Once a COVID-19 incident has been reported and associated with a  specific workspace or workspaces, the next step facilities teams will want to take is to disinfect the area. The WMA strongly recommends Archibus Maintenance (Building Operations) to help synchronize efforts across an organization to disinfect the workplace. Maintenance (Building Operations) uses work requests and notifications to keep those involved aware of the steps being taken to complete a work order; in the case of COVID-19, staff across an organization can request disinfection to take place, craftspeople and janitorial staff will be notified of work to be done, facilities managers and overseers should be updated on the status (not started, in progress, completed, etc.) and everyone should be aware of when the request is completed.

The Process

To begin this article, we’d like to demonstrate what the process of requesting, updating, and completing work, in this case disinfection, in Archibus would typically look like for an organization. We’ll then look at key steps in more detail.

The workflow within Archibus for responding to a COVID-19 incident may look similar for many companies.

The flowchart above shows the general response process. First, an incident will be reported, using Archibus Health and Safety. To respond to this incident, facilities professionals will create a work request in Archibus Maintenacne (Building Operations) from the report. This work request will trigger a specific Service Level Agreement (SLA), discussed in more detail below, which will determine the parameters of how and when the work will be approved and completed. In the case of COVID-19 incidents, this will notify facilities cleaning crews that they need to be dispatched. Once this cleaning has taken place, a facilities professional will close the work request, and the system will notify the correct individuals and keep an accurate record of open and closed requests.

As multiple requests are open in the system, facilities teams will be prepared with accurate location and protocol information. Reporting features allow the health and safety teams and upper level decision makers to look at the floorplans, see how many COVID-related incidents have occurred, then take other precautionary and preventive action appropriate for their organization.

Watch a video about what happens after a health and safety incident is reported and facilities teams need to be dispatched for workplace disinfection. Learn about work requests, Service Level Agreements, and how these speed up the response process.

Generate a Service Request

As mentioned above, Archibus Health and Safety allows users to view an incident then generate a work request for that incident. This work request is then viewable and editable in Archibus Maintenance (Building Operations). Generating the work request in Health and Safety allows it to easily be associated with the incident and makes it trackable on floorplans. This work request will allow facilities teams to more quickly provide services such as:

  • PPE restock
    • Disinfection and cleaning
    • Isolating a workspace after COVID exposure

Request Types and Problem Types

Request Types ensure that the work request is routed to the appropriate team. These are pre-determined by an organization.

As opposed to Request Types, any kind of Problem Type can be created when generating a work request. Problem Types allow organizations to track how many responses to a certain category of incident have occurred, in this case, how many COVID-19-related responses have taken place.

Each problem type has a Service Level Agreement (SLA) attached to it. An SLA allows the work request to be run through the appropriate approval process and protocols, to either speed up the response process, or ensure that the required personnel have seen and approved the work request. SLAs are versatile, and they are an essential component to the work request process.

Watch a video about creating a work request and how to assign a problem type so a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is triggered and speeds up the process of responding to a health and safety incident.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

An SLA is the agreement with the customer or requestor that defines how an issue—or work request—will be addressed and completed. It answers key questions for both the requestor and the craftsperson such as:

  • How much time should it take to respond to an issue?
    • How much time should it take to resolve?
    • Is upper-level or managerial approval required?
    • Who will respond to the issue?

For facilities teams, SLAs can act as routing engines to sort issue types by categories, such as:

  • Problem type
    • Location
    • Requestor
    • Equipment code

Notifications around the SLA can be created to notify those involved of the status of work. For example, some notifications notify:

  • Facilities managers that work has been completed
    • Facilities managers and craftspeople/janitorial staff that work is past due
    • The requestor that work has been started, is in progress, or completed
    • A craftsperson that a work request has been assigned to them

An SLA will be triggered by certain parameters within the work request; in this case it is the problem type. The SLA in the video was triggered when the problem type of “COVID-19” was selected while generating the work request.

Watch a video about Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and how they ensure that a work request receives the proper approval and gets completed in the appropriate time-period.

Update a Work Request: Define Cause Type and Add PPE as Parts

Facilities professionals may find that they need to add or change information about the work request. Two essential edits that apply to a COVID-19-related incident are associating a cause type and associating parts.

Cause Type

Assigning a cause type to a work request allows users to associate a request with COVID-19 or any other specific health and safety incident type, while still keeping the original problem type. For example, let’s say that a work request exists that an organization needs to label as both related to plumbing and to COVID-19, but its problem type is already set to plumbing. A user may designate the cause type as COVID-19 so that all the plumbing requests are tracked and that data is maintained accurate, while still keeping the data for COVID-related incidents accurate.

Parts

Users may go into their organization’s parts inventory and associate parts with the work request. If an organization enters their PPE into the database, this can help an organization track how much has been used, how much they need to order, the rate at which it is being used, etc.

Watch a video about assigning a cause type and PPE as parts to a work request. Learn why keeping problem types and cause types separate can help organize work requests and keep data accurate.

Reports

There are several key reports that can be accessed within Archibus from the data provided by work requests.

Incident Status

Located in the Incident Response tab of an incident entered in Sustainability and Risk, this report simply shows the status of the work request. Every time the status changes, the requestor and the facilities team assigned to it will receive a notification.

Users may look up the status of the work request from Archibus Health and Safety.

Concentration of Incidents

Also found in Sustainability and Risk, users may view a heat map that shows the location and  concentration of incidents, and filter this down to view only COVID-related incidents. Clicking on the “Details” button will display the specific floorplans associated with each incident.

Heat maps can display the concentration of incidents within an organization’s entire real estate portfolio.
Clicking on a site’s “Show Details” will display the floorplans of the locations in which the health and safety incident occurred.

Incidents Over Time

Located in Maintenance, the Maintenance Report Builder generates graphs such as bar charts, pie charts, and more. Users can group the data displayed by month and problem type, then filter down to specific types, such as COVID-19.

Within the Maintenance domain users can see different charts and graphs, such as bar and pie charts, about the number of incidents over time in an organization.
Watch a video about the different reports that can be generated off of work requests in Archibus. Some of these reports include heat maps, bar charts, and incidents over time.
 

Hate reading? Watch the entire second part of the Knowledge Series!

Watch the entire second part of the “COVID-19 in 1.9 Minutes”, Disinfect the premises with Archibusmaintenance (Building Operations).

Get to know the Workplace Maven Alliance.

The WMA collectively has 150 years of experience in Archibus, AutoCAD,  IWMS, and CAFM solutions. We are a group of certified Archibus business  partners who are committed to finding the best solution for our clients. Formed in April of 2020, the alliance consists of:


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