Pickens Technical College’s Facilities Maintenance Technician Pathway: The Era of Smart Buildings
The Facilities Maintenance Technician pathway at Pickens Technical College gets you ready to perform all the duties of a trusted facility tech at almost any building. These skills include performing inspections, preventative maintenance, basic repairs, and more on both residential and commercial buildings.
There are two main career paths for facilities maintenance technicians that are loaded with opportunities, especially in Colorado, where both companies and individuals are investing more in the property. One path is working on residential buildings. Usually, technicians work with property management companies, working on rented spaces for people and ensuring that residents of various properties are safe and comfortable.
The other path is working on commercial properties. Many businesses need skilled technicians to manage their manufacturing spaces, which requires more technical expertise than other situations because businesses that produce products need highly regulated spaces.
Smart buildings are becoming more common in commercial spaces because they make work more efficient. Smart technology is nothing new, but now, many companies are seeing a competitive advantage to investing in this technology and hiring facilities maintenance technicians who can handle it.
Better Efficiency Than Ever
Here’s a scenario you might encounter: You’re working for a company that produces products that require extremely precise environmental conditions. The temperature of the massive warehouse can’t exceed 65 degrees. But there’s a record heatwave bearing down outside. If the warehouse temperature rises even one degree, that is, if the building is not made to cool itself by the right amount to counteract the baking heat outside, your company loses millions of dollars in product. You might be out of a job. What do you do?
Smart buildings have evolved from simply automatically turning off their lights at night to being able to monitor outside weather conditions like heat waves and automatically alert maintenance technicians long before a problem arises. Buildings can order themselves parts to make their cooling systems work better when they detect problems, and much more. This increased sophistication in smart building technology requires smart technicians who are accustomed to working with these systems.
Where Do You Fit In?
Facilities maintenance technicians are being given more responsibilities than ever to maintain optimal conditions because of smart technology. An expert who can operate this technology for private residents or commercial interests will be in high demand in the coming years, as this technology gets more sophisticated.
Industry experts respect the work of facilities maintenance technicians. A common axiom in building maintenance is that operators of these systems are already very smart, but the buildings they manage could always be smarter. As the technology races to catch up to the operators of structural systems, technicians will continue to be needed.
Technicians will become more important because, with smart technology improving, there will be more responsibility to go around. Technicians are already trying to manage several buildings at once, but with greater investment in smart technology, their ability to do more will increase, leading to better building maintenance and control for residential properties and commercial ones. Pickens Facilities Maintenance Technician pathway is a great place to start in a career like this.