One platform for facilities operations and campus asset tracking
A public research university replaced disconnected emails, spreadsheets, and a legacy maintenance system with a single Airtable solution covering equipment inventories, maintenance ticketing, keycard access, and janitorial coordination across dozens of buildings.
The problem
Facilities operations at a large public research university had grown too complex for email and spreadsheets. Equipment inventories lived in silos, maintenance requests arrived via untrackable email threads, and keycard access changes required manual coordination that could take days during staff offboardings.
Vendor communication with an external facilities management contractor was fragmented, billing disputes arose because there was no photo record of completed work, and schedule data locked in thousands of photos required a full day of manual transcription just to get into usable form. There was no single place for Facilities Services, Engineering, and third-party contractors to see the same information.
What they built
The university built a multi-table Airtable solution that gave Facilities Services, Engineering, and external contractors a shared operational hub. Equipment and asset inventories, room and building master records, electrical panel data, and machine-hour logs all feed a single source of truth. Maintenance tickets route directly to the appropriate contractor or internal team, with photo attachments that document work and resolve billing questions before they become disputes.
Keycard access provisioning and termination were automated so that offboarding triggers deactivation without manual follow-up. Janitorial coordination shifted from verbal and email instructions to structured records with photo evidence of deficiencies. Non-routine service billing calculations now run inside the same system, replacing manual receipt reconciliation and giving both the university and its contractor a shared audit trail. A proposed integration with the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) will extend this data further.
The outcome
With all nine workflow types deployed, the Facilities team eliminated the untrackable email requests that had previously been the default mode of communication. Dozens of hours of weekly staff time are recovered, and the day-long data entry task tied to schedule table photos has been replaced by structured digital records.
External contractors now log into role-specific views, giving them real-time visibility without requiring back-and-forth communication for every status update. Photo documentation of custodial deficiencies and completed work has reduced billing disputes, and automated keycard deactivation means offboarding no longer creates access control gaps. The solution scales across all campus buildings without adding administrative overhead.
Inside the solution
Facilities operations and asset tracking
Rapid App Development Solution
Facilities & Workplace
- Equipment and asset inventory management
- Maintenance ticket tracking with contractors
- Keycard access provisioning and termination automation
- Janitorial service coordination with photos
- Room and building master data
- Electrical panel and infrastructure tracking
- Custodial deficiency tracking with photos
- Machine-hour logging
- Non-routine service billing calculations
- Manual data entry from thousands of schedule table photos taking a full day
- Disconnected vendor communication via untrackable email
- Slow access control updates during staff terminations
- Lack of visibility into equipment refresh cycles
- Scattered facilities data across multiple systems
- Billing disputes with vendors due to missing documentation
- Manual receipt reconciliation
- No shared view for external contractors
- Automated keycard deactivation during offboarding
- Photo documentation eliminates billing disputes with contractors
- Eliminated day-long manual transcription from schedule images
- Real-time equipment and maintenance visibility for all teams
- Scalable infrastructure tracking across all campus buildings
- Dozens of staff hours saved per week
- Shared contractor views reduce status inquiry emails to zero
- Non-routine billing calculated inside the same system
- Facilities Services
- Engineering
- Third-party contractors
- Contractor portals
- Computerized maintenance management system
Facilities operations and asset tracking
Run equipment and asset inventories, maintenance ticketing, keycard access, and janitorial coordination for a whole multi-building campus in one place, with room and building master data, electrical panel records, machine-hour logs, and non-routine billing calculated on the same records. Automations open follow-up work orders from custodial deficiencies, deactivate keycards the moment offboarding starts, and email a weekly digest, while AI fields draft work order briefs, triage incoming requests, and write deficiency notices from the photo-documented record.
How the workflow runs
Assets and spaces go into a single source of truth
Maintenance tickets route to the right team automatically
Keycard access changes trigger automated deactivation
Contractors get role-specific views without extra meetings
Non-routine billing is calculated inside the same system
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
No. All workflows in this solution manage institutional and operational data: equipment inventories, building records, maintenance tickets, keycard access logs, and contractor billing. No student records, youth data, or personally identifiable information about individuals in any academic program is captured or processed.
When a staff member's status changes in the system, a keycard deactivation is triggered automatically. This removes the need for a manual email chain and ensures access control updates happen in the same operational step as the offboarding action.
Yes. Airtable's role-based views let contractors see only the records relevant to their assigned work: open tickets, photo documentation requirements, and service history. Internal asset records, billing calculations, and other sensitive fields remain restricted.
Custodial deficiency reports and completed work orders both include photo attachments logged at the time of service. When a billing question arises, both the university and the contractor can reference the same timestamped photo record, which resolves most disputes before an invoice is contested.
A proposed integration links Airtable to the university's computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) via API. In the current deployed state, Airtable serves as the operational hub; the CMMS integration will extend data to cover additional reporting requirements when fully connected.