Contractors and Workers - How Work Orders are Assigned and Completed

This article describes assigning and completing work orders, trades and labor rates as related to Contractors and Workers in Facilitron Works.

Assigning Work Orders to Contractors/Workers

Workers

Workers on Facilitron Works are almost always employees of the property owner. To set up new Workers, please see Creating a User's Worker Profile. Work orders are assigned to Workers via the normal work flow set by the property owner during implementation. Assigning work orders may happen at any time during the lifecycle of a work order. Please see The Workflow of a Work Order for more information.

Contractors

Facilitron Works enables school districts and property owners to track all costs/hours associated with contracted work along with regular employee maintenance costs and efforts. On Works, Contractors are considered as outsourced businesses. Contractors may be added to the system so that recurring work orders can be assigned to them when district staff will not be performing the work. You may also assign a single work order to a business with a contractor profile in the system on the Receive Screen (please reach out to your account manager for more information if this isn’t visible). However, that contractor will not have access to the Facilitron Works system, but they will receive email notifications that a work order was assigned to them. The Contractor must have a worker profile in order to have access to the system. To set up a new contractor, go to Manage > People > Contractors > and click the "+ Add New" button. 

To bulk import contractors who will be assigned work orders, but will not have access to the Facilitron Works System, go to the vertical ellipses on the upper right hand side > Import Data > Import Contractors > Contractors Excel Spreadsheet Template and fill out each cell.

To bulk import contractors who will be assigned work orders and should have access to Facilitron Works, go to the vertical ellipses on the upper righthand side > Import Data > Import People > People Excel Spreadsheet Template. Fill in “TRUE” for Contractor and MaintenanceTech columns to ensure a contractor, user, and worker profile are created in the system for that business entity.

Contractor Types

When adding contractors to Works, each contractor should always have a type associated with them, i.e., roofer, pest abatement, Hazardous Materials etc. This is similar to a worker trade. Please see the section below.

To add a new contractor type, go to Manage > People > Contractor Types and click the blue "+ Add New" button. These can be automatically configured by filling out the "Type" name with the associated contractors on the "Contractor" import sheet, in bulk.

Worker Trades

Worker Trades are a specific categorization of a work order that categorizes the type of staff that will be doing the work. Trades can be used to create auto-assignments and share work orders. These are optional for site staff. Examples of trades would be "Carpentry", "Electrical", or "Outside Contractor".

Ensuring all your workers are assigned to a trade enables the work category automation on the Receive Screen to preselect the relevant trade and draw up a list of particular workers in that trade once the associated work category is selected.

Trades are typically configured during implementation, but can be added after implementation by the Order Administrator by going to  Manage > Website Configuration > Trades > click the blue "+ Add New" button > enter Trade Type, Effective Date and Published Hourly Wage. For more information, please see What are Work Categories, Trades, and Purposes? 

How Do I Auto-Assign Workers to Properties?

To assign a worker to a property, go to Manage > People > Associate Maintenance Worker to Property > click the blue "+ Add New" button.

Facilitron Works can automatically assign a worker during the Receive process. The Receive Screen requires only the work category to be selected. Based on the work category, the system will look up the trade listed for that work category, then will look up the "Associate Worker to Property" list to see who is responsible for the work category and trade at the designated property.

For example, if the property “Springfield Elementary” has a leaking faucet, the work category might be “plumbing repair”. The responsible trade is “plumber” so, if on the "Associate Worker to Property" list, the plumber for Springfield Elementary is Tom Jones, then the system based on the work category “plumbing repair” will automatically assign the Trade as “plumber” and the worker as Tom Jones.

If the Worker Is Grayed Out

If the worker is grayed out and it says "No Labor Rates" in the "Costs" section of the work order, that means that the worker's labor rates have not been configured.

To add labor rates for a worker, go to Manage > People > Worker Hourly Labor Rates to add rates for any worker profile already in the system.

Completing Work Orders for Contractors/Workers

To complete a work order on the Facilitron Works mobile application, please see Closing Work Orders on the Facilitron Works App.

To complete a work order on the Facilitron Works web application, update the status of the work order to “Closed (Pending Review)” or “Closed/Completed”, per the conditions set forth by the property owner after logging actions taken and hours worked.

To complete a work order as a third-party contractor without access to Works, please contact the Order Administrator of the property owner’s Facilitron Works account with hours worked, labor costs, and details of work performed so they may close the work order in the system.