours of your working week back. 

Why Might I Need A Maintenance Regime?

The benefits of Facilities-iQ Maintenance Regimes are far-reaching for both your internal team and external stakeholders. One of the greatest advantages of setting up Maintenance Regimes in Facilities-iQ is their ability to save you time as it removes the need to make manual imports and/or adjustments to your CAFM.    

Fundamentally, Maintenance Regimes can be used to organise schedules by specific factors, such as location, industry or contract in a way that’s entirely bespoke to you.  

For example, you might have multiple sites in one regime if they are all in a similar area such as London.  

However, if you have multiple sites across the UK then you might have one regime for London, one for Manchester and one for Birmingham etc. 

How Do Maintenance Regimes Work?

You can build Maintenance Regimes in Facilities-iQ in such a way that reflects your estate structure and/or maintenance responsibilities. Whether you’d like to base it around your organisation, contracts, service-level delivery or something else, your Maintenance Regime(s) can be as complex or as simple as you wish. 

Adding a Facility or several via the “Add Facility” button as your starting point can be a useful way to organise your folders. You can choose to add the address, location information and images of your facilities as well as key contact information to help other team members.  

If you’d like to go into more detail, you can then divide your Facilities into sub-folders pertaining to Space (i.e. buildings, rooms or outdoor areas), Floors and schedules for each. Or, you can simply go in and add schedules or Systems directly into each of your starting Facility folders – it's entirely up to you.  

 Once you’ve built your regime, you have the option to choose which schedules to include and can tailor your chosen content (a new schedule code reference will always be generated if you’ve tailored your schedule). Additionally, you can manage any changes to the content of your Maintenance Regime(s) in line with updates via the “Actions” area found on the left-hand-side panel underneath “Home”.  

What Can I Tailor In A Maintenance Regime, And How Do I Do This? 

When you open a schedule, you'll be able to tailor elements of tasks for a particular location, meaning only that specific asset in that specific location will be affected.  

You can choose to exclude specific tasks, adjust their timing, frequency, UoM (unit of measure) and update the skill set required for each task. You can also add instructions or notes for tasks as needed. 

Even when you've tailored a schedule, you'll still receive update notifications that have been introduced to the core SFG20 schedules, allowing you to keep your tailored schedule up to date. 

You’ll also be able to see an audit trail of decisions made on Maintenance Regimes including who has made changes as well as when and why, helping to build your organisation's golden thread of information. 

How Does A Maintenance Regime Differ From A Maintenance Plan?  

A Maintenance Regime differs from a plan in that a plan assigns resources to a specific date for each task, whereas a regime will state what tasks need to be carried out, how often and by whom in terms of skill set.  

This includes all of the relevant task instructions, frequencies, skill sets and criticality that are needed to build your maintenance plan. 

Maintenance Regime Approval  

There are four stages of a Maintenance Regime including Draft, Review, Candidate and Live. A Maintenance Regime can only be shared by licensed users with appropriate permissions once it’s in either in the Candidate or Live stage.  

It’s important to note that if any schedule content changes are communicated by SFG20 or you make changes internally, the regime approval process will need to be repeated. 

 Also, if you update a Candidate or Live regime, a new updated draft version will be created in the Draft status.   

How Do I Share Maintenance Regimes With Others? 

You can easily share your Maintenance Regime(s) with other people such as Contractors via a secure sharing link. 

To do this, simply navigate to your Maintenance Regime and select the “Share” button to the left of “Preview”.  

You’ll then be able to name this share link, select who you wish to send it to out of your appropriately licensed contacts and choose how long they can view it for. You can also send out links via an email address or domain name. The recipient(s) will then receive an email with a link to access the shared data.  

Below is a summary of the license types available and what they give users access to:

All content within a Maintenance Regime is shared as default, however you can choose to provide access to individual parts such as a specific facility location or schedule only.  

It’s important to note that a Maintenance Regime can only be shared once it’s in either the Candidate or Live stage.  

Setting up your Maintenance Regime(s) For Success: Factors To Consider 

Facilities-iQ has been created to give you maximum flexibility to suit your site and way of working. 

To maximise the value that you derive from Maintenance Regimes, here are some helpful questions to consider to help you structure your Maintenance Regime(s) in the most logical, time-saving way for you and your team.  

Who Has Operational Responsibility? 

Think about who in your organisation is responsible for making sure the statutory maintenance tasks are completed and who decides when to apply SFG20 updates. Each person with operational responsibility will require their own Maintenance Regime so that they have control over when to review and apply SFG20 updates and can choose when to publish and share their regime for operational activity. 

How Do You Manage Your Budget? 

If you manage multiple budgets, then it’s a good idea to create a regime per budget. This will allow you to effectively manage each budget and give you clear visibility, enabling you to compare what work needs to be completed by budget area vs. what work has taken place and the associated costs. 

Do You Have A Single Or Multiple Maintenance Contracts?  

If you have multiple maintenance contracts for a site and the contract dates are different, then each contract needs to be split into its own regime so that a plan can be built to suit each contract’s timings.  

How Many Assets Do You Have? 

It’s not always necessary to have one regime per site. However, for large and complex buildings that may each contain several thousand assets, for clarity and time-saving purposes, it’s best to create a Maintenance Regime for each large building. That way, if SFG20 publish updates relating to, for example, fire extinguishers, then these updates can be implemented at a time that suits the property manager. 

How Do You Manage Your Budget? 

If you manage multiple budgets, then it’s a good idea to create a regime per budget. This will allow you to effectively manage each budget and give you clear visibility, enabling you to compare what work needs to be completed by budget area vs. what work has taken place and the associated costs. 

Maintenance Regimes For Contract Fulfilment 

If you're a Service Provider or FM Contractor, you'll want to create a Maintenance Regime per contract that you're working on. This will ensure clarity and allow the regime to be transferred back to the building owner at the end of a contract, helping to maintain your golden thread of information.  

Maintenance Regimes For Running A Tender 

If you're running a tender, then you can create a regime for each contract that you’re inviting Service Providers to tender for. This will provide you with control over when to start each invitation for the tender process.  You’ll also be able to transfer the regime to your chosen Service Provider when the contract starts, meaning that they don’t have to do this work themselves.  

How Do I Create A Maintenance Regime in Facilities-iQ?

To access the Maintenance Regime section, simply navigate over to the left-hand-side panel and click on “Maintenance Regimes”. From here, select the “+ Add Regime” button, type in your regime name and select “Add Facility” and/or “Add Folder”. Please note that only Advanced and Professional users are able to create maintenance regimes in Facilities-iQ. 

Maintenance Regime Uses: Industry-specific Examples 

Leisure Industry Client  

“We have multiple sites all over the UK and each site is different, including historic houses, listed buildings, gardens and parks. For example, one of our sites contains a hotel, a visitor centre, several cafés and a playground. Some of our buildings are listed and contain specialist assets. We have 6 budgets that are split by region in the UK. Each region has their own contract and we have 3 large buildings that have a large number of assets each. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion: 

To provide control to each budget holder, it’s best for them to each have their own Maintenance Regime. This is because they will then be in control of when to accept SFG20 updates and implement them in their contract. As each region only has one contract, you don't need multiple regimes per region. However, due to the large number of assets in the larger buildings, it would provide clarity for users to have these set up as their own regimes, so 9 regimes in total.  

Fitness Industry Client  

"We’re a gym brand. Our budget is managed on a regional basis with each region having its own FM who is responsible for that budget. We operate in 5 regions and have a TFM contract. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion  

To align with this organisation’s set-up, it would make sense to create a regime per region so that each budget owner can control when to implement SFG20 updates. Each of the gyms that sit in that region can be set up as a separate facility within that regime. 

Healthcare Industry Client 

“We run 3 large hospital wings with each wing containing around 3,500 assets including specialist medical equipment. We run a total FM contract. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion 

Due to the amount of assets in each hospital wing, for clarity it would be a good idea to create a Maintenance Regime for each wing. This will enable users to clearly see what needs to be maintained in each building. 

Healthcare Trust Client  

“We run 5 large hospitals in different geographical locations. Each hospital contains around 5000 assets including specialist medical equipment. We manage a budget for each hospital and run a total FM contract. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion 

A great way to set up your regimes would be to create a Maintenance Regime for each hospital – this will reflect how you manage your budget and enable users to clearly see what needs to be maintained in each building. It will also allow those with budget responsibility to keep tight control. 

Retail Company Client 

“We have 12 destinations: 1 based in England, 1 in Ireland and the rest in international locations. The location in England consists of 150 individual retail stores surrounding a landscaped, pedestrianised mall. We manage our budget on a site-by-site basis. We have contracts for the building fabric and grounds maintenance, and we are responsible for the cleaning. Our tenants are responsible for the management of the catering facilities. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion 

You could consider creating a regime per site to reflect the way your budgets are structured. For the site based in England, you could create a regime per contract that you are responsible i.e. 2 regimes. That way, you can review SFG20 updates and choose when to implement them for your building fabric and grounds maintenance contract, and you can keep your cleaning contract separate in its own regime. This would offer you total control over your contract management.

Education Client 

“We manage a school with boarding facilities, a swimming pool, hospitality suite and science laboratories. All of our buildings are on one site and looked after by a mixture of in-house and external FMs. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion 

We would suggest that you set up a regime for your outsourced contract and depending on the number of assets on your site, you could also consider one regime for tasks completed by your in-house team to provide further clarity. 

FM Contractor  

“We are a growing FM contractor and now have 10 contracts with clients. We are often asked by clients to create the maintenance plan from their asset register. What’s the best way to build our Maintenance Regime(s)?” 

Our Suggestion 

If you manage 10 contracts, then you’ll need to set up a regime per contract for clarity. This will allow you to publish each regime according to the contract start date. 

There’s Even More To Facilities-iQ  

As you’ve now learnt, Facilities-iQ's highly tailorable Maintenance Regime feature enables you to structure your organisation’s maintenance processes in a way that’s meaningful to you and your team. 

There’s lots more to learn about Facilities-iQ, and we want to set you up to succeed. To do this, we offer in-depth user training videos via Learning Lab which is included with your license fee. 

If you and your team would like to find out more about Maintenance Regimes and all of the other fantastic features that Facilities-iQ offers, you can book a demo with our team below.   

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