Facilities managers face daunting challenges in the calmest of times, but even more so as emergencies like natural disasters are becoming more frequent. But with the right tools, like a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), FMs can centralize all the information they need in one accessible place.
CMMS are likely to become used more in facilities management. According to industry projections, the value of the global CMMS market will increase at a 10.4% compound annual growth rate from 2025 to 2035.
A recent webinar hosted by Facilities Management Advisor and sponsored by FSI underscored the capabilities of CMMS solutions. The webinar showcased how a CMMS can become invaluable in situations like scaling emergency preparedness for enterprise companies in critical and risky areas, like healthcare. Joe Martino, director of operations for facility development at Northwell Health, and Joe Stockman, director of product experience at FSI, shared insights and lessons from working together to implement a CMMS across Northwell Health, a New York-based healthcare network with 21 hospitals and 890 outpatient facilities, more than 85,000 employees, and 655 facilities personnel.
The Role of a CMMS in Emergency Situations
In healthcare, the priorities for FMs are pretty clear-cut: address issues that can cause significant damage to the facilities in the network and result in widespread asset downtime, or put patient and visitor safety at risk.
So while some FMs might find proactivity to be a privilege, for Martino, it’s a necessity to help define Northwell Health’s emergency plans, ensuring readiness and making sure any and all documentation is easily accessible to anyone who needs it, wherever they are.
A CMMS provides a single source of truth to support FMs who have to monitor and make critical decisions across multiple buildings and locations. The system supports Northwell Health’s emergency preparedness operations by evaluating and tracking assets for readiness like downtime repairs, making operations more efficient and less manual, and helping access critical data and reporting.
With a CMMS, FMs are more able to weather any storm. For Northwell Health, their CMMS helps protect their healthcare facilities from various threats, including weather events, natural disasters such as earthquakes, utility and equipment failures, mass casualty events, contamination, and pandemics.
How a CMMS Can Crucially Link FM and Patient Care Teams
A CMMS can also serve as a conduit for more integrated teamwork that’s needed in healthcare.
Martino said he wants to break down the silos between healthcare service delivery and facilities management with better communication and data-sharing to facilitate better patient care. “For a long time, we looked at facilities as a facilities entity … from you know, engineering or a support-services model, not necessarily a patient care model,” he said.
Siloing is more likely to occur when managing numerous facilities. Martino said that it can be difficult to consider the impact of one event that could trigger cascading events. During facility emergencies, when the units aren’t communicating or making decisions using the same data, the healthcare team’s ability to provide care can be impacted. Martino gave the example of the flash flooding that hit New York City a few years ago, saying there was so much water coming through valves that had been unused for decades that it poured into laboratory spaces—illustrating how important it is for infrastructure and clinical operations to work together, so they’re ready for whatever emergency strikes.
System-wide Visibility and Accessibility
The enterprise-wide CMMS that Northwell Health is implementing aims to make data more accessible by organizing and digitizing documentation to put information at FMs’ fingertips with cloud connection, enabling them to keep working without delay.
Photo documentation of facility assets and digital building maps allows for quick reference in critical moments, like locating where medical gas shutoff panels are in a fire, or where doors are locked in an active shooter scenario.
Rather than relying on printed materials locked away in a filing cabinet, or manually gathering information whenever its needed, the expectation now is to be able to see information at a corporate level that can be accessed anywhere.
Another upside of using a CMMS is to provide readily available data that can support a growing company that may experience a high turnover rate—from mechanics to leadership—as roles expand or the job market changes. This reduces information loss between generations of the workforce.
Proactive Risk Management
A CMMS also allows for tracking risk and problem areas and go a step further to enable risk management scoring, helping FMs prioritize needs.
Risk management has evolved over the past few years. Since data is easier to collect and use now, like work order history, FMs can have a clearer picture of how to spend their budgets. For instance, building temperatures in Florida can get too hot during the summer, requiring evacuation, which results in productivity loss. However, if the FM is planning for hotter weather and sees that although a generator that provides back-up cooling is relatively new, it has also had many issues over the years, the FM can use work order history to help justify the purchase of a spare before the equipment fails.
In healthcare, risk categorization is quite explicit, making FM decisions easier. The NFPA 99 code helps determine risk categories to minimize hazards of fire, explosion, and electricity failure. This ranges from Category 1, when if facility systems like equipment fail, there is a likelihood of major injury or death of patients or caregivers, to Category 4, when failure would have no impact on patients. With a CMMS, FMs can log potential risks of failure to their critical systems and equipment, like when and if they were tested and preventative maintenance.
A CMMS makes it simpler to oversee and assess critical systems and equipment on an ongoing basis. For FMs that look over multiple buildings, they can more easily prepare for and implement emergency plans with information stored in the CMMS, such as what trucks they have in their fleet that can transport generators between sites, and know alternative routes to get from A to B if the roads are closed.
Asset and Resource Tracking for Emergency Response and Recovery
Martino said that tracking expensive equipment is another crucial use case for a CMMS. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone needed HEPA filtration units, Martino said that it was necessary to have ready access to information like: How can we power all the additional HEPA units? Can my generators handle all the extra load? And how do we account for all the additional resources?
Particularly with additional items that are borrowed during emergencies, Martino uses his CMMS to track them to know how many items like HEPA units were received, where they went, and how to get them back. He recalled asset losses following the emergency response to the 9/11 attacks, when New York City received a bill for equipment that was dropped off but “vanished” in the chaos of the operation—this is a time when tracking would have made a difference.
The ability to track a wide range of information enables an FM to see things more clearly, like asset tracking to streamline reimbursement for emergency funders like FEMA, whereas tracking work orders helps FMs analyze how prepared they were for emergencies after the fact, like how many work orders, and what kind, were filed per scenario. This information provides proof for business cases that will help FMs optimize their emergency readiness.
For FMs that operate in high-risk environments like healthcare, a CMMS isn’t just a tool to take stock of equipment; when implemented to its full potential, it can be a strategic asset for emergency preparedness, response, and recovery across large healthcare networks.
To watch the full “Harnessing Your CMMS for Emergency Preparedness & Rapid Recovery” webinar on-demand, click here.
Ali Hickerson is a freelance journalist, content writer, and strategist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Outside of Facilities Management Advisor, Ali’s recent bylines on health and workplace issues have crisscrossed the country and helped advocate for programs and policies that work to create a healthier, more humane, and equitable world.