What to Look For in Your Next Facility Engineer

by May 18, 2016Property Management4 comments

A facility engineer’s job description changes from one property or management company to the next. One may have several ongoing construction projects and it’s the engineer’s responsibility to draft plans and secure bids from suppliers. Another could utilize a team of engineers tasked with the preservation of several historic buildings. Some engineers may have years of experience while others are just getting started in the field.

Candidates will likely have widely varied work histories and skillsets that could be great assets to your organization. Regardless of a candidate’s experience, you should be looking for the following qualities in your next facility engineer.

Organized

Organization is an engineer’s key to success. They should be able to manage several projects as well as complete daily monitoring and routine procedures. It’s important that your next engineer has the ability to not only organize his or her work, but also prioritize to ensure safety and meet company goals.

Facility engineers need to be organized with how they approach their workload as well as how they keep track of their data. If an engineer is unable to effectively organize the information they collect in the field, that data can’t be analyzed to understand the state of your facilities. That’s a problem!

Here are some sample interview questions you can ask to get an idea of a candidate’s organization skills:

  • Have you ever managed a team? Can you describe your scheduling process? If you haven’t, how do you think you would?
  • Describe a situation where you have managed changing priorities.
  • Tell me about your process for collecting and presenting facility reports to management.
Communicative

Facility engineers have to communicate with other team members every day, as well as representing the Facilities department at meetings, and project updates. Communicating effectively is a great skill that your next facility engineer must have.

Here are sample interview questions to gauge a candidate’s communication skills:

  • Tell me about a time you had to present complex information in a simplified manner.
  • How do you develop a rapport with co-workers?

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Detailed

A sister skill to organization – A facility engineer must collect detailed information from their walkthroughs and inspections. Thoroughly collected data is one of your most valuable resources. A small crack in a heat exchanger could get dangerous, allowing carbon monoxide inside a building. Regular detailed information can identify issues like these before they become serious.

Here are sample interview questions to gauge a candidate’s attention to detail:

  • How would you handle <scenario>? (For this question, pay attention to how detailed of an answer they give)
  • Give me an example of how you’re detail-oriented in your work.
  • What frustrates you about other people’s work?
Willingness to Learn

Of course, if you are hiring a senior engineer, you will want to look for a candidate that already has several years of experience and some credentials in the facilities management field, and membership in a professional association like IFMA. But if you’re looking for entry-level or intermediate candidates, what may be more important to look for is their interest and willingness to become experts in their job.

Here are sample interview questions to gauge a candidate’s willingness to learn:

  • We use a tool called X (i.e., LogCheck). If you haven’t used it before, would you be willing to take a week training course?
  • Tell me about a time you had to learn a new process or tool to do your job.
  • What would you like to learn from this job?

Once you bring a new hire on board, the next thing you need to do is train them. Want to see how LogCheck can be a powerful training tool? Request your free trial on this page and mention this blog post and our team will show you how it works.

Header image “Help wanted sign” used via Create Commons License from andjohan.

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4 Comments

  1. John

    I think this is real good for many facilities/buildings that have maintenance personnel.
    I had to create my own check list to ensure the Preventative Maintenance and other inspections are done.
    That is why I have been working as a Facility Maintenance for the company I have been working for.
    Have been working for my company for over 17 years and the company before this company 9 years.
    Preventative Maintenance is the key to a safe and healthy building.
    I work for a ‘same day surgery company’.

    Reply
  2. Stephen Elias

    Great info. Thanks

    Reply
  3. Scott

    I like that you point out that it is important to hire an engineer that is organized and monitor the progress of the project while ensuring proper safety. I can see why this would be really important in order to keep things progressing. It seems like it would be a good idea to ask about the experience they have had and what they did in order to meet all the safety requirements and how they showed their organizational skills.

    Reply
  4. JB

    Facility engineer should have an excellent leadership and organizational skills to keep the management workflow efficiently in all areas and aspect.

    Reply

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