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Jeff Benjamin, CEOFacilitron’s CEO Jeff Benjamin, father of three active kids, was all too familiar with these activities regularly volunteering to carpool his kids and others to practices and events. But one too many times his group arrived to find another team already practicing and no other fields available. With no one to call, the situation lead Jeff to wonder how public facilities were managed when community organizations came calling. The surprising answer in almost every case was pen and paper. “Not only is the request process pen and paper, but the whole interaction was by almost any measure a nightmare for both the renters and facility owners,” said Benjamin. And Facilitron was born.
Now just four years later, Facilitron has partnered with thousands of schools across the country to help them manage their facility use—both community requests and internal use schedules. The rapid growth is not simply the embrace of a Silicon Valley-style transformational product, but also the result of a unique business model—software, setup, and support at no cost.
Instead of software licensing fees, Facilitron adds nominal service fees to community requests which allows them to support every partner and request with dedicated account managers and 24-hour customer support. “Our business model creates a relationship that’s more like a partnership; we invest in the school district and we support every transaction the whole way,” Benjamin continued. The process begins with Facilitron’s Implementation Team kicking off the partnership by creating a digital catalog of all district facilities including not just athletic facilities, but also the classrooms, cafeterias and auditoriums used by a variety of community groups ranging from churches to educational organizations. The pictures, descriptions, pricing, insurance and more are used to create an online marketplace where the community comes to search and view availability and to make requests to use community facilities – resulting in a better customer experience and reducing the number of inquiries school administrators receive.
Our emphasis is not on just making the data accessible, but to help districts understand the data
Streamlining the facility use request and approval process saves facility administrators valuable time, but Facilitron’s platform is more than a request and scheduling tool. The data it collects is transforming the way schools and cities approach managing their assets, helping them make decisions on utilization, maintenance and the effectiveness of their current policies. “Our emphasis is not on just making the data accessible, but to help districts understand the data. We provide a variety of KPIs that districts can use to start understanding not only what data they need to track but also to comprehend how the application of that data can help them drive change,” explains Benjamin.
In the future, Facilitron is intent on developing more data tools to allow schools to better manage and leverage their assets from more of a business services approach. Without it, public schools, continually asked to do more with less, will continue to struggle to balance the facility use required for school programs and the expectations of access from the community.
Company
Facilitron
Management
Jeff Benjamin, CEO
Description
FACILITRON is a public space marketplace and provider of facility management and data solutions for public schools and colleges. Through a unique partnership strategy that provides software, setup and support at no cost, Facilitron helps districts create, develop and manage facility use programs that maximize utilization and recovery costs and enable a completely new approach to data-driven facility management. Headquartered in Los Gatos, CA, A Facilitron partnership includes ongoing analysis and business insights that enable districts to create policies that have a major impact on the health and performance of schools. All while allowing for an overlap of resources that benefits both education and the community
LOS GATOS - Facilitron, the world's largest public spaces marketplace and a leading provider of facility management systems, is pleased to partner with Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) and more than 10,000 schools across 31 U.S. states to provide innovative facility use management solutions that will help K-12 public schools and colleges implement more efficient and cost-effective ways of sharing their buildings and grounds while enhancing their communities.
As the country's sixth largest school district, serving more than 250,000 students in its 356 campuses, BCPS recognizes the benefits of Facilitron's unique approach to facility management which addresses the challenges and costs of maintaining and operating its facilities. With growing community demands for space rental and school safety as its top concern, BCPS sees the need for a more comprehensive facility management system which allows them to showcase and share their spaces with the community while ensuring security for all of their campuses. Facilitron is working with BCPS to achieve this balance, implementing enhanced systems for facility reservation and scheduling, security staffing and facility maintenance as well as attendee management.
Like BCPS, school districts of all sizes across the country are also seeking ways to alleviate budget constraints as well as additional workload stress on administrators tasked with managing their facility rental programs. "Historically, pen and paper management of these rental programs has been tedious and inconsistent, with the increased costs associated with facility upkeep, security and staffing taking away from the funding that the schools desperately need for their own programs," says Facilitron CEO Jeff Benjamin. "We're utilizing our technology to transform the way public and private space operators manage and monetize their buildings, and we're helping foster meaningful change, driving revenue which can go directly back to the classrooms."
Like an Airbnb, but for public spaces, Facilitron partners with public schools, colleges, cities and private facility owners to provide meeting rooms, fields, theaters, gyms and more to individuals and community groups seeking event space. BCPS significantly contributes to Facilitron's position as the world's largest public spaces rental marketplace. With hundreds of gyms, fields, cafeterias, and parking lots, along with over 70 auditoriums and 16,000 classrooms, the South Florida district, 2nd largest in the state, adds substantial offerings. This contribution is especially notable in Florida, where now nearly 50% of all schools in the state rent their spaces through Facilitron.
More than simply a marketplace and rental business software, Facilitron's integrated facility management tool allows school districts to schedule both internal events and community requests, track utilization and costs, manage maintenance, coordinate support services, and connect to automated building systems for HVAC and lighting control. Rental business services include AI-powered insurance verifications, automatic invoicing, payment collections and refunds, account and customer support, training and data analysis – all with no direct costs to the districts. For renters, Facilitron offers a user-friendly marketplace where organizers can search, request and pay for space for community-centered activities.
"Using valuable data to make its decisions, BCPS is transforming the way it runs its facility rental programs and quickly becoming a model for our country's safest schools," says Benjamin. "We're proud to be working with forward-thinking districts like BCPS across the country, and we're excited to continue to grow and develop our platform capabilities to help schools and communities successfully share resources."