Facilities management tools, on the workplace side of the job, do four things: work how much space a headcount needs and what it costs a person, measure how much of the floor is actually used once attendance is counted, decide how many desks a hybrid rule needs and on what sharing ratio, and keep the contractors cleared to be on site with the date each credential expires. The best facility management tools do those four and nothing else the facilities manager did not ask for. This page is the map of them on this site: three worksheets that work the arithmetic free, and one paid record that keeps the answers, so the question of which facility management tool to open is answered before the question of what to pay.
The three free tools, and what each works
The office space per person worksheet takes a headcount, a desk ratio, an area per desk, the meeting and support space and a circulation allowance and returns the desks, the floor and the square feet per person: 120 people at 7 desks per 10 is 84 desks and 10,425 square feet, 86.9 a person. The space utilization worksheet takes desks, headcount, average and peak attendance and area and returns the utilization, the surplus and the sharing ratio. The return to office policy template takes headcount, days, desks and clustering and returns the busiest day and the desks short. None needs an account.
The one paid tool: the record behind the answers
HardFM Pro keeps what the worksheets work: the inventory of floors and desks, the bookings and the attendance week by week, the policies built from the figures, and the contractors cleared per building with their insurance, induction and expiry dates, with a reminder before any date lapses. It is $24 a month for the whole team, flat, and everything in it exports as tables. That is the entire product; there is no dashboard tier above it and no per-user seat.
Facilities management technology: sensors, readers and what they feed
Facilities technology on the workplace side is mostly ways of counting people without a person counting: desk and room occupancy sensors, badge readers at the door, wifi association counts, and the booking system itself. Facility management technology is worth its price when the counts it produces land in the record the facilities team keeps and feed the utilization figure; it is an expensive dashboard when they stay in the vendor's portal. HardFM takes those counts as inputs and integrates with none of the hardware, on purpose.
What the best facility management tools leave alone
Work orders, the asset register and the preventive schedule are the maintenance product's and live at the neighbouring hub, fmlane.com. Room booking, visitor sign-in, the intranet, the lease and the office furniture are other products with other buyers. A facilities management tool that tries to be all of them is owned by everyone and used by nobody; the four jobs above are the workplace manager's own, and this hub does those and stops.
Questions people ask about facilities management tools
What are the best facility management tools for the workplace side?
The ones that work the four workplace figures from your own inputs and keep the record behind them: the space a headcount needs, the utilization from attendance, the desks a hybrid rule needs, and the contractors cleared on site. On this site the three worksheets are free and HardFM Pro keeps the record for $24 a month for the whole team.
Are facilities management tools the same as facility maintenance tools?
No. Maintenance tools keep the assets, the work orders and the preventive schedule for the plant that keeps the building running; that is fmlane.com. Facilities management tools in the plural, here, are the workplace side: space, desks, attendance and site access.
Do I need facilities management technology like sensors?
No. Sensors change how the attendance count arrives, not what it means. A door count, a booking export or a manual count for a month gives the worksheets the same inputs, and HardFM takes any of them.