One contract, every trade
Facilities Management in London
End-to-end facilities management for London commercial buildings: planned and reactive maintenance, building services and compliance, run by one management layer instead of a dozen separate contractors.
The problem is not the trades. It is the joints between them.
Most commercial buildings in London are maintained by a patchwork. One contractor for electrical, another for air conditioning, a cleaning company, a fire company, someone local for decorating, and a property manager trying to referee it all by email.
Every joint in that patchwork is a place where something goes missing: a job nobody picked up, an invoice nobody expected, a compliance certificate that existed on somebody’s laptop and left with them. The trades are rarely the problem. The gaps between them are.
Guardian Facilities Management replaces the patchwork with one management layer. One number to call, one system of record, one party accountable when something has not been done.
What sits inside a contract with us.
You choose the scope. A contract can cover one building or a portfolio, one discipline or the full set, and it can widen as the service proves itself.
- Reactive maintenance, answered around the clock
- Planned preventive maintenance on a calendar built for your building, not a generic template
- Statutory compliance: fixed wire testing, emergency lighting, fire alarm and fire door inspection, water hygiene, gas safety, lifting equipment, asbestos duty to manage
- Building services: electrical, HVAC, plumbing and drainage
- Building fabric: repairs, decoration, glazing, flooring
- Soft services: commercial cleaning and grounds maintenance
Where a discipline needs an accredited specialist, we hold the relationship, manage the visit and file the certificate. You still deal with one party.
Who this is built for.
Facilities managers, property managers, managing agents, landlords and owner-occupiers running offices, industrial units, retail, leisure and mixed-use buildings in London.
It suits people who want the maintenance of a building to be one relationship with one accountable contractor, rather than a diary full of separate ones.
Why the scope is wider than one contractor.
Guardian Management Group runs the specialist arms as well as the management layer, which is why the scope is unusually wide for a single contract. Commercial Floors London handles flooring. Scan Surveys handles measured building surveys and laser scanning. Commercial Refurbs London handles project work.
The practical effect is that a job which starts as a reactive call and turns out to need a floor replaced, a survey taken or a room rebuilt does not need a new contractor, a new quote cycle and a new set of introductions.
Why one contract
What changes when it is one party, not nine.
The technical work is the same either way. What changes is how much of your week goes on coordinating it.
One number, not nine
Every discipline through one line. You describe the problem; working out which trade owns it is our job, not yours.
Nothing falls between contractors
The gaps between separate contractors are where jobs, invoices and certificates go missing. One party means there are no gaps to fall into.
One system of record
Every job logged with a time, an owner and an outcome, and every certificate filed against the building rather than against whoever did the work.
Reactive feeds the planned
Recurring faults get designed out of the schedule instead of repeatedly attended. That is the point at which maintenance spend starts falling.
Wider scope than a single contractor
Flooring, refurbishment and surveying are inside the group. A job that grows does not need a new procurement exercise.
Predictable cost
A fixed monthly figure against a known schedule is easier to budget and easier to defend than a year of unforecast callouts.
Where we work
Different buildings, different pressure points.
The discipline is the same everywhere. The priorities are not.
Offices and workspace
Occupied buildings where almost nothing can be done in working hours, and temperature generates more complaints than everything else combined.
Read more →
Retail
Where a fault is lost trade rather than an inconvenience, and response time is the thing that actually matters.
Read more →
Industrial and warehouse
Big roofs, hard-worked floors and loading bays. These buildings fail at the envelope, usually somewhere high up.
Read more →How we work
How a contract actually starts.
- 01
Walk the building
We record what is actually there: plant, age, condition and what the law requires of it. No schedule is worth anything if it was written from a price list rather than a walk round.
- 02
Write it down
A scope, a schedule and a price, itemised so it can be phased. You should be able to see what each part costs and decide what happens first.
- 03
Work around the building
Phased, out of hours, room by room or floor by floor. The building carries on being used; that is the constraint we plan against, not an inconvenience we discover.
- 04
Evidence it
Every job closed with an outcome, every statutory certificate filed against the building. The test is whether you can answer an insurer or an auditor without ringing us.
Common questions
Questions we get asked about FM.
Can we start with one building or one discipline?
Yes. Start with a single building or a single discipline and widen as the service proves itself. The contract only ever covers what you ask us to run.
Do you self-deliver or subcontract?
Both, and we are straight about which is which. The group directly delivers general building works, repairs, decoration, flooring and a range of maintenance disciplines. Accreditation-gated work such as legionella risk assessment, lift thorough examination and asbestos surveying is delivered by accredited specialists we hold the relationship with, manage and evidence on your behalf.
What areas of London do you cover?
All London boroughs, with the densest coverage across the City, Canary Wharf, Shoreditch, Westminster and the east London corridor. We are based at 20 Wenlock Road, N1.
How is the work reported?
Every job is logged with a time stamp, an owner and an outcome, and every statutory certificate is filed against the building rather than against a contractor. You get one view of what has been done, what is due and what is outstanding.
Are you tied into particular suppliers?
No. Where a specialist is required we select on capability, response time and price for your building. If you already have an incumbent you are happy with for one discipline, we will manage around them rather than force a change.
Elsewhere on the site
Related services
Reactive maintenance
One line, answered around the clock, for the things no calendar predicts.
Read more →Planned preventive maintenance
A servicing calendar built for the building, so plant is maintained before it fails.
Read more →Building compliance
Every statutory test your building needs, on one calendar, in one certificate library.
Read more →One conversation, every trade at the table.
Tell us about the building and which disciplines are causing the pain. We will come back with how the group would run them.
Talk to the group