How To Use Maintenance Regimes In Facilities-iQ For Multiple Sites

Trying to stay compliant while managing multiple buildings with several thousands of assets can be quite a handful. 

With Facilities-iQ, the latest and greatest software solution from SFG20, the industry standard for building maintenance, you’ll know for certain that you and your team are using legally up-to-date maintenance schedules across your facility portfolio.  

What’s more, Facilities-iQ's nifty Maintenance Regimes feature allows you to effortlessly replicate the asset structure of your buildings in easy-to-organise file and folder format, freeing up hours of your day while saving you time, money and hassle.  

In 10 minutes or less, this guide will explain what Maintenance Regimes are in Facilities-iQ and how hugely beneficial they are for managing multiple facilities, with helpful industry-specific examples for you to refer to while creating your own regimes. 

What Is A Maintenance Regime In Facilities-iQ? 

A Maintenance Regime is a Facilities-iQ feature that allows you to organise and tailor SFG20 maintenance schedules to suit your way of working.   

You can then share these regimes via secure sharing links with colleagues, technicians or engineers out in the field or for the purpose of providing a specification for a tender or for completion of works.  

Maintenance Regimes are often used to organise maintenance schedules by specific factors, such as budget, location or contract. They’re also an excellent solution for maintaining a Golden Thread of information about a building because they can be easily transferred from Building Owner to Service Provider and back again.

With an Advanced or Professional Facilities-iQ subscription, you can create different folders and sub-folders pertaining to Facilities, Floor, and Space (i.e. buildings, rooms or outdoor areas) in a way that’s logical to you and your organisation.   

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’ve built your Maintenance Regimes, you’ll have the option to choose which maintenance schedules to include or to tailor your chosen content. 

What Are The Benefits Of Using Maintenance Regimes In Facilities-iQ For Multiple Sites?  

Keeps You In The Loop Of The Latest Legislation 

Staying on top of the latest legislation isn’t as simple as skim-reading documents - it’s a full-time job - and who has time to do that with multiple facilities to manage? 

It’s why all SFG20 maintenance schedules are constantly ratified and updated by our highly accredited team of in-house technical authors to reflect the latest laws, keeping you compliant.  

So, you no longer need to dedicate hours upon hours to trawling through lengthy legislative information. You can leave that up to us!  

Saves You Money  

As our technical team clearly communicates which maintenance tasks are statutory (legally required) and non-statutory, this allows for a more efficient use of resources and resource planning based on criticality, putting both money and time back in your pocket. 

This is especially advantageous for organisations with multiple sites where every minute and penny counts.  

In Facilities-iQ, you can add maintenance schedules into Maintenance Regimes and then tailor them for each individual building within your portfolio, or even add notes to help engineers locate specific assets and parts. This enables the rapid location of any problem areas and reduces the time on-site for technical teams, which can lead to further reductions in costs.  

For a full breakdown of the return on investment you might expect from Facilities-iQ, make sure to read our deep-dive guide Is Facilities-iQ Worth The ROI And Value For Money? 

Detailed Tailoring Accurately Reflects Your Sites  

Facilities-iQ gives you an entirely bespoke experience by allowing you to tailor specific maintenance schedules for specific sites. This means that you don’t have to keep your schedules the same everywhere i.e. identical for each building, floor and room.   

With a Professional subscription, you can even create Derived schedules from a current SFG20 schedule and add any additional tasks you wish – this is ideal if you have business-specific requirements or SLAs to fulfil. Or, you can create a Custom schedule from scratch which is useful if you manage specialist assets. 

Eliminates Manual Work  

Ask yourself the question: how many hours do you think you’ve spent manually uploading information into FM systems such as CAFMs? If you have multiple facilities, this can take up a significant amount of time that you could be using elsewhere.  

In fact, one of our recent clients Mathew Houghton from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Estates estimated that before using Facilities-iQ, he would spend around 20% of his time manually updating his maintenance plans in his CAFM for their two major hospitals.  

Our freely available API (Application Programming Interface), links Facilities-iQ to your chosen FM software, meaning that your Maintenance Regimes can automatically populate in your system.  

This seamless flow of information through our API reduces manual, time-consuming data uploads and updates and helps you stay compliant with the latest legislative updates.  

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

Simplifies The Tendering And Building Handover Process 

Both internal and external stakeholders can use Maintenance Regimes to draw up and access a precise specification to base a tender or for completion of works, streamlining both the tendering and building handover process.   

Through our secure sharing link feature, you can quickly and safely share your Maintenance Regimes to authorised internal and external collaborators.  

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. This is super handy for organisations with multiple facilities, as it enables you to share what’s most relevant (which provides focus for the recipient) as well as avoid sharing information that is unnecessary and potentially confidential. 

At the end of a contract, Service Providers can then simply transfer Maintenance Regimes back to Building Owners with all maintenance task IDs retained, helping to support the all-important Golden Thread of Information. 

Rather than sharing a static document such as a PDF which carries compliance and confidentiality risks, Facilities-iQ's sharing links ensure that you are able to share the latest, accepted SFG20 content with your intended recipients, all while helping to reduce your carbon footprint.  

How To Use Maintenance Regimes In Facilities-iQ For Multiple Sites: Industry-Specific Examples  

Facilities-iQ has been built to be flexible so that you can mirror the way you work, and so there's no fixed way to set up your Maintenance Regimes. However, here are some suggestions for you.  

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.  

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.  

Fitness Industry Client  

"We’re a gym company. 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 your 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.  

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. 

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.  

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 Maintenance Regimes  

We hope you’ve learnt a thing or two about what a Maintenance Regime is in Facilities-iQ, how they benefit organisations with multiple facilities and how they can be applied to specific industries with several sites to manage.  

At SFG20, we’ve been championing compliance across the board since 1990.  

There are many more benefits to Maintenance Regimes, and so we want to help you learn as much as possible about how they can keep you legally compliant while saving time, money and effort.  

Because ultimately, we’re here to make your job easier, and who doesn’t want that?  

Can’t wait to learn more? Hit the buttons below to read our Top 5 Benefits Of Maintenance Regimes article and our Complete Guide To Maintenance Regimes.  

Learn More About Maintenance Regimes