It can happen – a power failure that blacks out your building or your offices. What would you do? First Canadian Place, shown here, went black for an entire day from about 7:30am to 4:30pm on October 14th, 2010. It’s a 44 story, 2.7 million sq.ft. building in the heart of Toronto’s financial district.
DetailsWhen’s the last time you got out of your office? If you don’t attend Facility Management or Property Management related trade shows and conferences, you aren’t keeping up with the industry and your colleagues and you aren’t discovering solutions and products that will benefit your company.
These Top 10 issues come from an association that focuses on educational facilities, but as you can see, they can apply to anyone managing properties.They confirm that managing physical space is essentially the same regardless of whether you are managing corporate facilities or commercial properties. The list was put forward by APPA, the North American…
DetailsI recently held a Program Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting for the Certificate in Facility Management at Ryerson University for which I am the Academic Coordinator. It is a continuing education program for people in the Facility Management industry to develop and upgrade their skills. The PAC was formed for a program review to identify changes…
DetailsIs the 2009 H1N1 pandemic scare good for us? Definitely. The bad thing is that people became sick or died because of the flu, yet there are a few good things that came from this recent scare. First, to put in in perspective, according to the Center for Disease Control, 36,000 people die in the…
DetailsEffective Facility Management is all about communications. Whether you are managing office space, maintaining building systems, developing strategic asset plans or all of the above, good communication skills are essential.
I had the privilege of speaking at The Facilities Show in May. My seminar is based on a cover article I wrote for Building Operations Management Magazine called ‘Sparring Partners’ (email me for a copy of the article) and focused on the 3 ways we fail to develop a strong partnership with our service providers…
DetailsI’ve been doing quite a few operational reviews and benchmarking exercises for facility clients recently. Something that keeps coming up is the optimal design of the facility management department’s organization structure. Through my career I’ve worked in functional, integrated and even matrix organizations. My facility clients are also a mix. In each approach, I saw…
DetailsMy Facility Management book is now available. It’s written for both new and experienced facility professionals, regardless of level, function or the type of facility managed, who want to leverage existing skills and advance their career with leading business practices, strategy, management and leadership in FM. $39.95 US Soft Cover 7″x10″ 532 pages ISBN 978-0-9813374-1-8…
DetailsFinally, my book is out to the editor for a work over. I expect it to be printed and available in November. If you haven’t already signed up for the newsletter at my main FM consulting website StrategicAdvisor you should – if you sign-up before the end of November, you get a chance to win…
DetailsThere is a growing trend to implement effective performance measurement systems and frameworks (KPI’s and SLA’s) for subcontracted and outsourced functions, but very few organizations measure their internal services with the same tools.
In the December 2010 issue of Canadian Facility Management & Design magazine, the magazine’s editor Pamela Young interviewed me about Facility Management and about my new book “Managing Facilities & Real Estate” Here’s how she began the article: “Managing Facilities & Real Estate, by FM consultant and Strategic Advisor principal Michel Theriault, is hot off…
DetailsMy latest article “Make Your Memos Hit The Mark” is the cover article for the January issue of Buildings Magazine. This is a great US based magazine for both Facilities Managers and Building Managers.
While it’s nice to have your ideas and concepts features by a magazine like Buildings, I’m glad that Buildings is putting focus on the non-technical skills in the industry.
In the Facility and Property Management profession, I see an important ingredient missing from many organizations – good information. That’s information you can use to make decisions and improvements both with internally delivered services and with your suppliers. An excellent example of the value of information, even if not directly related, is Wal-Mart. Their retail…
DetailsSome people simply use benchmarking results to justify the status quo. Since raw benchmarking results can be deceptive, this is easy to accomplish. Unfortunately, this is not what Benchmarking is meant to do. Really, Benchmarking is the just the first step in an important process to improve what you do.
DetailsI saw an Interesting comment about my FM Pie diagram recently. Someone from the United Kingdom made a comment that it didn’t really apply in the UK. Given that the FM Pie included the full range of responsibilities involved in managing a building of any kind, imagine my surprise that things might be so different…
DetailsI was pleasantly surprised at how many people attended my seminar on Benchmarking at IFMA’s World Workplace in Orlando earlier this month. As usual, I brought some take-home material for the audience, but I ran out. In fact, a number of people had to stand at the back of the room. I think it’s because…
DetailsFirst, it is important to understand what resiliency means. According to Merriam-Webster, it is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” Since the facilities we manage provide space for the occupants to conduct their business, we must consider resiliency from their perspective, not just from a building perspective. This is…
DetailsBuilding a professional career in facility or property management means more than simply doing a good job for your employer. It also means getting involved in associations that represent your industry to expand your knowledge and learn from others. And, it doesn’t help to network with other professionals and service providers. If you look at…
DetailsIn my Webinar on Information Based Decisions (see the link below), I spoke about getting and using information for your benefit. While you need an FM system and should work towards getting approval and implementing one, if you already have one, the question is whether you use it for information, not just process management. Whether…
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