Key Takeaways:
Every facility leader eventually faces the same question: hire another person or bring in a contractor? Budgets rarely make that decision easy, and the answer usually depends on what you can see on paper. But the question is often different. Who knows how this building actually works, and what happens to that knowledge if one person is out for two weeks?
As my team and I manage operations across multiple programs, each location has its own rhythms, quirks and people who understand them best. When I first looked at our staffing, I saw gaps that looked like headcount problems. Some were actually knowledge problems. We had skilled people who were the only ones who could troubleshoot a particular system, approve a particular vendor or open a particular room after hours.
In my experience, that is a fragile setup, and it is one I have seen at many organizations I have worked with. The fix is not always to hire more staff or contractors. Often, it is strategic cross training.
Cross training means deliberately teaching two or three people to do the critical tasks that currently live with one. It may be a technician learning the building automation logic alongside the person who already knows it. It may mean a coordinator can process a work order, schedule a vendor visit and explain the priority to a building occupant without waiting for someone to return from lunch. It means no single absence stops work.
One way to do this is mapping out critical functions. Not every task matters equally. Emergency response, preventive maintenance scheduling, vendor access and safety inspections are the ones that cannot pause. During this process, I ask myself and my team who can do this today, and who should be able to do it in six months? The gap between those answers becomes our training plan.
Cross training does not eliminate the need for outside help. Specialized work, like certain controls programming or licensed electrical work, still belongs to qualified contractors.
However, there is a difference between hiring a specialist for a specialized job and paying one to fill a gap your own team should be able to cover. Cross training helps you tell the two apart. It also makes you a sharper consumer when you do bring in outside help, because your team understands the scope well enough to write a clear specification and evaluate what comes back.
As a woman in this field, I see a leadership lens here that really matters to me. Because many of us came into facilities from other fields, we tend to notice when knowledge is hoarded. We build teaching into daily work, whether that is walking a new team member through a site or explaining the reasoning behind a decision. That habit is a staffing strategy. It turns every day on the job into an opportunity to build capacity.
Cross training also builds the kind of loyalty that is hard to buy. When people are given new skills, they see a path forward. I have seen technicians who started by handling routine calls grow into the people who lead complex repairs. That growth does not show up on a vendor invoice, but it shows up in retention, morale and how well the team handles the unexpected. I also believe this is true leadership.
If you are deciding whether to hire or outsource, start with a simple exercise. List your ten most critical recurring tasks. Next to each, write the name of the person who does it best and the name of anyone else who could step in tomorrow. Where the second column is empty, you may have found your staffing priority. Some of those gaps will call for a new hire. Some will call for a contractor. Many will call for a training plan that costs less than either.
Staffing strategy is not only a budget conversation. It is a question about resilience, and resilience is built one skill at a time.
Maria Ruiz, CFM is the executive director of facilities management and planning at Monroe University, overseeing operations across the Bronx, New Rochelle, St. Lucia and online programs. With 20 years of cross-sector experience in nonprofits, international development and higher education, she brings disciplined methodology and strategic thinking to complex facilities challenges. Maria is an advocate for repositioning facilities management as a strategic partner rather than a cost center, advising on people, process, technology and the built environment.
