A large commercial building or physical plant is called a facility and facilities maintenance essentially involves the same tasks as managing different kinds of properties. But the term is used only in the context of commercial buildings and it involves complex activities. Maintaining a facility involves performance of hard services and soft services. The hard services include ensuring the proper functioning of the components of the building like any electrical circuitry, the air conditioner etc. Soft services include keeping the premises of the building clean and also ensuring that the staff employed in carrying out the maintenance task is carrying out their tasks properly. There are many firms undertaking the maintenance responsibilities of facilities.

Facilities Maintenance involves a lot of operations that can be classified into a number of categories. They provide engineering services and set right any electro mechanical defects in equipments. They ensure that the water supplied to the facility is used judiciously and the waste products produced are disposed of in a hygienic and eco friendly manner. They see to it that the building premises are not infested with pests and disease producing organisms. These companies also recruit appropriate manpower to perform the maintenance tasks efficiently.

The services offered by the management companies can be taken in single capacity or as an integrated whole of a number of services. The companies offer facilities maintenance services in modules namely, soft service module, hard service module, hospitality services module and the staffing solutions module. The soft services module includes housekeeping, maintenance of external premises including lawns and gardens, providing security services and manpower, keeping the premises hygienic by controlling pests and disease producing germs, taking care that any of the valuable property and maintenance resources are used judiciously and any wastage is disposed of efficiently. The soft services also include providing vendor management and mail room services.

The hard services include setting any mechanical and electrical equipment right. Providing specialized services and ensuring efficient management of water and plumbing services. Hard services of facilities maintenance also include managing the judicious usage of electrical energy by the building personnel and ensuring that the entire electrical circuitry of the building is safe. The staffing solutions provided by many companies include generating support services and providing support and solutions in the administration of the property office. It also includes dealing with the enquiries of the users of the property and providing assistance to them wherever and whenever required. Staffing solutions also includes providing efficient warehouse and dispatch management services. Last of all hospitality services offered by the facilities include maintaining the guest houses and providing impeccable catering services to the guests.

These days there are sophisticated computer software to aid facilities maintenance. Nowadays there is specialized software available, that provide reliable aid in monitoring and supervising the different devices. There are control and regulatory systems that sense, actuate and control the different components of a building by interconnecting them in an electronic network. The manager can store vital maintenance information in a computer database. The software can be used to make sophisticated calculations regarding the maintenance costs etc. Computer graphics can be used to form a layout of the complicated structure of the building and also its electromechanical layout so that in the case of emergency the facility manager does not have difficulty in locating the place where the fault occurred. The software can also be used to predict any probable damages to any part of the building.