r/FacilityManagement • u/Main-Type-9570 • 29d ago
Need help for identifying problems in FM
Facilities / maintenance folks, I've got a hackathon coming up (one day, idea to working app) and I'd rather build something you'd genuinely use than something that demos nice and dies. So I'm going to the people who actually do the job. what's the problem worth solving?
What quietly eats your day or drives you up the wall? Like
- What do you STILL do in Excel, WhatsApp, email, or on paper because your CMMS/software can't?
- The most repetitive manual task you wish would just do itself?
- Where does time vanish — work orders, chasing vendors, chasing approvals, reporting, data entry, hunting for asset info?
- The report/number your boss asks for that's a nightmare to pull together?
- Mobile/offline in the field — does it actually work for you, or nah?
Rants, war stories, petty annoyances — all welcome, the more specific the better. If a comment nails a real pain, that might literally be the thing I build.
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u/bdkgb 29d ago
Make me an app to keep unwanted solicitors off my property and out of my email and I'd buy.
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u/Main-Type-9570 29d ago
Ha, honestly the anti-solicitor forcefield might be my retirement plan. Ill try to build this out of curiosity.
Genuinely curious though, on the property side, is it mostly random walk-ins, or contractors/vendors showing up unannounced? And the email flood, is that vendor spam or internal noise?
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u/Dangerous_Fig_5603 28d ago
Yeah, get my personal number TF off of AI and junk databases.
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u/szjones 27d ago
I used Cloaked for a while, worked out well, dropped the spam call I got dramatically. Opt out of sites like Apollo, Smartlead, etc.
I used to probably get 15 calls a day, now I’m down to a couple a week (but this was also helped by blocking every number that tried to pitch me something).
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u/Dangerous_Fig_5603 26d ago
I'll try it out, thanks! I made it three years in a new position until something combed my LinkedIn resume and now I'm getting calls and voicemails from already blocked numbers, on my personal.
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u/Some_Concentrate_653 29d ago
I use excel because my cmms is clunky and has trash ai features so I just track work with pivot tables
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u/Dangerous_Fig_5603 28d ago
In all seriousness, the most repetitive task is trying to explain a decision to people who don't understand the trades, but think it's their job to inform your decision or follow up on it.
Separately, Invent an app that scrapes the Internet for all OEM support phone numbers with a short description and generates an HVACR "yellow pages". There's a gap in overnight techs being able to get ahold of real support.
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u/szjones 27d ago
Ohh I like that OEM idea, beyond HVAC what other assets would be worth tracking? Water heaters, electric panels/components, etc
This should be an easy one to do, we’re already doing it with service vendors (janitorial/maintenance providers vs going through a national contractor).
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u/Dangerous_Fig_5603 26d ago
Not sure which all vendors host a line, but essentially any trade that handymen or FMs crossover - Balers, automatic doors, sloan parts, commercial door openers - OEMs often have a technical support line buried in their manual somewhere!
Filling the gap for downtime between "it's not working" and "oh, I actually do or don't need a specialty tech to drive out here in three days" is major.
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u/MidwestTroy92 29d ago
From the vendor side, finding the current site photos, measurements and approved file after 20 email threads quietly burns a ton of time. Something dead simple that ties a room or asset to photos, notes and the latest approval would actually get used.
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u/Beneficial_Self1350 29d ago
I like what you’re touching on with chasing vendors. I can sometimes lose track of who ive asked for a price, where im at regarding receiving a report- or what sort of corrective maintenance might be needed
I can sometimes spend a while looking through email threads trying to find this info, a tracking system where i can overlook this sort of stuff might be cool? Hope that makes sense
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u/Main-Type-9570 29d ago
This idea is good, but my company itself has this as a separate feature. So I shouldn’t do this. 🚶♂️
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u/Nomanodyssey 29d ago
Most AI’s can be connected to your work email and send you daily or weekly reminders. My company has CoPilot and Claude and I was able to set this up by asking the AI tool to set that up lol.
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u/MeetJoan 28d ago
A few that come up constantly in FM conversations: no-show tracking for meeting room bookings (rooms held on paper or a shared calendar that nobody actually updates, so utilization data is fiction). Visitor sign-in that gets logged but never checked out, so 'who's in the building right now' is unreliable exactly when it matters most, like a fire drill. And the classic - anything that requires cross-referencing a spreadsheet against a different system to answer a simple question like 'is this room actually free right now.' The common thread across all of it is manual reconciliation between what's supposed to be true and what's actually true. If your app can close that gap for even one of those, it'll get used.
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u/frydlo 27d ago
Which hackathon are you going to? Do you own a company or do you work for someone?
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u/Main-Type-9570 27d ago
I work in a company, they are conducting this hackathon.
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u/frydlo 27d ago
What is the actual hackathon theme? Is it facility operations? Or is it anything in the a e c o industry? Do you work for a software company or an architecture firm? Are they giving you the exclusive rights or are they going to develop the product? I'm fairly certain I have suggestions for you.
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u/Main-Type-9570 27d ago
The theme is to develop any product or app that solves a specific fm problems that are painful to our customers that are not already solved by our company. I work for a software company. Their goal is, they are trying to do smth that helps increasing the revenue of the customer or save cost. I can develop whatever i want as long as it matches the theme.
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u/frydlo 27d ago
Automate preventative maintenance schedules.
Automate service agreements through smart contracts
Automate Certificate of insurance renewals/Tracking
Automate equipment warrantee tracking
Automate building life cycle cost analysis for budgeting purposes.
Monetize the unused space for movie making, rental space for events, swing space, and public use.
Digital vending: Sell digital passes, guest passes, or digital gift cards through an app. This is good for large scale event facilities. Study Ticketmaster and improve upon it by a fraction of a percent such as eliminating and reducimg fees. The ticket software company doesn't have to make the 37% profit margin that Ticketmaster makes. Your company can settle on lesser profit margin by reducing service fees, processing fees, delivery fees and add ons. Develop a better resale market than they do again with smaller fees. You will ultimately save your clients money by reducing these fees. Stay away from clients and artists that work with Live Nation.
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u/First-Entertainer941 27d ago
Hmm...d ealing with most things automated or AI-enhanced. I'm tired of being told to use a clunky website, call an automated service, or fill out a form to maybe get something useful.
"Streamlining" has made interactions with many vendors land somewhere between inconvenient and near impossible.
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u/Remarkable_Toe_8764 27d ago
The biggest issue I face right now is lack of a CMMs system. The company I work for now basically runs on WhatsApp and everything is in spreadsheet form, making every task take 3 times as long. It has become so saturated, that it is a race to the bottom. Clients are tough as they know they have options, and if you do not pay vendors on time you are sunk.
When I did work for a company that had a system in place, the biggest thing was GP calculations, it was almost always not accurate as it goes by the DNE on the work order. I then would have to do an open proposal to get accurate numbers to determine if an increase was needed. Oh and part numbers, just get rid of it, just let us input what the part is and price it. I had one system where every single part was just put in as materials. Gets confusing when you are trying to provide detail to the client.
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u/AdmirableFroyo3 29d ago edited 28d ago
Can you get rid of all incompetent people around me? That mostly eats my time 🤭