The Only Template Project You Need to Return to Office Work

Office return template (1)

Template projects have proven to be extremely useful for Fieldwire users juggling multiple projects, especially those coming out of lockdown and back to office work.

If you think you'll be creating similar projects frequently as you return to work, we suggest creating a template project that’s set up with the correct categories, people, checklists, folders, and settings to save you time.

For the purpose of this blog post, we’ll show you how to create an “Office Building Collaboration” project template using Fieldwire. This will be particularly useful for owners and operators who need to ensure their buildings are safe as people return to work.

Simply follow these 7 steps:

1. Create a Fieldwire project called “Office Building Collaboration.”

2. Invite the building maintenance, building owners, and office personnel to the Fieldwire project. Why?

To foster a transparent environment where everyone has visibility to COVID revised floor plans and future office modifications or improvements
To have one place to easily plan, manage, and prove building recommissioning and maintenance work
To empower office workers with information; ensuring they have access to the latest COVID social distancing and sanitization protocols
To create an inclusive environment where all voices are equally heard
To make everyone feel a part of the new, collaborative return to work ecosystem

3. Create standard categories to organize your virtual collaboration activities, for example:

Current Facility Requirements (CFRs)
Building Owners
Building Recommissioning
Building Engineers
Building Management
Building Inspections
Janitorial Maintenance
Building Operations and Maintenance
Information Technology
Commissioning
COVID Safety
COVID Task Force
Workplace Equity and Inclusion
Team Happy Hour
All-Hands Meeting
HVAC
Plumbing
Painting
Millwork
Architecture
Electrical
Mechanical
Security
BAS and Building Controls
Fire Suppression
Elevators

4. Create standard checklists to add structure to your collaboration and keep projects on track. Best practice is to develop your commissioning strategy checklists based on ASHRAE's strategic guide to commissioning. Work with your building operations and maintenance staff to develop great maintenance and operations checklists.

Here are some example checklists for your “Office Building Collaboration:”

Steps to update your Current Facility Requirements
Building Commissioning guidelines and procedures
Operations and maintenance procedures (example: HVAC inspections, testing, etc)
COVID safety guidelines
Onboarding items for new employees

5. Upload the office building construction drawings and office layout plans, and come up with a consistent folder structure and drawing naming convention, such as:

01_Indices
02_Architectural
03_Structural
04_Mechanical
05_Electrical
06_Floor Plan

By empowering your building owners, maintenance, engineering, and office workers with access to the floor plans and drawings, you create a powerful ecosystem of office facility collaboration.

This provides a framework to attach tasks, photos, or any document directly to a specific location on the plan (i.e., conference room, cubicle, or IT room). For example, if a worker sees something not following COVID principles, they can drop a pin on the location, snap a photo, and trigger for the issue to be resolved. Watch this tutorial on how to create tasks!

6. Upload important facility documents to the files tab, organized based on folder type. Examples of file folder types include:

Current Facility Requirements (CFRs)
COVID Safety Agreements
New Employee COVID Safety Protocols
Facility Specifications
Facility Submittals
Operations and Maintenance Manuals
Material Safety Data Sheets
Building Information (Occupants, security, etc)
Building Sustainability and Energy
LEED Certifications Documentation
Site Instructions
Requests for Information
Change Orders
Reports

7. Build out custom form templates to track compliance, store information, and collect signatures. For example:

Recommissioning Form
Maintenance Work Order Form. See one in action with this video
COVID Equipment Order Form
COVID Safety Inspection Compliance

Now that you have your template project set up and standardized on Fieldwire, you have a strong foundation to coordinate the four things that need to happen before your team can fully return to the office. For more information, check out this blog post.