FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
Expansive FM has landed a new CAFM partnership with childcare provider, Busy Bees.
Busy Bees is the largest early-years childcare provider in the UK, with more than 360 nurseries providing care for tens of thousands of children. Founded in 1983, Busy Bees has grown significantly over the years, not only within the UK but also expanding internationally with locations in Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, and beyond.
Creating safe, welcoming and comfortable environments where children and their carers can thrive is a top priority, but for companies like Busy Bees, which has a huge real estate stretching from Aberdeen to Jersey, plus a large network of contractors to work with, managing repairs and maintenance in a timely and cost-effective way can be hard.
Until now, Busy Bees’s work order management was a manual process, with a legacy help desk taking hundreds of calls daily. The team were struggling to handle the volume of requests and track completion of tasks. Much of their time was spent with follow-up enquiries from nurseries, who were checking up on the status of their requests.
The team at Busy Bees wanted to move to a CAFM system that could digitise and automate their help desk. Above all, they needed access to the budgetary and operational data that could be used to optimise the way they work.
Following a formal tender process Expansive FM was appointed as Busy Bees CAFM provider.
Mark Kirkby, Head of Construction & Facilities at Busy Bees Nurseries, commented: “After evaluating several options, Expansive FM stood out for its simplicity, intuitive user experience, and, most importantly, its strategic fit with our long-term vision. It’s not just streamlining our helpdesk; it’s giving us all the budgetary and operational data we need to optimise our spend, efficiency, and the quality of our delivery.”
Nurseries will be able to raise work requests on the app and track completion of their tasks in real-time. Contractors will access their portal to give quotes, ask questions, and log time and attendance, but the real game changer will be access to data.
Kirkby added: This level of visibility and control is going to reduce the volume of calls to the help desk. Automation will save us time and money while speeding up the way we work.
“This system will give us real-time financial and strategic insights, enabling us to make informed decisions quickly. It’ll change how we manage contractors and plan budgets and Capex.
“The bespoke reporting dashboards will deliver our data in ways that we can share with all our teams, helping us all optimise performance together.”
The partnership holds the promise of global expansion, with Busy Bees able to roll out Expansive FM’s solutions to its international operations, thanks to the system’s ability to handle multiple currencies and languages.
Josh Greibach, co-founder and CEO of Expansive FM said: “It’s been a great pleasure working with the amazing team at Busy Bees. This partnership underscores our commitment to delivering cutting-edge facility management solutions that meet the unique needs of our clients. We’re all about driving efficiency and fostering strategic growth.”
As environmental protection demands unified action, transparency, and heightened awareness, Biological Preparations has launched an initiative to catalyse sustainability efforts within the FM sector.
FM businesses face unique challenges and heightened expectations of eco-initiatives from their clients. Yet, behind the scenes in FM businesses, many environmental initiatives, rollouts and even planning, are not broadcasted and transparent.
Have your say: Sustainability Trends in FM
The UK biotech company’s five-minute, anonymous FM-focused survey, offers FM professionals of all hierarchies with a platform to voice their perspectives and share their experiences. The results from this survey will then be analysed and presented as an industry-specific report, which aims to guide FM businesses helping them benchmark trends, gain clarity on industry challenges, and map out goals and metrics towards sustainability.
To share your experiences, please click here.
