.svg){kind=small}
SFG20 produce the industry standard for building maintenance. Its extensive library of maintenance schedules is accessed using SFG20 Facilities-iQ - software that empowers building owners, managers and maintenance professionals to control their risk, stay compliant, and keep buildings safe and efficient.
Our core library of maintenance schedules containing all assets commonly found in most buildings plus specialist content for specific industries.
.jpg)
SFG20 Solutions offers a bespoke service for industry sectors seeking technical support to deliver an effective maintenance regime.
Explore SFG20's resources: in-depth e-guides, engaging webinars, informative blogs, practical case studies, and upcoming events to enrich your maintenance knowledge and skills.
.svg)
At SFG20, we're reinforcing efficiency, safety and compliance across the board and are here to make all of your digital building maintenance processes easier, not harder.
Which is why in February 2024, we redesigned and upgraded our Core Plus and Service Model software to a modernised new version named Facilities-iQ based on extensive customer feedback and rigorous testing.
Created in response to changing needs within the industry, our new and better-than-ever software comes with a host of new BIG benefits to help you save time and money while achieving compliance.
This comparative guide breaks down how our new Facilities-iQ software surpasses our Core Plus and Service Model software, detailing all of the key differences to help you make the best choice that suits you.
For simplicity, we’ll be referring to Core Plus and Service Model as our superseded software.
When you log into Facilities-iQ, you'll start on the homepage where you'll be able to easily browse SFG20 schedules and search within our schedule library using specific terms including SFG20, Uniclass and NRM codes as well as legislation codes and British Standards (BS) references.
The homepage shows you information about schedule changes and lets you know how many of the changed schedules you have in use. Below this, you'll be able to see all Technical Updates and Schedule Updates which provides more details including the specific changes that have been made.
You can also access your schedules via the Schedule Library tab, which will display your Licensed, Available To Purchase and Custom schedules.
When a schedule is updated, the new version of the schedule is always presented alongside the old content, allowing you to compare them both. You’re in complete control of when you’d like to approve and implement the updates – once approved, they’ll flow into your FM systems without any manual updates on your side.
Time Saving And Cost Effective Time is money: Facilities-iQ offers you and your team hours of your time back by allowing seamless integration with FM systems and providing automated updates, which in turn can make your maintenance budget go further and reward you with a significant ROI (Return On Investment) in the long term.
In fact, one of our customers told us that we helped them to save on the cost of hiring an additional compliance professional and are giving them an estimated 20% of their time back each week.
Modern, Intuitive Interface With Facilities-iQ, you’ll be able to find everything you’re looking for in a flash. It’s now faster to locate tasks and schedules, and we’ve made it easier for you to tailor content and add new features in a way that’s unique to your requirements, helping you improve your resource planning and allocation.
There’s also the option to create your own personal Favourites folders to save time finding what you need – this can be found in the Favourites tab on the left-hand side navigation.
Similarly, you can use the Tags feature also found on the left-hand-side navigation to help identify and quickly find schedules.
Tailored Schedules You can now add specific notes to a schedule that applies to a particular location or asset and keep it within the SFG20 update process. This assists engineers in locating assets and specific parts, reducing the time they spend on the task and maximising efficiency.
We’ve also now made it possible for you to amend the introduction, duration, frequency, units, criticality and skillset of tasks so it’s that they’re wholly bespoke to your business, improving efficiency and potentially reducing costs.
New Maintenance Regimes Feature 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 can create folders and sub-folders pertaining to Facilities, Floor, Space, Systems and use the Groups folder to hold additional information that you often use.
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.
Custom Schedules With a Professional subscription, you can create a Derived schedule 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.
There’s now also the ability to create a Custom schedule from scratch which is useful for those who manage specialist assets.
Shareability Thanks to our new sharing link feature, Facilities-iQ ensures that you can easily share data electronically with the likes of subcontractors, customers, subject matter experts and internal staff via a secure sharing link, helping you work more collaboratively.
Our new sharing link feature also 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.
Rather than sharing a static document such as a PDF which carries compliance and confidentiality risks, our new way of sharing ensures that your content remains up to date (i.e. compliant) and only shared with your intended recipients, all while helping to reduce your carbon footprint.
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 accepted or implemented at a later date that suits you (we also send out emails to notify you that there are updates ready to view in the system).
You’ll notice that there’s even a handy new “Actions” tab to help you stay on track of everything that needs your attention.
Freely Available API Our freely available API (Application Programming Interface) links Facilities-iQ to you chosen FM software including CAFM, CMMS and IWMS. 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.
Companion Mobile App Access Facilities-iQ from your pocket with our free-to-download companion mobile app, ideal for external stakeholders involved in your maintenance management process such as contractors. Those with a View license can be given read access to individual schedules via Smart Words on the companion app.
RAG Visual Support 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.
If you’re used to our superseded software, the amount of new features may seem daunting at first. However, not to worry: Facilities-iQ is easy to learn and adopt, and help is always on hand for our users. Your license also comes with free in-depth online user training videos which you and your team can access at any time.
Simple Interface As the superseded software offers fewer features than Facilities-iQ, it offers a more basic interface which is easy to use.
Helpful Search Feature Within the search area, you have the option to use the “Advanced Search” button which allows you to search for your chosen term within specific areas of the library. For example, you can search the term “fire door” by task titles, task actions, task notes and even legislation.
The superseded software’s technical bulletin can be time consuming to review on a monthly basis as it requires you to work out which updates relate to schedules you are using and determine which updates you are going to implement and when.
If you wish to load SFG20 content (or SFG20 updates) into external FM software such as a CAFM system, this involves manually downloading schedules in XML format which requires purchasing credits and can be time consuming.
In addition to this, XML file formats require additional formatting work to be used in a CAFM.
With Facilities-iQ, your experience will be much smoother as our API has been specifically created to cope with all of the requirements of modern FM systems.
The superseded software is restrictive in its ability to share data electronically. For example, you can’t easily share data with stakeholders such as colleagues, subcontractors or business owners without downloading a PDF and sending it manually.
Not only is this old way of working inefficient, costly and time-consuming, but PDFs can also become quickly out of date when the SFG20 standard is updated. Plus, as PDFs can be freely shared, it can put your confidential information at risk.
At the Core Plus Level product, schedules are not tailorable, so if for example you want to change it by removing a task that’s not suitable for your asset, you won’t be able to do this. However, you can amend the core schedules with a Service Model subscription.
As outlined above, while it is possible to customise your schedule, for example to reduce task timings, it’s important to bear in mind that this will create an entirely new schedule.
This means that it’s your responsibility to track and implement changes to the parent schedule so that you can update your customised schedule and CAFM accordingly.
All The Same Benefits Found In Our Service Model Subscription And More Facilities-iQ gives you access to all of the same benefits you’ll find in our Service Model subscription and many more which can help you to save time and money as well maintain compliance.
Quick and Easy Set-up There’s no complicated set-up process involved with Facilities-iQ. Just select your content, subscription type and license requirements, and we’ll send you your login details within 24 hours.
On-hand Support And Training At SFG20, we want to help 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. You’re also able to easily contact our team of Technical Authors should you have any questions about our schedules and any legislative changes that are made to them.
"Facilities-iQ gives us that reassurance that we are keeping up to date with all the current statutory requirements. The overall Facilities-iQ system is good and much more user friendly and modern. I think it’s going to be a handy tool going forward.”
"The new layout in Facilities-iQ is great. It’s more modern, refreshing and easy to navigate through. SFG20 has saved the trust the cost of hiring an additional compliance professional and we're forecasted to make a 20% time-saving (7.5 hours) each week."
"Using Facilities-iQ benefited our Academies through significant cost savings realised by increasing the amount of work that is completed in-house versus contractors. We now have a consistent process across our schools and the ability to manage and control our risk across the estate."
.svg){kind=small}
