When Salal Credit Union purchased its headquarters back in 2016 from the previous owner, they inherited rolls and rolls of building blueprints.
Capturing, organizing, archiving, accessing, updating, and sharing all information is a priority for both current facility team members and new hires.
More importantly, how can you use mobile devices as a central repository for all things facility-related for technicians on the go?
When Mark Verner heard about ARC Facilities, he thought it would be a good way to capture building information.
ARC Facilities has helped the facility team by mapping out the locations of every security camera, fire alarm, fire strobe, fire horn, fire extinguisher, AD devices, as well as fire safety equipment – all of which are now accessible from mobile devices which the facilities team uses every day.
ARC Facilities also added QR codes that Verner and his team can put on any equipment. By scanning a QR code with a mobile device, the team members can quickly access warranty information, videos, and other information.
“In the beginning, we basically just handed over all of our blueprints to ARC Facilities and then had those all scanned,” said Verner. “And over the years we’ve been slowly adding stuff to it.”
ARC Facilities came out and did a complete walk through of the Salal Credit Union building and went through every office suite, including 12 tenants in the building.
- Before implementing the ARC Facilities solution, the Salal facilities team had three different boxes with 20 rolls of blueprints in each box. Now, the entire contents of the storage room can be found in the palm of your hand on a phone or iPad.
- Productivity boost. No more wasting 30 minutes trying to find the right blueprint or floor plan – time better spent on maintenance or responding to an emergency.
- Having drawings scanned in the system made it easy to locate and repair a major pipe blockage between floors, preventing an incident from escalating into a catastrophe.
- Mapping out the locations of every security camera, every fire alarm, and fire extinguisher gave the team peace of mind and the ability to respond faster during emergencies.
- Simple succession planning when a new person comes on board.
- Seamless continuity of business for the next person who manages the building when all facility information is in one place – all preventative maintenance schedules, leases, and contracts.
“When it comes to plumbing issues, we can show our mechanical drawings to the vendor or the plumber and say, well, here’s where the pipes are, here’s where the shutoff valves are, all of that. So that’s definitely helped,” said Verner.
Getting Up to Speed on Your Own Building
Verner plans to add VAV boxes and pinch boxes to their equipment inventory by putting QR codes on them, so technicians can scan the QR codes and see complete maintenance histories – when each piece of equipment was replaced, when it was installed, and when the last time air filters were changed out.
“Instead of having facility information on multiple spreadsheets stored on a hard drive or in the cloud, having all critical information in one location rather than multiple folders on a computer means even vendors can access our information when needed.”