Flooring Focus for World Facilities Management Day

The theme for this year’s World Facilities Management Day is ‘Building Resilience for the Future’ and is aimed at encouraging the FM world to debate critical issues such as business continuity, sustainability and energy management.

These are all key themes for Flowcrete India, which works alongside facilities managers to provide them with the advice and materials required to create high-performance, long lasting floors that actively benefit the working environment.

The resin flooring specialists have produced a wealth of literature to advise facilities managers when going through the specification stages. For example, the eBook Taking the Headache out of Flooring Specification for Facilities Managers provides key information on how fast-cure, methyl methacrylate enhanced resin floors can be used to rapidly create a seamless, robust and visually appealing floor finish.

Alongside being able to provide information on flooring materials and applications, one of the main ways that Flowcrete India works with facilities managers is to help them conduct an in-depth life cycle analysis of the flooring options.

This process will identify both the initial, as well as lifetime costs of the floor. Often this analysis shows that choosing a cheaper floor won’t provide as many advantages to the daily operational activity as a superior alternative and can in fact end up costing the site more in maintenance, repairs and refurbishments.

Installing an inadequate finish that subsequently fails can have a seriously detrimental effect on a business’ continuity and in sensitive working environments, such as the food and beverage sector, can even put the company and its consumers at risk – as a failing floor can become a site of bacterial contamination, which in this industry can infiltrate produce and in the worst case scenario lead to fatal foodborne illnesses.

To avoid this scenario the floor needs to be able to withstand the future use of the site for an extended period of time. In industrial facilities this can include being faced with heavy impacts, forklift truck movement, exposure to corrosive chemicals, slippery surfaces and hot water washes.

Commercial facilities may not have to undergo such intense conditions, but here the floor plays an important role in the interior design and customer experience. Should the floor fail due to the heavy and continuous foot traffic, regular cleaning regime or food and drink spillages then it can become a unsightly health hazard that turns away visitors and spoils the site’s aesthetic impact.

Justifying an investment in the floor early on will avoid the danger of settling for a sub-standard system and will instead inform a final choice which will help to build long-term resilience into both the structure and the business.   

As one of the largest surfaces in the building, the flooring system can also be an important factor in a site’s sustainability credentials. Flowcrete India has developed a variety of floors with little or no toxic substances to reduce the amount of environmentally harmful material used by the construction industry. The longevity of resin floors and the fact that systems such as Flowfast often don’t require the existing substrate to be taken up also reduces the waste associated with flooring projects.