Ground and facility management

What is a facility management plan?

A Facility Management Plan is a formal planning tool used by your club to manage the current and future operations of your club facilities.

This plan is put together to ensure efficiency of operations is increased, save money over the life of your facility and even extend the overall lifespan of your facility. This management plan should be a written document, agreed upon by the committee, which includes:

• The aims and objectives, or what you are trying to achieve, from your club facilities
• The agreed strategies, or how you will achieve, these outcomes
• Evaluation methods, or how you will know you are meeting these objectives

Basically, a good management plan will allow anyone in your club to be able to identify what facilities your club is responsible for, how often and how they need to be maintained, repaired or replaced, and who is responsible for the service delivery.

A good facility management plan will also consider how to maximise the use of your facility within the community in a safe and cost effective manner. This will generally require your club to consider three important elements:

Access and opportunities – accessibility through pedestrian, parking or transport, bookings and key access for inside and outside club users, safety and security in terms of lighting, hours of operation and fees and pricing.

Quality, safety and sustainability – planning, budgeting, audits, inspections, cleaning, repairs, maintenance registers and infrastructure upgrades. Legislative requirements, leasing & licensing requirements and public liability.

Multiple use or sharing – multiple users or sharing potential for increase in community ownership, additional source of funding and increased potential for grant funding, rights and responsibilities for user agreements.