Recently, Andrew Heagney from NFS sat down with Leah Piron from BuildingLink APAC to discuss their daily operations and how BuildingLink provides efficiencies along the way.
1. National Facility Services manage some of Melbourne and Geelong’s most complex residential buildings, how does BuildingLink streamline processes for these communities and their managers?
BuildingLink is a must have for the buildings we manage. We communicate to all of our residents via the communicate tab, emailing up to 1,000 residents and or owners with the click of a button! Our Managers and concierge staff use BuildingLink to inform residents that packages have arrived, use the open requests section that deals with defects and or maintenance issues amongst other things.
2. One of the things that makes NFS stand out is the close collaboration with Owners Corporations. How do NFS’ Building Managers use BuildingLink to support this collaboration?
We use the dashboard and the active announcements to get our message across when we are not emailing residents. Residents use the amenity tabs to make bookings to use the buildings amenities. The OC is unaware of tenants who are in the building, we capture this information and if the OC ever need to contact tenant, we have this info readily available. Residents also use the forums to lease out a car park or storage cage and to sell items to fellow residents.
3. Thinking about a typical day as a Building Manager for NFS, when would you first open BuildingLink to assist with your workday?And what parts of BuildingLink are most useful for your day-to-day activities as a Building Manager?
Shift log is used first thing in the morning to see what may have happened whilst the BM was not on site. Generally, the evening staff will use this function. Also, the BM would look to see what bookings are coming up for the day, i.e. someone is to move in or out.
4. How do you typically use BuildingLink throughout your day to make your job easier/add value for residents, OC members and developers?
Communicating is the main key to BuildingLink. If something is not quiet right in the buildings generally a resident may report it via BuildingLink. We also use it to remind us of recurring tasks that we must arrange attendance for contractors to attend site.
5.Does using BuildingLink create more time in your day to support your community and complete your building management tasks? If so, what parts of BuildingLink help create this time for you and what do you do with the ‘extra’ time?
Running reports assists me compiling my monthly building managers reports whereby we can extract data from BuildingLink. With the time saved this allows me to focus on other things throughout the day.
6. Is there anything you would like to add about the daily challenges and patterns of your day and how you manage them – both with and without BuildingLink’s software?
Well without the software we are in trouble, we are incredibly reliant on BuildingLink. It pretty much runs our whole day!
Thank you to Andrew and the team at National Facility Services (NFS) for taking the time to tell us a little more about how they utilise the BuildingLink platform for their day-to-day operations!