Who You Work with For Facility Maintenance Matters
If you have a large organizational footprint to manage, you know that working with partners that are reliable, trustworthy, and clear about their facility maintenance costs, capabilities, and processes goes a long way. The last thing you need is to start a partnership with a company only to start experiencing issues, confusion, or distrust right off the bat. Facility management is a vast function that requires your partners to be responsive, consistent, and reliable. While mistakes happen, you — and your facilities — can’t afford repeat offenders.
This applies just as much to the administrative and financial side of the relationship as it does to work quality and performance. Aspects like the detail and clarity of service estimates and quotes, agreed-upon cost structures, service level agreements, and other contractual elements are all important to understand and define upfront, particularly when they will influence your facility maintenance costs as time goes on.
At CLS Facility Services, we have built one of the strongest reputations in the facility asset management industry — not only for the consistency of our work and relentless commitment to customer service, but also for how we build programs and manage the financial and operational details along the way. Here, we’ll explore three key ways that our approach helps organizations nationwide better understand their facility maintenance costs and plan for them.
1. Detailed, Clear Quotes
Would you pay a bill without understanding what it was for? Not likely! The same goes for your facility asset management program. If you don’t understand the costs, you can’t possibly trust the process. We’re not saying this automatically makes the partner or vendor untrustworthy, but it certainly doesn’t help build trust. Detailed quotes with the information you need to provide approval, understand the work being performed, and what you’re being billed for are essential.
At CLS, our internal estimating team builds all quotes in-house with a line-by-line breakdown of pricing and all costs. All aspects of the quote are spelled out upfront so you know the details, including labor, materials, and taxes. Our estimators are available to answer questions regarding each and every quote. Nothing moves forward until you’re confident in what you’re approving.
Learn more about what makes us different and how we produce meaningful results for clients.
2. Pre-Established Rates
Different parts of your footprint are subject to different costs. This is normal and is due to the cost of materials, labor, and other factors being higher in some areas, just like the cost of living varying based on where a person is located. But as a facility manager, you need to know what to expect with these facility maintenance costs. If you have facilities in high-cost areas and your partner isn’t transparent with you upfront about variances, you might have sticker shock when they give you a quote that’s significantly higher than it would be for a different region.
CLS establishes hourly rates for each state we’ll be working in for your organization. This will be provided to you upfront as we build out the details of your program. Apart from giving you better insight into what the overall cost for your program will be, you’ll have greater peace of mind in knowing what to expect in the event a new cost arises for a location in a more expensive area. This level of transparency ensures that there are no surprises.
Learn more about what you should consider when it comes to asset maintenance.
3. Not-to-Exceed (NTE) Pricing
NTE pricing is meant to help you save time and build a foundation for understanding and controlling your costs. When you work with a partner you trust, NTEs can help you spend less time obtaining multiple bids and more time focusing on managing your facilities. Costly future repairs are avoided because you and your partner will have agreed-upon pricing that governs all work. In the event a repair exceeds the NTE, you and your partner can make a decision together.
When you partner with CLS, we’ll help you manage your facility maintenance costs by establishing NTEs that fit both of our needs. Ultimately, we’ll be able to work together more efficiently, transparently, and effectively when we are both aligned on what repairs will cost.
Learn how our quarterly PM program for a mall-based brand significantly reduced T&M calls.
Ready to Work with a Partner You Can Trust for Facility Asset Maintenance?
CLS Facility Services has been helping brands across the country manage the many assets at their locations more proactively and cost-effectively for more than 50 years. We’ll work with you upfront to define the elements explored here and many others, creating a preventive maintenance program that keeps your costs manageable while maximizing uptime and customer satisfaction.
Ready to get started? Set up a time that works for you to learn more about our capabilities, or get started right away here.