An SLA is a promise with a stopwatch. For a facility management company the stopwatch decides bonuses, penalties and renewals, so it must be built on rules both sides accept. The most common dispute is not whether the target was met, but how time was counted. Settling the rules in the contract and in the system removes the argument. The system side is covered in FacilityOS UAE.
Priority levels
| Priority | Typical example | Targets (illustration) |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency | Water leak, lift entrapment, power loss | Respond within minutes, make safe within hours |
| High | Air conditioning failure in an occupied office | Respond within hours, resolve the same day |
| Normal | Lighting, door repair | Respond within a day, resolve within a few days |
| Planned | Scheduled maintenance | Complete by the date in the plan |
The numbers are set per contract. What matters is that each job has a priority at the start and that the priority only changes with a recorded reason.
Two clocks, not one
Response time measures how fast you acknowledge and start. Resolution time measures how long until the problem is fixed. Tracking them separately shows whether delays come from dispatch or from the work itself.
Calendars and pauses
- Count time on the working calendar in the contract, including weekends or public holidays only if they apply to that service.
- Pause the clock only for causes outside your control, such as waiting for the client to give access or approve a quote.
- Record every pause with a reason and a user. Pauses without reasons are the first thing a client's auditor will question.
At-risk alerts and escalation
- When a job passes a set share of its target, mark it at risk and notify the supervisor.
- If the target is missed, mark it and notify the manager, once, not repeatedly.
- Review missed jobs weekly for cause: parts, access, staffing or wrong priority.
Reporting to clients
Send a monthly report: jobs by priority, percentage within target, average response and resolution times, repeat faults by asset and open items. Use asset history from the register to propose preventive work, see the asset register guide. Tell us about your contracts.