Facilities Management – More than Maintenance

Take a Long-Term Approach to Stewarding Your Ministry’s Facilities

Many ministries focus on facilities maintenance, the routine act of cleaning and repairing their property. While this is an important aspect of caring for ministry property, there is a greater need to manage ministry property. Facilities management takes a long-term approach and includes managing the care, repair, and upkeep of your property. It is proactive, preventive, systematic, and focused on the stewardship of ministry assets. While the differences may seem subtle, there is an important distinction that has lasting implications for ministry property and budgets.

Managing the Known to Avoid the Unknown

Routine maintenance is a component of facilities management. Facilities maintenance is keeping what you have running smoothly and efficiently. Facilities management involves planning ahead, seeking to improve, and managing risks. Expert Tim Cool emphasizes there will always be emergency repairs. Cool is the founder of Smart Church Solutions, an organization dedicated to helping churches become better facilities stewards. “I’m convinced that the more proactive we are in our facility management, the less often we will be surprised by the maintenance and repair issues of the day,” said Cool.

Plan Now, Save Later

A proactive organization has contingencies in place that anticipate mechanical failure or end-of-life cycle deterioration. By identifying issues with your building or systems before they become a crisis can diminish the negative consequences. For example, routine inspection of HVAC systems identifies issues that can be fixed before they suffer from catastrophic failure. This saves time and money, allowing for continued operations and avoiding unplanned, costly replacement.

Facilities Management Resources

Brotherhood Mutual® Insurance Company and Smart Church Solutions routinely provide guidance on maintaining ministry facilities. Those additional articles are found below:

What all these resources have in common is that they discuss preventive maintenance, one component of an overall facilities management plan. “In order to care for their facilities, ministries should shift from a ‘run it until it breaks’ philosophy and embrace proactive management and anticipation of normal facilities deterioration,” Cool says.

Smart Church Solutions offers an exhaustive manual on helping your ministry become masters of facilities management. Purchase their resource here. In addition, Smart Church Solutions offers several free resources to help you get started. Go to https://www.smartchurchsolutions.com/resources/ for more information.

As you examine your facility stewardship planning and personnel, consider if you need to shift from a maintenance mindset to a management mindset. Careful planning and strategizing can not only reduce the number of facilities emergencies you experience, but it can also save time and money. That is what facilities stewardship is all about. 

Appeared in Brotherhood Mutual’s Safety News, October 30, 2019
Created on October 23, 2019

2024 Brotherhood Mutual

2024 Brotherhood Mutual