Multi-Location Management

5.1 The Three-Level Hierarchy

The system organizes physical space as a three-level hierarchy: Sites at the top (a campus, an office building, a district facility), Buildings within a site (each structure at that campus), and Rooms within a building (the discrete spaces where assets actually live). Every physical asset must be resolved to a room, not to a site. That level of granularity is the single most important design decision for making physical inventory efficient, because a counter can walk into a specific room and confirm exactly which assets should be present. A district with fifty sites, two hundred buildings, and three thousand rooms produces an inventory plan in which each counter has a well-scoped list to verify — the difference between a two-week audit and a two-day audit.

5.2 Setting Up a New Site

Adding a new site is a linear process. The user opens the Sites list, adds the site with name, code, address, and coordinates, then adds the buildings within the site, then adds the rooms within each building with room numbers or names. Floor plans can be attached at the building level, which is particularly useful for physical inventory planning because a counter can print or view the floor plan to route through rooms in a logical order rather than backtracking.

5.3 Geolocation

Some assets such as outdoor units, portable equipment, field-deployed devices do not have a room. For those cases, the platform integrates a unique geolocation system that assigns a unique three-word address to every three-meter square on the school campus. A field technician can pin the exact location of an HVAC condenser on a roof, a portable generator on a construction site, or the scene where a work order is being performed. In practical terms, this eliminates the delay caused when a facilities team dispatches a technician who then spends fifteen minutes finding the unit — the three-word address routes them directly to the piece of equipment.

5.4 Multi-Site Transfers

Moving an asset from Site A to Site B is a special class of transfer. The sending site initiates the transfer and selects the destination site, building, and room. The asset enters the “In Transit” status until the destination site confirms receipt. On receipt, the destination custodian signs, and the asset returns to Active status at its new home. The In Transit interval is important — it prevents an asset from being counted twice (once at each site) if an audit runs during the move, which is a common source of overstatement in spreadsheet-based inventories.

5.5 Location-Centric Views

Two dashboards support location-based operations. The Site Detail view shows every asset, every open work order, and every open custody record tied to that site, giving a principal or site administrator a complete operational picture of their location in one page.

The Work Orders by Location view combines a map or floor plan with a list of open work orders, letting a technician plan an efficient route across a campus rather than jumping between disconnected addresses. Pairing What3Words pins with this view is especially productive for large campuses: technicians walk directly to each pin without hunting for room numbers on unfamiliar buildings.