ABRO

Use of Facilities Management Software in Government

Responsible for the land system repair needs of the British Armed Forces, ABRO prides itself on providing an unparalleled level of service and expertise to its customers. It was the same focus on excellence that led ABRO’s Head of Estates, Malcolm Mair, and his team to implement cutting edge technology to help them manage the agency’s vast array of assets and property.

Malcolm is responsible for Facilities Management at the eight ABRO strategically located sites: the Head Office at Andover, Bovington, Bicester, Catterick, Colchester, Donnington, Sennybridge, Stirling and Warminster – comprising in excess of 150,000 square metres of space. His role encompasses ‘anything that is needed to support the sites in the way of facilities or services’.

ABRO’s relationship with Mass began in 1999 with the commencement of the Asset Information Management System (AIMS) project, which involved the identification, bar-coding and recording of 90,000 individual items, ranging from office equipment and furniture to the wide range of expensive tools and machinery used to repair and maintain the Armed Forces’ equipment. The system soon extended beyond asset management to other modules from Mass' integrated range, including portable appliance testing, cable management, space management, furniture and equipment, building operations and, most recently, FM Works, the web-based facilities maintenance system.

“When we began the selection process, we were looking for an asset management system alone. However, it was recognised at board level that there would be considerable benefits in choosing a system that was more comprehensive, one that would allow us to expand into other areas whilst retaining the same common database of information,” says Malcolm.

As part of the project, Mass carried out a Building Condition Survey for ABRO, which allowed Malcolm to have up-to-date information about his facilities. Malcolm comments: “From the information gathered, we knew what condition our buildings were in, and were able to review, plan and cost future maintenance jobs on all sites and this has helped shape the business”.

This information proved extremely valuable, because in April 2004 ABRO outsourced the Facilities Management of all of their sites (including planned maintenance, reactive repairs, cleaning and ground maintenance) to Alfred McAlpine Business Services.

Malcolm was very keen to expand the use of the Internet in his FM operations by implementing a facilities maintenance system over the web. He selected FM Works from Mass, a computerised maintenance management system that is fully compatible and integrates with ARCHIBUS/FM. “We were able to simply plug the software in and it worked! There was no need to populate the database as FM Works reads from the background database from our ARCHIBUS Building Operations Management module,” explains Malcolm. John Neville, Operation Manager - Defence, Government and Health for Alfred McAlpine Business Services adds: “My staff are very impressed with FM Works as it is a flexible product to use, and they are pleased that they have not had to start from scratch collecting all of the data”.

He continues: “The facilities staff enter, process and assign work requests, work orders, resources, and prioritise the jobs. The maintenance workers will be able to log onto the FM Works system using their own ID and access, update and report on the

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