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Facilities management at scale: Standardising operations across contracts
Facilities management teams delivering across multiple contracts often assume that more systems mean more control. Each part of delivery has its own tool, workflow, and source of truth.
In reality, fragmentation creates risk. Jobs drift between systems. Evidence is captured late or not at all. Approvals slow down, invoicing becomes a clean-up exercise, and reporting becomes a debate about which system is right.
The issue is rarely the contracts themselves. It is the lack of a standard operational process behind how work is delivered across sites. Public sector FM standards take the same view.
Standardising operations across contracts means keeping the job lifecycle consistent from creation to completion, evidence, approval, and invoicing, while allowing variation only where contracts genuinely differ. When that lifecycle lives in one place, teams spend less time chasing information and more time delivering work.
Why multiple systems create risk in multi-contract facilities management
Tool sprawl is when nobody can answer a simple question without checking three systems. The problem is not the tools. It is the handovers between them.
- Status becomes guesswork because updates land in different places.
- Evidence exists, but it is not attached to the job record, so it gets chased after the visit.
- Variations get agreed in conversations, so approvals and audit trails fall apart.
- Invoicing slows because “complete” depends on someone stitching the record together.
At scale, this is not an efficiency issue. It becomes a risk and governance issue.
What standardising operations across multiple contracts actually means
Standardising operations is not about forcing every contract to look identical. It is about nailing the operational process behind delivery, then making it the truth everyone works to across every contract.
That lifecycle needs to run the same way everywhere. The real question is where variation is allowed, and how it is controlled, so you do not end up with five different ways of doing the same job.
A useful way to think about this is the minimum common workflow. In mature estates, it is usually written and governed.
The minimum common workflow for multi-contract delivery:
- Job raised and captured
- Triage, priority, and SLA applied
- Scheduled and allocated based on skills, qualifications, and capacity
- Work completed with the right evidence captured
- Reviewed and approved, including variations where needed
- Invoiced and closed with a clean audit trail
- Reported in a way that is comparable across contracts
Start by standardising the job lifecycle before touching forms, SLAs, or reporting.
Unifying jobs, assets, compliance, scheduling, and invoicing in one system
Once you are operating across multiple sites, the workflow usually works. The problem is the systems around it. They stop scaling and start adding admin instead of control.
Bringing jobs, assets, compliance, scheduling, and invoicing into one system closes the gaps. Asset requirements are visible at planning. Scheduling matches skills and qualifications, so the right people are sent first time.
That only works when your asset data is consistent across the estate.
Evidence is captured on the job, not chased later. Variations stay controlled because approvals are built in. Close-out and invoicing become straightforward because the record is complete.
For customers, that can mean up to 95% less paperwork when jobs, evidence, approvals, and invoicing are captured digitally as part of the workflow.
How standard forms and approvals improve audit readiness
Audit readiness should be a by-product of how the job is run, not something left until the end.
Standard forms make sure the right fields and evidence are captured every time, and the job cannot be closed until the basics are complete. Approvals keep changes traceable.
If decisions live in conversations, proof evaporates. If they live in the workflow, you can see what changed, who agreed it, and when.
That is what makes audits less painful. You are pulling the audit trail from the job record, not rebuilding it afterwards.
Standardising operations in practice across multi-site estates
Multi-site facilities management at scale
AFM were managing over 5,000 sites across Guernsey and Jersey. They needed visibility and fast updates across split teams. Joblogic helped them keep delivery moving without piling admin onto the office team.
Replacing multiple systems in regulated estates
Achieve Together was running multiple legacy systems to manage maintenance and compliance across 450 homes. Those tools struggled under audit pressure and made subcontractor management harder than it needed to be.
With Joblogic, they consolidated into one platform. The process stays consistent, and evidence sits where it should.
Signs your multi-contract operation is working at scale
The early win in a rollout is usage. The real win is control that holds up when reactive demand spikes and contracts pull in different directions.
A simple test: can you answer these quickly from one place? Is the job complete? Is the evidence there? Has any variation been agreed? Is it invoice-ready?
- Fewer jobs stuck in “done but not closed”
- Evidence completeness improving week by week
- Approval cycle time tightening, especially on variations
- Job-to-invoice time dropping because close-out is cleaner
- Less exception handling and fewer “can you just send…” messages
Do not measure everything at once. Start with the metrics that expose risk and exceptions. If those improve, the rest usually follows.
Across Joblogic customers: 90% customer satisfaction and 95.35% customer retention.
Governance needed to keep operational standards consistent
Standardisation does not survive scale without governance. Without ownership, standards drift by contract until you are back where you started.
Name an owner for the standard core
One person or function owns the job lifecycle, evidence rules, and what “closed” means.
Allow variation, but make it deliberate
Contract differences are normal. The rule is that variations are agreed, documented, and controlled.
Use one change route
One way to request, assess, and approve changes. Otherwise quiet tweaks creep in and reporting breaks.
Put it on a cadence
- Weekly: review missing evidence, stalled jobs, ageing approvals
- Monthly: check performance pack consistency
- Quarterly: review standards and retire workarounds
Where this lands
The goal is that your weekly performance review feels different. It shifts from stitching records together to staying ahead of demand.
That only happens when the process is consistent and work is captured as it happens, not rebuilt afterwards.
If you want to see how this looks in practice, we can run through a job end to end in Joblogic and show status, evidence, variations, approvals, and invoice readiness.
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