Just what does a Facilities Manager do at a church? If you’re wondering what their responsibilities are, then look no further than our list below. The role of a facility manager is an important one! A facilities manager uses a facility scheduler to maximize the efficiency of the church and how it operates. By using a facility scheduler to assist in daily operations, you’ll see your church flourish!
Let’s take a look at the responsibilities of a facility manager and how they can incorporate using a facility scheduler into their everyday work flow.
Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
Table of contents
Role of a Facilities Manager
There are many things that a facilities manager will help with such as building safety, room scheduling, budget management for any repairs and so much more.
Maintenance and Repairs: Ensure the church’s buildings and grounds are well-maintained, safe, and operational. This includes frequent routine checks, repairs, and preventive maintenance.
Space Utilization: Coordinate use and scheduling of church facilities for meetings, events, and worship services.
Vendor Management: Oversee contracts and relationships with outside vendors, including landscapers, janitorial services, and equipment repair professionals, plus more.
Safety and Security: Implement and maintain safety procedures and protocols to protect guests, staff, and church property.
Budget Management: Develop and manage the facility’s budget, ensuring costs are kept within the allocated funds.
Improvements and Renovations: Plan and oversee any construction, remodeling, or renovation projects.
Equipment Management: Ensure all equipment, from sound systems to HVAC units, are functioning correctly and are serviced frequently.
Regulatory Compliance: Ensure church facilities comply with local, state, and federal regulations, including building codes, fire safety, and ADA requirements.
Emergency Preparedness: Develop and implement emergency plans, including evacuation procedures and disaster response.
Staff Management: If applicable, manage, train, and oversee facility staff or volunteers.
Why Does My Church Need a Facilities Manager?
Hiring a facility manager is a necessity. Hiring a pastor is a no-brainer. And hiring someone to run the youth ministry is also an easy ‘yes.’ However, hiring someone to maintain and oversee your facility is also essential. Facilities represent a large part of any church’s asset base and annual expenses. While our buildings are our tools, they still require care and attention. And, let’s face it — it’s a tool you probably do not want to lose.
1. Manage Your Largest Asset
Facilities are one of your church’s largest assets, if not the largest. They represent a high cost to operations. Therefore, a facility management professional can provide your church or organization with the knowledge to maximize value and minimize costs. Your facilities can require considerable effort to manage effectively. Therefore, having one person dedicated to their maintenance and management frees up other resources to entirely focus on why you do what you do.
2. Efficiency
Facilities have an enormous impact on productivity — of its environment, staff, and congregation. A facility manager understands the church’s mission and strives to maximize efficiency to align with that goal and purpose.
3. Right Direction
Facility accommodations require strategic planning to minimize costs and maximize value. Facility managers have the proper background and experience in all areas of the complex issues and services needed to provide effective stewardship to your assets. Therefore, having someone on staff who can offer strategic direction and development guidance can help your organization fulfill its vision and mission.
4. Risk mitigation
The environmental and legislative complexity of owning or leasing a facility represents a huge risk. Someone in the facility management profession — with the proper training — can navigate the requirements and mitigate any unforeseen risk. Facility stewards have the experience and oversight for facility issues, enabling them to see patterns, track changes, and identify risks that may have a future negative impact. Their knowledge enables them to take corrective action to reduce your risk and costs.
5. Resourcefulness
Your buildings require an entire team of specialists to provide services — think about your HVAC, roof, or bathrooms. Facility managers understand how to identify and assemble a skilled team to maximize value, reduce risk, and minimize costs. And, frankly, they know who to call and who not to call when a job needs to be done.
Bottom Line: You Need A Facility Manager
You need someone on your team whose sole job it is to maintain and manage your facility — someone truly equipped for the job. Below are examples of why church facility managers (stewards) carry a significant stewardship role:
- Our facilities belong to God
- Facility-related expenditures are generally the second-largest line item in a church budget, only after staffing
- The health and safety of the staff and guests are essential
- Maintaining facilities is a constant activity
- Operational costs (utilities, maintenance, janitorial) make up about 80% of your church’s life cycle cost of ownership
- Your facility care shows a level of respect
Church Facility Management Software
There are a few helpful tools that a facility manager will implement to make everyone’s lives easier. These are facility management software programs that help a church to stay organized and on top of every small detail. To access certain schedulers, your computer must use Internet Explorer version 6.0 or even higher. If you do not use Internet Explorer, you will not be able to access these sites. To determine your specific IE version, open your internet browser, click on “Help” and then select “About Internet Explorer.” The version will be displayed on the information screen. However, many church software programs have the option of using another internet browser.
1. Smart Church Solutions
Smart Church Solutions is a great option that is specifically catered towards churches. eSPACE is built to integrate seamlessly into your facility environment, providing integrations with leading HVAC, door access control, digital signage and other building systems. Following the BACnet and other integration protocols, eSPACE covers the majority of IoT needs for most facilities.
Their event scheduling software and Facility Rental Software offer a complete solution for seamless event management. From handling event requests and registrations to ticketing, payments, and even a user-friendly billing and invoicing feature for facility rentals, they’ve got it all covered. Say goodbye to those headaches and streamline your event management with their powerful software suite!
- Manage Spaces, Resources & Services
Reserve the room(s) for your event, and also any resources or services that are required as well.
- Public & Private Calendars
Allow users to see their full master calendar internally and even display your public events on your website.
- Public Request Forms
Customized public event request forms that allow external sources the ability to request use of your facility.
2. Mazévo
You deserve a room scheduling system that keeps all your meeting and event information in one place and is a breeze to use. Mazévo has all the tools you need to manage the use of your busy meeting rooms, while keeping track of setup details such as AV services, tables, chairs and even catering.
Easy-to-use request forms for staff and customers
With Mazévo’s built-in event request process, be sure that you collect all the event details you need without wasting time tracking down additional information from your customers.
Schedule rooms without double booking
Resolve potential conflicts in seconds! Made for busy facilities, Mazévo lets you instantly see why a room is not available so you can resolve it immediately and never overbook.
Manage all event services including AV, furniture, and catering
Record all event details and special instructions. Always know how much equipment you have available at any given time to meet event needs and receive alerts if you don’t have enough required resources.
Real-time public calendar of events
With Mazévo you’ll have a master calendar for your entire organization. Publicize everything you have happening to your community with detailed online event calendars.
Mobile friendly
Now you and your staff can access all event details when you are on the go, and your customers can also make room requests from their phones or the desktop.
Integrate with systems you use every day
Mazévo will seamlessly integrate with HVAC systems, digital signage, door access control platforms, and more.
3. Fiix
Fiix quickly builds asset hierarchies, add equipment, clone records, and intuitively organize assets with drag and drop functionality. Import existing assets from CSV files to easily migrate from other systems. Access asset histories with one click.
Eliminate maintenance chaos with easy work order management. Everyone on your team can access work instructions, task lists, notes, files, and print-to-paper options, from desktop or mobile phone. Set up scheduled maintenance requests according to date, time, meter, event, and alarm-based triggers. Standardize practices with automated task lists and receive notifications for upcoming maintenance.
4. AkitaBox
AkitaBox has cloud-based software delivers real-time facilities data in a visual and easy-to-use, customizable format, helping teams simplify their operations, reduce risk, and solve even the most complex facility challenges.
Asset Management & Capture
Location-based asset mapping that helps visualize facilities management. Get instant access to your facility and asset information anytime, anywhere. Experience dynamic, digital facility mapping that mirrors your physical buildings. Plus, enjoy a central repository for facility documents!
Key Features
- AutoDesk® Revit integration
- 2D digital floor plans
- Location-based asset mapping
- OCR technology – text recognition that pulls text from photos
- Asset and space inventory
- Historical asset data
- Asset relationships
- Customizable data fields
- Document management
Application Programming Interface (API)
The AkitaBox API makes it easy to retrieve important asset information you’ve collected using our platform, including customized data fields and attached photos and documents. You can also create and track the status of work orders associated with important tasks, service requests, preventive maintenance, or inspection programs.
5. MaintainX
Create, assign, and monitor Work Orders and Work Requests. 95% of maintenance teams agree MaintainX helps improve how they plan, manage, and execute work. See each work request instantly as soon as it’s made. Assign it to a team or a specific technician, prioritize it against other requests, and monitor the progress from start to completion. Receive clearer work requests by customizing request forms and making certain fields mandatory.
Allow requesters to select assets, locations and assignees to speed up resolutions. See what requests are being completed and by who. Report to stakeholders on metrics like MTTR, work completion, downtime and more. Use data-driven insights to improve your processes.
6. Q Ware
Inventory Management
Q Ware inventory management integrates with work orders and assets to easily track costs and consumption as well as assign parts to specific assets for quick reference. Reorder points and email recipients can be set to send reminders when stock levels get low.
Asset Management
Work orders are tracked against each asset and location in the system allowing your team to show proof of compliance and generate reports showing common problems. Procedures can be uploaded to asset records to ensure work quality is consistent.
Event Booking
Q Ware’s event booking software provides administrators with the ability to manage event scheduling, approvals, and rental fees quickly and stress-free. Requesting an event is intuitive with automatic conflict checking, transparent fee schedules, and space availability tools.
Custom Workflows
Workflows for managing maintenance requests are customized for each Q Ware customer. Form fields, work order statuses, email templates and triggers, table views, and user privileges can all be set up to fit your unique operation. As your needs change, so will Q Ware.
Guest Requests
A dedicated customizable guest form allows anyone inside or outside of your organization to submit requests. Users are not required to log in to submit their request and the form link can be shared or embedded in web pages for easy access.
7. Limble
With Limble, organize your spare parts so you know what is in stock, where to find it, and when it will run out to keep your technicians prepared for a job well done. Intuitive and flexible asset management features make it easy to care for your equipment, whether you are responsible for 10 assets or 10 million. Allocate your resources for maximum efficiency, automate key workflows, and cuts costs by replacing guesswork with data-driven decision making.
Pricing:
Free – Unlimited Work Orders with Attached Images, Unlimited Work Requesters, Real-Time Communication
Standard $28 per month – Unlimited Recurring Work Orders, Unlimited Custom Dashboards, Downtime Reporting (MTBF, MTTR)
Premium+ $69 per month – Unlimited Work Orders with Attached Procedures, Unlimited Advanced Analytics, Meter & Threshold Based Scheduling
8. ACS
Churches simply have too many people, events, facilities, and changes to coordinate for one calendar. ACS Facility Scheduler is a hosted, centralized scheduling tool designed specifically to expand and meet the multiple needs of organizations and their facilities. With this scheduling solution, you can create and distribute custom calendars to your members and staff so that rooms and resources are never double-booked. And since Facility Scheduler is a Web-based application, you can access it from anywhere at any time.
With its unique workflow security and even more user-friendly interface, Facility Scheduler is the optimum choice for your organization. It is the latest hosted solution, so your program is always up to date and your data is always secure.
- View one calendar or any combination of calendars with few clicks
- Quickly check the daily, weekly, or monthly availability of meeting rooms, people, or equipment
- Arrange meetings, reserve rooms, and book equipment and resources without causing conflicts
- Create complex recurring events (e.g. finance committee that meets every second Tuesday or VBS that runs five consecutive days)
- Schedule multiple locations per event
- Broadcast schedules and announcements on screens throughout your church
- Integrate information with Microsoft Outlook
9. Subsplash
Church member interactions on the Subsplash Platform automatically populate your database, which means it’s always up to date! With current people data in one place, you can streamline communication and access data on how people are engaging with your church. Everything you need to tackle the everyday needs of ministry. Volunteer Management, Service Planning, and Child Check-in help your church gather on Sundays, while People and Teams keep your community organized throughout the week—all on the same platform as your digital engagement tools.
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