What Are Work Categories, Trades and Purposes?

This article outlines Work Categories, Trades and Purposes and how Facilitron Works administrators can use them.

Below is an image of the Order Administrator and Order Processor’s Receive screen with Work Category, Trade, and Purpose circled.

Work Categories

A Work Category is a grouping of work, such as General Maintenance, Electrical or Graffiti. The system is designed to use the Work Category to determine what sort of work is being performed. This is similar to how a dental office will code certain procedures for insurance purposes. 

Work Categories also indicate staffing needs. A category implies to M&O how long the work being performed will take. Front office staff at each site are strongly encouraged to select the Work Category when creating Work Orders, which drives the automation that populates the Trades on Works. The Trades will then drive the configured selection of Workers in this Work Category based on their assigned trade or profile setting. Work Categories can also help M&O to analyze workload and backlog.

Trades

Trades are a specific classification 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.

Since Work Categories are tied directly to Trades, they provide the method for classifying work activity done by the various trade staff. Work Categories have a baseline number of hours to complete the task, and the backlog is simply the sum of those hours. 

For example, if the electricians are always replacing bad ballasts and the work category "Ballast Humming" always has 8 hours of backlog, then that means you have one full-time person’s worth of backlog for that particular work category (Ballast Humming), whose trade is Electrician.  So, if you can hire a new worker, then that simple metric highlights you are short one electrician. This information can be used in your hiring process since replacing bad ballasts is common for this role in the district -  you could ask the prospective worker about their experience with replacing bad ballasts if that is a common task for their role. 

To identify backlogs and conduct comparative analysis, you can pull the Work Order Backlog report. To do this, go to Reports > Workload Analysis > Work Order Backlog. This identifies the specific type of work orders that staff are unable to keep current. Combining this report with Worker Time On Task ensures that hours are being recorded, thus ensuring your backlogs and comparative analysis are accurate. 

Purposes

Purposes are the most general categorization of a Work Order. They are primarily used to route Work Orders to the correct department and, thus, drive the filtering of the Receive Screen for Worker assignment. These are optional for site staff. Examples of Purposes include: Grounds, HVAC Request, Facility Use Support, Vandalism, etc.