Vendor Plan Access Guide to Choosing the Right Solution

What Is Vendor Plan Access and Why Does It Matter?

Trust is a non negotiable part of everyday business when it comes to managing the operations of the facilities in which we work and live. Vendor Plan Access, previously an optional feature, is now a mandatory one to ensure successful partnership between FM teams and 3rd parties, as well as to ensure building and people safety, regulation and compliance. With our experience and broad range of services, ARC Facilities supports facilities managers in taking complete control of their building information databases, in addition to providing Vendor Plan Access on a case by case basis for authorized contractors and sub-contractors. Here is a brief overview of the concept, why this should be closely monitored and some best practice tips for improving control and communication of 3rd party access to buildings.

Vendor Plan Access enables you to share your building plans, emergency information and operational documentation with vendors, contractors and other third party service providers in a controlled and permission-based way. Therefore, sensitive information is not being compromised, risks are being mitigated and business operations are being accelerated.
Vendor Plan Access is some of the most important functionality in any facility management software application, especially in a fast paced, multi-stakeholder environment. A mechanical contractor may need a couple of as-builts in order to make some emergency repairs, or a fire safety vendor may need access to the emergency evacuation plans in order to service their systems. With granular Vendor Plan Access, the vendor only has access to the plans, documents, and emergency information that is relevant to their scope of work – and nothing more. See how easy it is to include Building Plans in the ArcFacilities application from day one.

Vendor Plan Access (VPA) Management Being able to manage access for vendors and other external entities who may need access to sensitive areas of the data center to perform construction activities has become a critical issue for any data center operator. In today’s environment of incessant threats from the dark side and increasing number of regulatory compliance requirements, having the ability to manage exactly who can go where and when, is of extreme importance. 

The Real-World Importance of Managing Vendor Plan Access

Vendor Plan Access

If you are responsible for facilities or campus assets, then Vendor Plan Access is critical to fast, risk-free projects and protects your reputation. This is especially important in sensitive environments such as education, healthcare and government where the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information or uncontrolled modifications to critical systems could result in serious consequences in the event of an emergency. A lack of Vendor Plan Access control can result in cybersecurity breaches, unauthorized modifications and other unsanctioned actions that can impact emergency preparedness and response at your facility.

Consider common scenarios in our day-to-day facility management work:

• Contractor needs renovation plans within a specified time frame.

• Fire safety partners only want to access evacuation and life-safety drawings, not all building plans and documents.

• External to IT or Telecom, vendors expect to receive as built documentation to progress infrastructure upgrade work, without the disclosure of security documents.

These scenarios all show why Vendor Plan Access is more than an convenience, but a business necessity. In addition to our more advanced features, having access to Vendor Plan Access via a robust system such as ours, allows for granular access controls for specific projects or requirements, multi-level permission sets, auditing and reporting of access to information, and more. Compliance to federal, state and industry regulations such as healthcare and government agency compliance are also an important consideration.

Challenges and Pitfalls of Vendor Plan Access in Facility Management

With the rapid escalation of digital plan and document sharing, Vendor Plan Access also presents a number of challenges.

• Over-permissioning: When vendors receive broader access than required, risks escalate.

• Manual tracking: Manual, spreadsheet-based permission tracking creates gaps and hinders audits.
• Missed revocations: Not revoking access when a project is completed or a vendor leaves can significantly increase the attack surface over time.
• Complex onboarding: Difficult set-up processes deter quick action during urgent needs.

• Lack of transparency: No clear record of who has access to what and when.

Vendor Plan Accessibility issues are magnified in large properties, K-12 and higher education campuses, hospital systems and multi-location companies. Vendor Plan Accessibility can become a significant administrative burden, a major barrier to timely maintenance and repairs and a source of significant exposure to risk in the absence of a comprehensive access management system. Our integrated access management solution, as highlighted in our product overview, eliminates these problems and provides a secure, enterprise-wide system for vendor plan sharing.

How to Set Up and Optimize Vendor Plan Access

When it comes to granting Vendor Plan Access in a way that is both secure and efficient there are three key elements to focus on – visibility, speed and auditing. We can help with:

Step 1: Define Stakeholder Needs

Start by documenting who your suppliers, contractors and service providers are and for what. This reduces the risk of providing access for no good reason. Having a need to know policy in place will prevent blanketing access away to everyone. The next step is to link the access permissions to the specific documentation that the user may require access to. Such as exterior plans for landscape contractors, or MEP drawings for mechanical vendors who have to do on going repairs and maintenance.

Step 2: Layered Permissions & Expiration

Effective Vendor Plan Permissions are seldom all-or-nothing. Our solution allows you to plan who has access to which vendors and their corresponding vendor plans in the following ways:

• Document type (as-built, O&M, emergency info, etc.)

• Project or building scope

• Time-bound access (e.g., project duration only)

Setting expiry dates or review permissions for access can help to prevent “permission sprawl,” the phenomenon in which various vendors are given permanent access to sensitive data and infrastructure following the completion of specific projects. This helps protect information and assets.

Step 3: Seamless Onboarding and Access Management

Instantly Onboard Your Vendors With ARC’s digital Vendor Plan, onboarding occurs in minutes rather than weeks. Rather than dealing with slow paper processing and missed emails, your facility manager can immediately grant and retract Vendor Plan Access at any time from any device. An authorized vendor, in the critical situation of a emergency need for repairs, will have access to the plans in a matter of minutes versus hours; streamlining the work process to save time on administrative tasks and to help protect your tenants while maintaining adherence to all of your facility building health and safety regulations. Use ARC to capture usage activity on every action that occurs with Vendor Plan Onboarding and make all actions traceable and recoverable. See our Emergency Information Product page for further details of ARC’s strong onboarding and security offerings for Vendors

Best Practices for Secure Vendor Plan Permissions

Smart Vendor Plan Access management is all about being security conscious and prepared. We suggest the following best practices to secure your environment and facilitate communication:

• Adopt a least-privilege model - Do not give vendors access to more than is necessary by only providing them with the documentation and digital plans required for the project.

• Time-box access: Automatically expire vendor permissions when a project ends or a milestone is reached.
• Mandatory training: Train vendors on the Digital Sales Plan and access policies prior to getting credentialed.
• Audit trails - an audit trail should be kept of access requests, approvals, downloads, etc. and revocations.
• Multi-factor authentication: Strengthen security by requiring identity verification during sign-in.
• Routine reviews: Perform reviews of permissions at regular intervals to verify that only active partners currently involved in planning efforts have access to planning documents.

• Segmented data rooms: Using multiple data rooms or segments within a data room for separate projects, clients, vendors, etc. will provide additional segmentation in terms of user access.

Adopting these best practices ensures operational integrity, protects institutional reputation and unlocks the full potential of rapid digital plan delivery. Use our software to streamline approval of standard templates for repeat projects and vendors to further drive compliance and productivity. See how our customers have successfully implemented these practices in the field in our customer stories.

Resolving Vendor Plan Access Issues and Staying Resilient

No system is completely hiccup free and therefore it is important to know how to spot and fix any issues that may arise in Vendor Plan Access and therefore business continuity, at the right time:

• Vendors report access denied errors. Permissions on the account should be reviewed along with project and user licenses. If these are valid and permissions have been properly granted, a support ticket may be required. We recommend that the permission status for the affected vendors be reviewed and that the end dates for the project(s) and vendors be verified.

• Air release valve used to repair old drawings that are mistakenly published: Set the default viewing documents via the version control functions.
• Revocation missed after vendor turnover: Audit reports and notifications tell teams when reviews are due and serve as a reminder to remediate stale accounts.
• Difficulty tracking who accessed what: The activity logs and detailed usage reports created using UserLock provide a paper trail for auditing and compliance purposes.

• Need help fast? Connect directly with our support team via ARC Facilities Support so issues never slow you down.

We constantly send updates to our admin team regarding Vendor Plan Access and associated tools, especially when our portfolios are expanding or there are changes in our corporate priorities. We try to be flexible and have good escalation processes with our internal facility management team and also with external vendors and vendors’ vendors. This way we can take care of any incidents as they occur and improve our relationship with the property owners and managers. For even more FM tips and best practices visit FacilitiesNet.

Upgrading and Future-Proofing Vendor Plan Accessibility

Vendor Plan Access: More Than Just Access With increasing complexities in facility portfolios and stringent regulations in the healthcare, education and industrial sectors, it is important to reassess the role Vendor Plan Access plays in your overall digital infrastructure. An improved Vendor Plan Access experience yields many benefits including faster turnaround time, less facility downtime and improved safety performance.

Key upgrade paths and trends include:

• Granular permissions: More refined controls allow you to set permissions for vendors at the document level or even at the level of a page, in order to maintain the confidentiality and adhere to compliance requirements.

• Mobile-first access: An increasing number of today’s technicians work primarily in the field, which is why mobile-first access is so important. Ensuring your digital documents such as technical drawings and emergency contact information are available and can be easily accessed right on the job site keeps technicians from having to take time to search for this important documents on their company PC.
• API integrations: We can link plan access to other systems (such as security, visitor management, compliance reporting) so that you can get an instant overview of all activities without having to log in to multiple systems and re-enter the same information over and over again.
• Smart notifications: Get alerted on the fly in real-time whenever a plan has been accessed, downloaded or shared so that management can instantly respond to and investigate any misuse.
• AI-driven insights: Analyzing vendor interactions with your digital plan repository to help you understand which unused permissions or high risk activities need to be addressed.

• Centralized management across portfolios: One solution for all sites, especially helpful for companies running schools, hospitals or multi-campus organizations.

Our vendors and facilities team are committed to bringing innovative Vendor Plan Accessibility (VPA) solutions to the ARC market. Take advantage of a secure, centralized access solution leaving behind the days of scattered files and broken storage links. Our solutions work in conjunction with healthcare compliance vendors, school facility management for school districts and vendor onboarding for industrial facilities. Contact us to learn more about each option in a free demo at ARC Facilities Contact.

Key Takeaways: Elevating Facility Operations with Vendor Plan Access

As we’ve explored, Vendor Plan Access is no longer a luxury for facility management - it’s a foundational safeguard and accelerator. Here are a few of the benefits your organization can achieve when taking a strategic and proactive approach to Vendor Plan Access:

• Precision-driven sharing: Permissions matched to specific projects, vendors, and compliance needs.

• Fast onboarding and Strong Security – Get your vendors onboarded in minutes not days without ever losing sight of them.
• Audit-ready reporting with extensive log records and usage statistics for compliance and management purposes.

• Future-ready infrastructure: Scalable, mobile-friendly access that grows with your facilities, your contracts and your portfolio.

Vendor Plan Access is a Top Facility Priority If you are like other facility leaders, ensuring that risk is mitigated and collaboration between internal stakeholders and vendors is high on your list of priorities. Ensuring that your Vendor Plan Access is robust can differentiate your facility experience and enhance your overall security, compliance and user experience. Ensure that these partners and relationships are considered in your overall security and compliance plan.

Ready to revolutionize the way you manage your document control and project partnerships? Reach out to ARC Facilities today for a free walk-through and find out how Vendor Plan Access can benefit you and your organization. Get in Touch Learn More About Our Software

FAQ

What is Vendor Plan Access?

Vendor Plan Access enables facility owners to share their blueprints and related documents securely with chosen vendors. At ARC Facilities, we strive to assist vendors in easier access to relevant plans to expedite work while keeping sensitive information safe. Vendor Plan Access helps to mitigate potential risks when dealing with different personnel.

Why is it important to manage Vendor Plan Access?

Vendor Plan Access administration is an important aspect of ensuring the overall security of data, compliance to regulations and operational efficiency. Unlimited Vendor Plan Access should only be provided to those who must make changes to the data in order to preclude unauthorized updates and help ensure data integrity.

What are common challenges when handling vendor permissions?

The following were the most common problems our customers have seen in their User Role Mgmt solution: Overlap of user roles (example: Sales Rep. and Department Head) that weren’t intentionally put there, bad passwords that never changed (often as a placeholder or something that never needed to be updated), and difficulty managing changes to users’ permissions or identifying who can do what on systems.

How do we set up secure Vendor Plan Access for our partners?

First time setting up Netguard and not sure where to start? We recommend starting with role-based permissions, using unique login credentials for each vendor, and regularly reviewing access lists. Updating credentials on a regular basis and enabling 2-Factor Authentication is also recommended to increase security.

What are the best practices for troubleshooting access issues?

If you are having problems accessing our eServices System, please check your account status and permissions with our office. It may also be necessary to clear your browser cache and update your operating system. If your problems persist, please contact our support team at ARC Facilities.