How to Access the SFG20 Standard

How to Access the SFG20 Standard

Want to access the SFG20 standard? The only way is through the SFG20 Software Solution, Facilities-iQ. With access to over 2,000 SFG20 schedules, you can make sure you stay on top of the latest legislation to avoid any building safety catastrophe. In this webinar, you'll hear from Lisa Hamilton and Paul Bullard on how to get the most out of Facilities-iQ, including a full product demo, sharing some of the key features that will help you save time and money whilst managing your maintenance.

Let's jump over to the webinar to find out more, and if you have any questions, let us know in the comments.

Lisa Hamilton: SFG20 are part of the BESA Group, and BESA stands for the Building Engineering Services Association, which is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting those within the design, construction, operation and maintenance of buildings. And that's where SFG20 fits in. So we fit into the maintenance element of a building's lifecycle.

What is SFG20? Well, it's the industry standard for building maintenance, so you might well have seen us featured in tenders, specified as contractors need to work to the SFG20 standard. We also work closely with other industry bodies such as the IHEEM, CIBSE and many others, and we appear in lots of the industry guides.

So RICS NRM, for example, also CIBSE Guide M. Also, we have a really broad range of customers, so it's absolutely appropriate that we would have such a diverse audience with us today. So these are just a few examples of some of our customers, but really our customer base spans SMEs, smaller enterprises, right up to the largest multinationals. And that makes sense because every building, every organisation can derive value from SFG20. And actually, the larger and more complex your organisation is, the more value you will derive from SFG20.

So for those of you that aren't as familiar with the SFG20 standard, this is a snapshot view of one of our maintenance schedules. Now our maintenance schedules contain five key elements. The first one is a list of maintenance tasks instructions, and then for each of our tasks, we include a prescribed frequency. And in this case you can see "1M", which means once every month. So it's a monthly task. We also include skill sets. So we give you instructions on what particular skill sets are required to perform that task.

And then you can see here colour coding. So our red tasks are colour-coded to show you that those tasks are statutory and you need to complete them to be in line with UK law. And then we have the orange tasks, which are tasks which will help you to prolong asset life, keep them running efficiently and they're optimal tasks to complete.

So it is the job of our technical authoring team to stay on top of all legislation and regulation and codes of practice, as Paul said. And then what they do is translate that into the correct maintenance of your building fabric and the assets within your building, including specialist equipment types such as healthcare, for example.

So what we've been doing is working on a way for you to be able to access this standard more readily, maximise the value from it, and that's why we're here today to share that new software solution. So over the last 18 months, we've spoken extensively to our customers—not just our customers, we've spoken more broadly to those in the industry.

We've spoken to a whole range of people from building owners to those who manage their own buildings, who manage FM internally, externally, or a mixture of both. So big picture: from all of that discussion, we know that there are at least three major challenges that are keeping you awake at night.

The first of those relates to sharing of information, so it's important for you to be able to share the right information effectively. We know that FMs need to work with a whole range of people, so building owners, like I was saying, internal and external teams, FM consultants. You might be running tenders, you might be managing mixed workforces, which will consist of a mixture of internal and external resource, or maybe multiple contractors, or both. So we know that it's really challenging for you to collaborate amongst diverse teams, and it's even harder for you to ensure that the right information is seen by the right people at the right time.

And we know now that competence is fully in the spotlight. So never has it been more important to be confident that the right work is being done at the right time and by the right person for that job. But not only that, to be able to evidence that the work has been completed by a competent person too. So the ability to audit works properly—we know it's a real concern for many of you. And therefore it's no surprise that when we researched and surveyed, 66% of asset owners and property managers were telling us that keeping a golden thread of information about a building up to date is a major or critical challenge for their business.

And we know that there's been such a lot of new legislation and regulation. So we've had the Fire Safety Act, Building Safety Act, fire safety regulations, and all of these and many others place new responsibilities and tasks on those who own or are involved with maintaining buildings. So that includes the importance of creating a golden thread of information about a building.

So with all of these additional challenges facing FMs, we at SFG20 knew that we had to step up, we had to take action. So we spoke to a broad range of people in the industry to understand better how we could help. So this is what you told us. You told us lots of different things. The first thing was around accessibility.

Help us to access the SFG20 standard more readily. And this encompassed lots of different topics really. There was the idea of whole lifecycle management, the idea that you wanted to be able to consider the implications of maintenance when you were taking decisions around the design of a building, the design of a new building or the refurbishment of a building.

And that's absolutely the right thing to do because maintenance, actually, costs... operation and maintenance of a building costs about 80% of a building's cost over its entire life stage, whereas only 20% are involved in the design and the construction of a building. And that's because buildings are built to last.

So they will typically stand for over 60 years, which means that smart choices that you make upfront in the design of your building can make major implications to the costs in the maintenance of your building further down the track. So what we've done is create a solution whereby you can easily map the SFG20 maintenance schedule codes with NRM and UNICLASS codes as well.

So that's a really valuable function in this new software. The other idea of accessibility was: help me to get my frontline staff to be able to access your task instructions really easily. So we knew that with this new software solution, we had to have a companion app that would be suited to mobile engineers in the field, or simply people that are in the field and completing daily tasks and checks.

There was also feedback that our tasks are too wordy for engineers. We know that engineers are on the clock and they're trying to fit in a certain number of visits per day. So what we've done is format our content as well, so that it's engineer-friendly and can be consumed quickly and easily.

The second area was all around: help me to organise and scale my business and organise my maintenance plan as it's done in real life. So that might be... you might want to organise your plan according to your contract. You know, you'll have an HVAC, a security contract, an M&E contract, or you might want to organise your plan by your facility or a floor in your facility, or a space in your building.

You can do all of these things with this new software. So we've built a solution that works for the smallest business, right up to the largest and most complex of situations. Then you told us: help me stay on the standard, help me to understand what the updates are. And we totally understand where you're coming from here.

There were 700 updates—more than that actually—in the last 12 months to the SFG20 standard, and that's because the legislative landscape is moving so quickly. So we've come up with a solution that provides users with automated updates notifications. Not only that, you were saying that you wanted an easy way to be able to tailor our maintenance schedules so that you can apply your site-specific knowledge.

And the really great thing about this software is that you can tailor your maintenance schedules and tasks whilst receiving these automated updates so that you can choose when to implement SFG20 standard updates. The final area is all around sharing. So we've created a way for you to securely share the right information for the purposes of tenders, of obtaining quotations, and also completion of works too.

Paul Bullard: Now, Lisa's given you some real good insight into the history and the intent of this new solution, so let's just dive in and show you around. If you're a previous customer of SFG20, you'll recognise that this is quite a different interface. We've gone for an information-first approach. The idea is to present you with those key pieces of insight to enable the usage of your product to be very obvious and very action-driven.

First of all, we have a comprehensive search function on the screen. This lets us locate those schedules that we're working with very quickly and easily. We also have a lot around the actual updates of schedules, and that whole process has changed considerably with this new solution, and it enables you to understand why schedules have been updated, what's been changed, and then have those changes flow through under a gated process into your downstream systems.

We also have a whole actions piece, which is about driving you, providing you the information that something needs to be done and actually having you carry that out. So if we go back to the search function here, we have different options to actually locate the schedules that we're interested in.

We may search by a UNICLASS code. We could search for a code for NRM3. Alternatively, really, we've got the simple option of just searching for a word and having us pull back the schedules that are associated with that. If I, just as an example, jump straight for boilers... So very quickly, I'm presented with the 69 schedules that reference the different types of boiler.

These are the schedules that SFG20 has available. So now if we go back, I can also search under legislation. So maybe I'm interested in a particular piece of legislation, be that LOLER or COSHH, and I might want to have a look at what schedules reference that particular legislation. So if I search for COSHH, I'm fed back immediately any schedule that references that individual legislation within its content.

What I'm going to do for you now though, is we're going to drive into an individual schedule, and one of my favourites is fire doors.

I'm presented with the schedule immediately so I can drill into that, and here you can see the way that the system now formats the schedule. We've made it a lot easier for this data to be consumed by you as an end user, but also for your downstream systems. So where you are passing this into a CAFM or an IWMS or a CMMS or an enterprise asset management system, the way we're now breaking the data up within the API and then presenting it means that that data should just flow through all of the downstream systems, right to the engineer with a mobile device. We're providing that pertinent action from tasks information, and we're able to then, as these schedules change, have those updates flowing through in the same simple manner.

On the right here, we also have a summary, lots of information around the colour coding at SFG20, so we can make the key decisions over whether we're carrying out red, amber, green maintenance. So where SFG20 is helping your organisations make decisions around the level of maintenance you're providing.

We also, as we said, have all those references to legislation or standards or guidance around a particular type of asset. You're also able to drive from here straight into the actual documents themselves. We also have the whole code, so this is where we're tying UNICLASS or we're tying NRM into the SFG20 schedule.

And then of course, we have details around the number of versions of the schedule, and we'll be bringing in things like, so you can see on each iteration what's actually changed from the previous schedule.

Now we're going to move on to something that's very important in the operation of Facilities-iQ called maintenance regimes. Within here, we're enabling you as the customer to map your business process into the system itself. We're able to segment the system so that it represents how you carry out your maintenance operation.

Give you some examples. First of all, we have BESA. Now BESA has two main buildings, different ends of the country, different facilities within those buildings. So we need to manage the schedules that we're carrying out within those buildings in different ways. Alternatively, we may have a healthcare estate.

Now the healthcare estate has a large number of buildings in very close proximity, but also has some outlying remote sites that are under the jurisdiction of the trust. Then we can consider a national FM situation where we're managing facilities management over our whole estate, and that could be countrywide, that may be divided into regions.

So we may have a national strategy on how we're carrying out our maintenance, but that might be interspersed with localised regional management for those activities. And then of course we have the FM service providers. Now the system can be used so that the service provider can reflect the way that they offer maintenance.

At a simple level, if they offer a gold, silver, and bronze level service, the schedule and the content of those schedules will differ between each of those regimes. You may offer a gold service that includes the entirety of the SFG20 content, all of the reds, ambers, and greens. But then if we're looking at a bronze level of service, we may just include those very important red tasks.

To explain this further, let's take a look at a regime for BESA. So under here you can see that I've segmented the BESA operation into Old Mansion House and Rotherwick House. Under there you can see we've also got some schedules attached. So under Old Mansion House, if I scroll down the screen, you'll be able to see that I've got the three contracts.

So I've got my building fabric contract, fire safety, and a mechanical and electrical contract. If I actually drive into some of these, into the contract, like the mechanical and electrical, you'll also be able to see that these are the schedules that are relevant to this particular contract in this particular building.

All we need to do now is have a look at how we can shape this content for that particular building. So if I drive into an individual schedule, so let's look at my humidifier. And you can see here that I have a resistance heater-type humidifier. Now I have a button here called "Tailor Schedule".

So bearing in mind, we're looking at this schedule within this building for this contract. And what I'm able to do is to tailor some of the elements of this schedule that are particular to this building. And if you look here, I know the assets in this building, there is no inbuilt step controller fitted, so I don't want to put that in my schedule and have someone try to do that.

What I want to do is say, I'm going to tailor this schedule. If I move down to the tasks, I can choose to drop this particular task for this schedule, for this building, for this contract. The important thing is as I'm tailoring, I'm able to still receive the updates as the original SFG20 schedule is updated by the technical author team.

So I'm not moving away and having a completely bespoke schedule. I have a tailored schedule and that's very powerful because I'm able to change things like the timings. I'm able to add additional instructions for the particular tasks. So maybe there's some pertinent information we want the engineer to be aware of as they're carrying this out.

But all the time I'm still in touch with that original schedule and being able to bring through those updates. Earlier we spoke about actions, and actions help drive the system so that you are informed of things that you need to get involved with. It might be that, for example, your maintenance regime that you've been updating, you're looking for some validation from your peers within your organisation.

Another reason to use actions though would be to inform you of schedule updates and have you go into those updates, understand what they are, and actually then make the decision to approve or collaborate with others as to bringing them into your daily operations. Now, if we just take a look at some of the schedule updates that have occurred previously.

Here we have a timeline, and the timeline allows us to see all of the activities that have gone on and the updates of those individual schedules. But most importantly, we can drill into the schedule itself and we can see those changes and be advised what the differences are. Now here we have two options.

We can look on a side-by-side approach, as you'll see in here where we have new content versus old content. This is advising us that some of the references have changed. We can also see where the content's changed, but we can also be advised by the system itself of those individual changes, making it very simple to understand actually what's been added.

So here we can see that two additional actions have been added to this individual task. We also can see that this particular task has been changed from an 11-minute task to a 15-minute task. Now in the grand scheme of things, it's a six-monthly task. That's not dramatically going to affect our operation, but if that was more significant, these are the key things that we'd be wanting to talk to our client or to our service provider about, because these things need to be built into your actual maintenance plans.

Another feature of Facilities-iQ is the actual customising of schedules, right? This varies from the tailored schedule in that with the tailor, we had certain elements we could alter to make it specific to that location, but this allows us to actually take a schedule and really develop it, really enhance it for our own personal use for a particular site or asset.

We can actually use that SFG20 base schedule and add extra tasks, add extra information. So really change the way that we're delivering for that particular entity. We also have the ability to create custom schedules. So this will be a schedule created from scratch that you'd then be able to distribute through the SFG20 programme into your downstream systems.

So the last thing I'm going to talk to you about today is the principle of sharing. Now we've tried to make the new solution as accessible by as many people as possible, and they might be your own internal staff or your external partners. So where I look at my BESA schedule here, now I've got a requirement that I need to, as the facilities manager at Old Mansion House, I'd like to share my fire safety schedules with my fire safety specialist contractor.

So what I'm going to do is create a sharing link. So I create a sharing link here. I can add a contact. My contact I'm going to add is Daniel Barnes, my fire safety consultant, and I choose from my buildings. I have Old Mansion House, under Old Mansion House I have my fire safety schedules. So now all of the tailored content that I've produced, I'm able to share with my specialist fire safety officer.

So if I confirm that, that's now with that subcontractor. So I've created a share of my content. I do have quite a lot of control over that content. I can control who views it. I can control the time it's available to view, it's my content, and I need to be in control. Okay, so if I just come out of this system, I'll take you into the view that the subcontractor would have.

So I've now logged into the Facilities-iQ product, but this time as Daniel Barnes, the fire safety consultant, and you can see that the view he has is quite different because all he can access is the content that's been shared with him. So you can see here, here's my sharing link and I can click on that and it will drive me to that content provided by BESA.

On this screen though, Daniel may also have other companies he's engaged with and they may also share their content with him. So he is able to manage that under one umbrella. So what I'm going to do now is drive into the actual content itself. So if we click on the sharing link, that then opens up a new screen. You might notice it's quite different in terms of how it looks and how it feels.

And we have the different styles of viewing and different ways of viewing this system. So different contrast settings. We have night and day mode. I've set this up for Daniel in night mode. When I switch it to day mode, you can see it's exactly as it was before.

And this is prevalent throughout the whole product set. So now Daniel's able to look at the content that I've provided. He's able to drive into Old Mansion House. He's able to be provided with all the information of the schedules that are available, but most importantly, he can go in and he can actually make use of that tailored content that we've been providing him.

So he has the same view of the content that we've set up, and he is able to get all that information from the tasks that we've tailored. Now you are seeing this in a desktop view, and obviously that's useful for people at their computers. We've also got a situation where you might be out and about in the field, so how do those people make use of this content?

So what I'll do now is hand back to Lisa and she can take you through that. Thank you everyone.

Lisa Hamilton: The number one factor that you deemed your biggest challenge was all around managing risk and achieving compliance. So we've created a way for you to stay on the SFG20 standard through those automated notifications, meaning that it's quick for you to review updates, and it provides you with control on when to accept those updates into your plan.

So you need never fall off the SFG20 standard again, thereby mitigating your own personal risk. And for those of you with budgetary constraints, the standard allows you to focus resource on those tasks that are statutory and apply a risk-based approach to your other operationally important assets. So this also enables you to take control, tailor schedules to suit your facility and effectively manage your contracts.

We have a new integration, which I'm going to talk about in a second, which means that data flows through seamlessly from SFG20 into your other FM systems, which removes the need for you to do any manual input and reduces your admin. And lastly, for those of you who are struggling with tenders and sharing information, those secure sharing links that Paul demonstrated to you, that really solves that headache for you.

So Paul referenced the companion app. So that's available for you to download. It's available on the Google or the Apple App Store. You need a Facilities-iQ licence to access the app and the SFG20 standard. So this is how you would access the app. You would download it, you would open it, you would enter the SFG20 Smart Words that you've been provided.

There's a unique combination of three words for each task that you want to access. You would type in those three words and then basically the benefit here is that engineers can immediately access the task that they're working on. They can see the detailed SFG20 task instructions. They can review introductory procedures if needs be, and this is the way to view the latest guidance that aligns with legislation.

So we had a couple of questions from our pre-launch events a couple of weeks ago asking about, can you download the app in other countries apart from the UK? Yes, absolutely you can. You can download the app from any country. You can access the SFG20 library of content from any country. As I say, it's live from today on the Apple and Android app stores.

And this app—this was another question that came up, actually—this app does work in addition to any current CAFM or IWMS systems for mobile engineers. So it's the best way to access the latest and the full maintenance schedule details. So I wanted to take the opportunity in these last few minutes of just answering some of the questions that came up from your peers two weeks ago.

So one of the questions was all around: can SFG20 maintenance schedules link in with CAFMs? And the answer is yes. So as I said, we're talking to all of the major software integrators and many more besides, and our new software solution allows for a seamless integration with our digital partners and allows users to share the appropriate SFG20 content too.

So now would be a great time to ask your CMMS, your IWMS provider just to get in touch with us and we can show them how to integrate easily with Facilities-iQ. And in addition, we'll be running a webinar in a few weeks' time that will provide you with more information on integrating with other FM systems.

As I said at the start, follow us on LinkedIn and that's a great way to keep up to date with the webinars that we're running. Second question on a similar topic: does this remove the admin required to update the plans in your CMMS or CAFM as the SFG20 standard is updated? Yes, it does. So instead of customising schedules in your CAFM system, you need to work in Facilities-iQ to tailor your content, receive all of the SFG20 updates, and then all of those updates will flow through to your CAFM or your other FM systems provider.

So just contact us and we can walk you through the art of the possible with this integration. Thirdly, for those of you who use a CAFM system to drive their PPMs and its delivery, how will they use this? Well, as I just said, so you create and you tailor your maintenance plan in Facilities-iQ, you receive any update notifications to the standard.

You review those updates. You control when you want to implement those updates. And then once you've accepted any updates, the SFG20 content will flow through into your other FM systems and allow CMMS to carry out the operation and the planning and the scheduling. So SFG20 is not trying to be a CMMS.

Okay. And the last question was: if I tailor a schedule in Facilities-iQ, do those changes get moved over to my local CAFM by the integration? Yep. Absolutely. That is how it works. So once the API integration is in place, that's exactly how it will work.