CAFM & IT
THE SECRET COST OF WORKSPACE
Conditions remain challenging for UK businesses, yet it’s an
astonishingly true fact that many are still throwing money away by not making the best use of their workspace, explains Luis De Souza, CEO of NFS Technology Group.
Poor room and resource management is a hidden cost that can become colossal; a healthcare expert recently estimated that inefficient use of hospital space in the country is costing hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
If you need further proof, one global utility with 40 locations recently saved over $100,000 in three months after making it easier for staff to find and book meeting rooms, reducing the costs of booking external rooms.
The utility implemented a meeting and resource scheduling software called Rendezvous from NFS Technology Group. Rendezvous workspace management technology partners with advanced CAD/CAFM software to give workers easy access to real-time views of available workspace, so they can book meeting rooms online.
The CAFM technology is used to design, draw, track, and manage facilities via an intelligent graphical floorplan, and the resulting combination is an easy-to-view and use workspace management system that gives managers a unique overview of space utilisation.
The system provides space accounting reporting that allows facilities managers to calculate how space is being used. They can also compare it to space standards, and to the lease, to make sure they are being charged for the correct amount of space.
Facilities managers also benefit from a greater ability to track assets, which is particularly valuable when it comes to high-value assets and furniture; it saves loss and unnecessary procurement. It also means that staff are spared the
22 | TOMORROW’S FM
its meeting rooms, but also provided a check-in and check-out monitoring service for valuable equipment.
Stephen Yates, TP Bennett’s IT Director, said: “We wanted something that was stable, something that worked not necessarily out of the box but could be adapted to fit our needs.
“For instance, as an architects’ office, we have a lot of resources that our people take out, such as laptops, projectors and iPads. Lots of systems can book them out – but we needed a system that logged them back in, too.
“We also have legal requirements to meet, such as making sure people wear hard hats and boots on site, and this also needed to be taken into account.”
TP Bennett settled on Rendezvous from NFS, who worked closely with Stephen’s team to customise the highly flexible meeting room and resource booking system, and the result has been a system that is easy for staff to use, and which they feel confident about.
frustration of trying to work or hold a meeting without the equipment or facilities they need.
One organisation that is currently making the most of workspace scheduling technology is leading architectural, interiors and townplanning practice TP Bennett. With headquarters in a converted Edwardian warehouse at Bankside in London and a further office in Manchester, TP Bennett has around 300 staff.
TP Bennett was looking to change its incumbent room booking system, and required a customised system that not only enabled efficient utilisation of
And while it’s early days to quantify benefits, Stephen says the company is already seeing efficiencies thanks to the easy availability of meeting room information and the logging of resources.
Giving facilities managers this kind of sophisticated control and monitoring is a powerful aid to cost cutting – it’s estimated organisations can gain a 5-10% reduction in annual workplace real estate costs by maximising space planning efficiencies. It adds up to more efficient operations, better space utilisation, higher productivity and happier staff .
www.nfs-hospitality.com twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
Images supplied by T P Bennett
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