Failure isn’t an option when managing critical facilities. Preventing failure is one of your primary responsibilities, which you ensure with a robust design, plenty of backup systems and extremely well managed operations. This applies to obvious facilities such as data centers, but also to facilities such as manufacturing, hospitals and other high reliability operations. Managing…
Budgeting is a crucial task for Facility Managers. Since we manage a significant part of our organization’s costs, the budget is important to the organization both to validate the amount spent and to manage it. When I talk to Facility Managers, the annual budget process they have to go through is always a tedious, time…
Managing facilities is by its nature financially driven. The high costs of real estate, the cost of energy and maintenance and the perception that an organization’s facilities are a cost drag rather than a value to the organization are contributing factors. If you don’t have enough information and aren’t able to analyze that information, you…
Real Estate costs money, and money is the bottom line for any company. Facilities Managers who recognize this fact are in a better position to raise the profile of the Facilities department and contribute to the success of the company by accurately establishing facility related costs and positioning the information for better corporate decisions. With…
Environment and Energy conservation is an important topics to building owners and managers, yet the challenge of getting occupants to buy-in to your initiatives and actually change their behaviors remains difficult. Increasingly, individuals are seeing the messages in the media and making changes at home, yet they often have a difficult time linking it with…
The introduction of space planning strategies such as open plan workspace, modular cubicles, reduction of enclosed offices and hotelling were designed to save costs, both on the space and the inevitable churn. In an effort to sell these concepts to the corporations and their workers, they came with the promise of improved productivity. This productivity…
Cleaning is one of the top two services in its importance to your occupant’s satisfaction, just behind HVAC. It can also represent a significant portion of your annual facilities costs. The key to successfully procuring a Janitorial Service Provider is to understand how the business works. When selecting a janitorial service provider, the first step…
Effectively communicating with people who use the facilities & buildings we manage is critical, yet it is often at the bottom of a long list of priorities Facility Managers deal with on a daily basis. A newsletter is an often-overlooked tool for communicating, and can support other customer service strategies you currently use. A well-written…
Facility Management Outsourcing companies have expanded into huge organizations, managing large portfolios of facilities for small and large corporations with local and even international portfolios. There is a reason they are successful in getting the attention and the business from large sophisticated corporations who entrust them to manage their Facility assets. While their success is…