The Cost of Complaints
Now that most small to medium companies are back in the office and most large corporations have announced their back to office plans for 2021 and 2022, its time to talk about the importance of comfort. It’s both the number one driver of work orders and of tenant relocation decisions. Not only does to the cost of combating comfort issues and workorders hurt facility management, it also hurts owners and corporate occupiers ability to maintain high occupant experience.
Data visibility on tenant comfort and more importantly predictive analytics that helps make proactive improvements for occupants is key to tenant retention and meeting occupant experience expectations.
Facility management teams envision running and managing Class A facilities, but too many times buildings are not delivering Class A comfort to the building’s occupants. Buildings are ultimately designed, built, and used as spaces occupied by people, but if occupants are uncomfortable, they are less efficient, unhappy, and generally uneasy in those spaces. At the start of service with PointGuard, we see clients that deal with upwards of 15 comfort complaints per week across their portfolios – sometimes even in a single building.
The first order cost of regular hot/cold calls means that facility teams spend the majority of their time and resources on fixing occupant complaints. According to one Building Operating Management survey, 68% of teams’ number one most common workorder is temperature. The cost of the truck roll and the use of a facility managers valuable time fixing a temperature issue are variable operational costs that could be improved with better visibility into building conditions.
However the second order costs of persistent discomfort on your tenants could be far more harmful to your bottom line. Poor comfort often means high tolerating costs for your tenants, and annoyance and ultimately dissatisfaction that the same issue is not being solved at the root, make people want to leave.
Class A buildings do not retain tenants with Class B comfort. The competition for tenants in markets where rental rates are largely indistinguishable means that tenant experience factors make the decisions to jump a lot easier. If the same company’s CEO’s office gets unbearably hot each July and their product dev team complains almost daily each January of the freezing temperatures in their part of the office, the lease renewal coming up in year three of their occupancy may not go well.
Visibility Is the solution.
Facility teams need to monitor and remotely manage the large number of buildings under management. They need assurances more than ever that their mechanical assets are working with them and for their tenants. There is increasing and inherent value in taking facilities management from good to great with software.
Building teams can use software in the “last mile” to precisely control set points, monitor for anomalous energy consumption, and maximize the value of their equipment assets. While CMMS and work order management systems are valuable data lakes, they make no reference to comfort and therefore no reference to occupants. PointGuard uses the existing, extensive sensor network of the BMS to arm engineers with the tools and visibility needed to complete the job.
PointGuard allows for customization of set points at the zone level and then helps you monitor for example that CEO’s office in the summer months for out-of-bounds temperature spikes. Proactively addressing this issue, for example by resetting static pressure to improve airflow, allows for both first order improvements to your facility management strategy, and also second order improvements to tenant experience and happiness.
The PointGuard platform also works for building operators in the area of airflow hygiene. Occupants today are more concerned than ever that their place of work may be unhealthy for them – but in fact it can keep them healthy with the right data benchmarking. But more on Airflow Hygiene in our next blog...
The PointGuard platforms diagnoses large energy wasting problems and more for facility teams in the first few months of service. However, the true benefit of software comes with better asset health and improved comfort. These are long term issues for facility teams, which PointGuard's KPIs and algorithms are tailored to address. This is the last mile of facility management that helps an occupant’s experience go from good to great.
About PointGuard.
PointGuard is a facility management software company that leverages existing building control systems to maximize the value and performance of mechanical equipment, increase occupant comfort and extend asset life. PointGuard’s platform, via monitoring based retro-commissioning, provides real time transparency to equipment performance in buildings for instantly better decision making for maintenance and capital budgets - so one facility engineer can manage up to 20MM sq ft strategically and effectively.
The PointGuard Snapshot provides an overview of operational performance levels after just 30 days of data, revealing potential and permanent improvements available through PointGuard's analytics platform. Based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, please visit www.pointguardtech.com for more information or PointGuard at info@pointguardtech.com.
