Staying On The Cutting Edge Is Just As Important As Learning From Others

Professional development is critical to a healthy career. Employees need to have opportunities to receive training, learn about the latest tools, observe industry best practices, and share business challenges and successes with colleagues.

Gary Rahn and Brent Reiner of the in₄mation team sharpened their industry awareness at the annual ARCHIBUS User Conference. The conference attracted hundreds of facility professionals to southwestern Florida for several days of training, networking, and learning of the successes in the deployment of the newest facility information management technologies. “We can all say that technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace,” said Reiner, an Account Manager with GBBN’s in₄mation division. “I look forward to opportunities such as the ARCHIBUS conference to observe how other facility professionals are using ARCHIBUS and related technologies in both simple and tangible ways.”

Brent was a featured speaker at the April conference, hosting a breakout session exploring how Cincinnati Public Schools uses ARCHIBUS to help support the district’s $980 million building campaign to replace and renovate 51 schools. Along with Mike Albrecht of Cincinnati Public Schools, Brent discussed the importance of having a software solution to automate work order processes, organize asset and building information for each new school, and standardize planned preventive maintenance and capital replacement procedures. “The facilities department of Cincinnati Public Schools has achieved significant results in the past three years with ARCHIBUS, and it was a pleasure to share the story of their success with others at the conference,” said Reiner. “Hearing other organizations discuss initiatives such as mobile technologies, building system control integrations, and energy tracking concepts helps us to develop our own strategies to tackle these challenges, and exceed the expectations of our clients.”

A core focus of this year's conference was the introduction of the latest 16.3 ARCHIBUS software product, featuring an updated user interface and enhanced web capabilities. Some of the enhancements to the core Web Central product include the expanded use of tabbed format screens, export capabilities directly to Microsoft Excel from the web, enhanced drill down indexes, and improved search mini-consoles. With the recent improvements, the Web Central product offers many new improvements to simulate Microsoft Windows style processing in a web environment.

This new release also puts additional tools in the hands of the facility professional with the recent integration of the TEAMS suite of modules to the core ARCHIBUS product. The TEAMS solution enables users at all levels of an organization to mitigate the risk of non-compliance with environmental programs while quickly and easily reporting on the conditions of their assets. Included in the TEAMS product are separate functions to manage compliance and financials, waste management, environmental health and safety documentation, LEEDS documentation, material safety data sheets, and environmental monitoring. The TEAMS functionality is easily added to an existing Web Central implementation, allowing the user to leverage existing ARCHIBUS data.

This is one example of how the in₄mation team continues to stay current on industry trends. Please contact one of us to learn about other exciting developments for facility and property management professionals.