Best Practices in Facilities Management – Are you Chasing Them?

Are you chasing best practices? While it’s fashionable, the problem is what to do when you catch those best practices.

Do you implement them? Do you adapt them? Do you assess whether they will work for you? Do you learn why they are best practices? The notion of best practices is a good one, but you have to attack the concept with a good understanding of your purpose and what you will do when you find them.

The first thing to consider is what a ‘Best Practice’ really is. Best for who? Best in what situation? Best when?

The definition of Best Practices,  from the Cambridge dictionary online, is:

“a working method, or set of working methods, which is officially accepted as being the best to use in a particular business or industry, usually described formally and in detail”

The assumption is that what’s best for one organization in their situation and at this time is also best for yours. In reality, Best practices are only a guide, not an absolute, and understanding why they are best practice – why they work – is much better. That way, you understand the principles and can apply them appropriately for your organization and situation.

I prefer to call them Leading Practices, which better describes what they really are.

In Facilities, which is a business role no different from other roles in most corporations, the FM needs to continuously look at practices others use to see which can be used (or adapted) to achieve improved results/efficiency/cost reductions/customer service, etc.

Some leading practices are quite general – using a CMMS system to manage work orders and maintenance, for instance. Others are more specific to your needs – whether to outsource or keep in-house, the structure and staffing model to use, specific space configuration/layout/furniture to implement for your specific business and culture, to lease or build/buy, etc.

Some Facility Managers turn to traditional benchmarking to find out about leading practices, but this often only provides numerical comparisons, so you know where your results are weak, but have no idea how to change them. Others use their own experience, possibly from a past role, to implement change in their current role. Unfortunately,  this may only be repeating practices that are not in-fact leading, or won’t work in the current situation.

The best ways to learn about leading practices are:

• Read Facility and Property Management Magazines to see what others are doing. Don’t limit yourself to ones in your specific sector (i.e. University, Hospital, Condo, Etc.) since FM is universal and you are likely to learn things from people who manage different types of facilities.
• Go to Conferences and attend the seminars to learn about other approaches. While you are there, spend time on the trade floor and talk to vendors to see what tools, equipment, supplies and processes are available that you might otherwise not know exist.
• Network locally with other Facility Managers and discover what they do to get results in their organization. Again, don’t limit yourself to managers of the same building type; you can learn a lot from Facility Managers who manage buildings with unique and different characteristics. If you do, be sure the practices will actually work and are applicable to your own organization’s specific needs and issues.
• Do an ‘Intelligent Benchmarking’ exercise, which goes beyond the traditional benchmarking comparisons and looks at practices. This usually includes a smaller number of organizations with interviews and more detailed examination of their org structure, procedures and approaches, not just their numerical results
• Conduct an Operational Review using an outside expert (who doesn’t have a vested interest in the status-quo). This is a third-party review of your organization, structure, training, processes, job descriptions, work activity and more. They will compare your organization with the leading practices from other organizations and help you identify what you are doing well and what you should change.

While you shouldn’t limit yourself to  these suggestions, as long as you are always looking for ways to do things better by seeing what others are doing and assess them for your own situation instead of assuming the status quo is enough, you are likely to find those elusive ‘best practices’ that work for you.