The vast majority of businesses are operated from buildings. While that may seem an obvious statement, some are actually not. With the rise of flexible working, gig economy, start-ups keeping costs low, and of course the proliferation of tech-based communications tools; mobile, remote and homebased workers mean it’s no longer necessary to run a business with a building.

However, the vast majority of businesses still require offices, retail premises, factories, warehouses, rest rooms, showers, and so on. Tall buildings might need lifts or escalators, large office blocks might need temperature-controlled server rooms, pharmaceuticals companies might need laboratories.

The point is that all of those buildings have a lot of infrastructure – electricity, gas, water pipes, and so on, and all of those need maintenance because they suffer from wear and tear, and from time to time may need repairs or complete replacement. Even the electricity cables that conduct the electricity through the walls, ceilings, and underneath the floor suffer from wear and tear, which is not something that occurs to many people. Over time they will deteriorate. It may only be a slow process – depending on the use of the building – but all of your infrastructure deteriorates over time.

All of this has led to the rise of facilities services providers whose whole purpose is to take care of the maintenance of your building, and your grounds where applicable, leaving you free to worry about other things such as running your business and making a profit. You don’t want to have to worry about who is going to clean the toilets - yet they must be cleaned.

Facilities services cover a whole range of different services, probably the most regularly needed of which is cleaning services. You can’t run a gym that isn’t clean, and you don’t want to clean it yourself after you have closed for the evening. So you have a specialist company in to take care of that for you. It contributes to the overall expenses of your business, in the same way that petrol or diesel is a part of the expense of running a team of salesmen. It’s an overhead.

You can’t run an effective office that isn’t clean, either, although some small businesses try to cut corners by getting the staff to clean and tidy their workspace. They quickly learn that it isn’t cheaper to do this, and often leads to a poor quality clean, as well as demotivated employees.

There are all sorts of facilities services that you can have provided for you. For instance, if your business has grounds you will need gardening services – lawn mowing, hedge trimming, flower bed planting and weeding, tree pruning, and so on – none of which you have the time, or for that matter the inclination, to do yourself, so you can simply call in facilities services providers to take care of all that for you.

Of course, you could hire your own gardener to take care of that, but he may only be needed one day a week in the summer and once a month in the winter. At the same time, you need office cleaners which you can also hire. You might need an electrician to fix something that has gone wrong and you can find them on Google. Likewise, a plumber.

Sourcing all of these roles individually is time consuming, and as a company grows the number and capacity needed grows too. It would be far quicker and more cost effecting to outsource everything to a company who can take care of all the services that you need so that you then don’t have to worry about it.

You don’t have to start looking on Google for an electrician to come and fix the heating on a cold February morning because you can just call your services provider who will come and attend to it. In fact, by using a facilities services provider it is far less likely won’t go wrong in the first place because they will continually monitor everything and take steps to see that your infrastructure runs smoothly. That, after all, is their job.