Facility Maintenance: Key Goals, Examples & Job Roles

Facility maintenance keeps every square foot working as it should — lighting steady, air flowing and people safe. We see this daily across hospitals, schools, warehouses and multi-site operations where even a small failure can ripple across an entire building.

But before you decide how it fits your operation, it helps to define what “facility” really means. A facility is any commercial space built for function — think hospitals, schools, offices, gyms or hotels. These aren’t homes or condos; that’s property maintenance territory. Facility maintenance covers everything that keeps these business environments operational, from HVAC checks and fire safety systems to custodial schedules and repair response.

In this guide, you’ll see how facility maintenance supports your daily operations, the goals it drives and what happens when it’s neglected. We’ll also walk through its benefits, potential downsides and examples of the job roles involved — so you can map exactly where your building stands and what improvements make the biggest difference.

What Is Facility Maintenance?

Facility maintenance ensures that all areas, assets and structures within or around a facility are operating as optimally as possible for maximum efficiency and safety. A facility maintenance task can be reactive and unplanned or preventive and scheduled. Tasks range from painting a building to cleaning or replacing HVAC filters to maintain efficiency. Put simply: Any upkeep that affects how a facility looks, works or performs qualifies as facility maintenance.

Facility maintenance workers maintain rooms, hallways, landscaping and systems, including security, HVAC, plumbing, lighting and machinery. They also tackle structural upkeep — like painting and general repair of the building’s interior and exterior. Without regular maintenance, facility condition and assets degrade and break down unexpectedly.

In practice, facility maintenance is often invisible when it’s done right — and painfully obvious when it’s not. Deferred inspections, missed repairs or undocumented work orders tend to surface later as safety issues, tenant complaints or costly emergency fixes.

Key Difference Between Facility Maintenance & Facility Management

It may seem like facility maintenance and facility management are the same — but they’re distinctly different. Mostly, facility management encompasses facility maintenance. A facility manager handles everything — from maintenance and team oversight to workspace layout, inventory moves and overall building operations. They also handle daily building operations to ensure it remains well-maintained, safe and efficient.

As part of facilities management, facility maintenance zeroes in on inspecting and maintaining assets, utilities and the building itself. Facility managers apply maintenance strategically through planning, daily operations oversight, building walkthroughs and equipment audits.

A few examples of facility management include:

• Writing and managing contracts to manage outside vendors for landscaping, security and cleaning
• Looking at ways to reduce the energy use of a facility, such as replacing older lighting with LEDs or reducing the hours an HVAC system runs
• Managing budgets for the whole facility that can include maintenance, vendors, energy efficiency, personnel and maintenance management software solutions
• Ensuring that the facility is compliant with health and safety regulations
• Managing a team across different divisions
• Choosing a facility maintenance management software and training the team to use it
• Overseeing asset management and work order management via a maintenance management software or, more specifically, a facility maintenance software

Contrarily, examples of facility maintenance may cover:

• Monthly lubrication of all moving parts in a HVAC unit
• Changing light bulbs
• Regular deep cleaning of a building’s carpet
• Replacing a valve in the plumbing system
• Regular inspections of lighting systems

In real operations, the line between maintenance and management often blurs — especially in smaller teams — which is why clear ownership, documented workflows and shared systems matter.

Benefits of Facility Maintenance

There are several potential benefits of implementing different types of facility maintenance work in a commercial environment. Across the facility teams we work with, these benefits tend to compound over time — not overnight — as maintenance shifts from reactive fixes to planned systems. Some benefits may include:

• Tenant satisfaction: When day-to-day operations are smooth, tenants are happier — and that improves business continuity and performance.
• Increases lifespan of your facility’s assets: By scheduling regular maintenance and inspections, you improve efficiency and extend asset lifespan and performance.
• Cost-effective workplace environment: Facility maintenance ensures spaces have exactly what they need — no more, no less — streamlining ordering and reducing costs.
• Ability to focus on other priorities: When you have a facility maintenance plan, managers can turn their attention to boosting employee engagement, investing in tech or scaling the business.
• Improved efficiency: Proper facility maintenance motivates employees, improves daily operations and ensures that all equipment and technology function as they should.

Challenges of Facility Maintenance

While the disadvantages of facility maintenance are relatively few, here are some potential challenges worth considering:

• Costly for smaller organizations: For smaller businesses, the maintenance cost of a facility manager or technician may not be justifiable.
• Potential breach of security and confidentiality: Facility managers typically get involved in multiple corners of a space to ensure it is optimized for those who live or work there. With this comes the possibility of security or confidentiality issues, though a confidentiality agreement will mitigate such a risk.
• Potential loss of control (for property managers): Since property managers have different responsibilities overseeing other areas of a building or business, they should be prepared to relinquish the relevant responsibilities to any facility manager they hire. Like any partnership, this may result in future conflict if the property manager’s vision clashes with that of the facility manager.

Note that many of these challenges surface when facility maintenance grows faster than the systems supporting it — especially as buildings, assets or locations scale.

Buildings That Require Facility Maintenance

Large, high-functionality commercial spaces benefit most from a facility maintenance program. These include:

• Large commercial buildings: Offices require functional equipment and smooth operations to run as efficiently as possible. Any piece of equipment that needs scheduled or routine maintenance falls within the realm of facility maintenance. Ensuring that essential machinery is fully functional provides a more comfortable and productive work environment for personnel.
• Hospitals: Due to the numerous operations that a hospital environment provides each day — not to mention its sheer size — facility maintenance is extremely beneficial for ensuring a hospital building remains compliant with OSHA’s sanitation and safety guidelines. Healthcare operators we work with rely heavily on preventive and compliance-driven maintenance, where documentation matters as much as execution.
• Universities: Like hospitals, universities and public school systems are large in scale. Facility maintenance is crucial for keeping faculty, staff and students comfortable and safe. But since universities often manage hundreds of assets across dispersed buildings, consistency and visibility become core challenges. Key areas of focus might include pest control, organization and replacement of classroom furniture and equipment, or upgrading HVAC systems.
• Warehouses: Warehouses and distribution centers contain many large pieces of equipment such as forklifts, conveyors, pallet jacks and more that are all handled in-house. With so much equipment, facility maintenance is crucial to keep these assets up and running and minimize downtime to ensure that the warehouse is able to streamline fulfillment.

Job Roles in Facility Maintenance

Several maintenance job roles fall under the facilities umbrella. We’ve already touched briefly on a few of them, but we’ll explore the distinct responsibilities of each below.

Since facility maintenance is somewhat broad and technically covers the duties of several roles, the field is further broken down into different areas to be managed separately. Three positions that make up facility maintenance teams include: facility manager, property manager and maintenance technician. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Facility Manager

A facility manager works to ensure that processes within a building or organization work efficiently and that personnel or tenants are comfortable. Technically, the position covers multiple disciplines to improve aspects of office or residential life in the areas of functionality and safety. Some niches that facility management works within include employee engagement, health and well-being, and sustainability. We often see facility managers act as the connective tissue between operations, maintenance teams and leadership — especially when priorities compete. This position benefits most from using a facility management software.

Responsibilities: Planning and coordinating work orders for installations and refurbishments; managing and evaluating equipment to meet health and safety standards; forecasting the facility’s future needs; supervising teams across business divisions to ensure a harmonious work environment.

Salary range: Approximately $77,000 a year, according to Payscale.

Note: Here are some facilities manager interview questions to help with the job search.

Property Manager

A property manager is responsible for ensuring the safety and functionality of a property’s infrastructure(s). Differing from a facility manager’s focus, a property manager is charged with overseeing the building rather than the building’s internal operations (pertaining to people and processes). He or she manages the building and acts as a liaison between the tenant(s) and the landlord.

Responsibilities: Ensuring building capacity accommodates the number of people who live or work on the premises; enforces rentals (if applicable) and manages the building’s budget; interviewing tenants and running credit checks.

Salary range: Approximately $72,000 a year, according to Glassdoor.

Maintenance Technician

A maintenance technician works closely with the facility manager in performing corrective maintenance on equipment defects and performing emergency repairs when mechanical or electrical system problems arise within a building. A maintenance technician’s services can extend from changing a light bulb to calibrating machinery and can also include other maintenance activities that target repairs or part replacement in an effort to avoid equipment downtime. Technicians are usually the first to notice recurring issues, which is why capturing their work consistently is critical for long-term improvement.

Responsibilities: Resolving issues with machinery or infrastructure; assisting with installation of new equipment; equipment calibration; taking preventive maintenance steps to prevent equipment failures and disruptions; maintaining logs of equipment history and breakdowns; conducting building walkthroughs. A facility maintenance software can benefit a maintenance tech by helping with work order automations on capital assets as well as using IoT sensors and real-time tracking to accommodate predictive maintenance strategies.

Salary range: Approximately $68,000 a year, according to Glassdoor.

Note: Here are some maintenance technician interview questions to help with the job search.

Certifications for Facility Professionals

It’s generally not required for facility professionals to have a college degree. But those who earned a bachelor’s degree and have gone on to work in facility management typically majored in business, engineering, facility management or information management. While certifications aren’t always required, they’re often another signal of operational maturity — especially in regulated or high-risk environments.

If you’re interested in applying for a facility maintenance position, there are also several maintenance training programs and certifications you can earn to help your career. The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) recognizes two types of certifications: the Facility Management Professional certification and the Certified Facility Managers credential.

Here’s some more information for you to consider:

Facility Management Professional (FMP) Certificate Program

The Facility Management Professional Certificate Program, supplied by IFMA, is a strong option for those who have little to no prior training or knowledge about facility maintenance. You don’t need any prerequisites to sign up, and costs vary based on background.

Certified Facility Manager (CFM) Credential

The Certified Facility Manager credential is among the most prestigious certification programs available. According to the IFMA website, it’s “the industry standard in facility maintenance certification.” This credential entails applying for and taking an exam to test your expertise in 11 core competencies of facility maintenance. Cost starts at $550 for IFMA members or $815 for non-members.

Facilities Management Certificate (FMC)

The Facilities Management Certificate is a training program that provides insider knowledge about running a facility efficiently. Courses include Fundamentals of Facilities Management as well as Design, Operation and Maintenance of Building Systems Parts 1 & 2. This flexible, self-paced program is priced at just $225. While this certification provides a budget-friendly option for improving your facility maintenance expertise, bear in mind that its provider (BOMI) does not carry the same prestige as credentials from IFMA.

Depending on what you’re hoping to accomplish with your certification or credential and how important cost is to you, these are just a few possible options to get you started on your journey toward becoming a facility maintenance professional.

HVAC Certification

HVAC certifications vary by state, and some states require technicians to become licensed by passing exams. The best way to figure out what certifications and licenses you need is to search “[your state] + HVAC license regulations” on Google or click your state on this map.

Bottom Line: Facility Maintenance Requires Consistency

Across every facility we see, the most effective maintenance programs aren’t defined by tools or titles — they’re defined by consistency. Clear priorities, documented work and shared visibility matter more than the size of the team.

This article was originally published in January 2021. The most recent update was in February 2026.