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.
DetailsBenchmarking can be hazardous to your health, so be sure to take all necessary precautions. Accurately comparing costs between buildings is not as easy as it seems, and using averages can sometimes result in wrong decisions. And don’t get hung up about oranges.
Performance Measurements (KPI’s) are one of the most useful management tools available. Getting it right, is another matter. It’s easy to develop ways to measure performance but it’s harder to assess how those measures will drive Performance.
Sparring Partners : Outsourcing May Not Equal Partnership Building Operating Management My latest article was the feature article and appeared on the May 2010 cover. I took a very hard look at what partnership is and isn’t as well as what needs to change in the industry.
DetailsI 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’m always amazed how many facility managers don’t use Facility satisfaction surveys as an important information tool to make decisions, find areas for improvement, and even provide them with information and data that they can use with their senior management to support initiatives. I think there are two main reasons for this problem, and Facility…
DetailsI’ve talked about it before – how KPI’s and other measurements with rewards and penalties attached can lead to behavior you didn’t expect. While this example isn’t from Facilities or Property Management, it does illustrate the issue quite nicely and has relevance to anyone who is measuring customer or service satisfaction in their property or…
DetailsThe search term “penalize your supplier” in a Google search recently led someone to my web site, www.StrategicAdvisor.ca They landed on our performance measurement article, which certainly has those words in the content, but then they quickly went somewhere else – probably because we don’t talk about penalizing suppliers – we focus on managing supplier…
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…
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.
Performance measures are relatively common in outsourcing arrangements where project management services are included. Whether you manage projects internally or use third party project management, you can manage results with a good performance management framework, just like you would apply to other outsourcing company, subcontractor, service providers or internal staff. Whether performance management is effective…
DetailsPerformance isn’t just about measuring results. You must implement management techniques that use performance measures proactively to drive behaviour and improve results. Start with measurement data and KPI’s, understand their impact on employee and subcontractor behaviour and implement a management approach that influences behaviour and drives results.
DetailsHaving been on the supplier and the client side in the past, I know that Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) themselves don’t result in performance. While some people like the carrot and stick approach, you need a management approach that uses measurements (and other techniques, not just KPI’s) to get performance. Don’t just rely on a…
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 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…
DetailsYou’ve probably heard about Big Data. That’s what your credit card company collects, Google has and even your grocery store uses. For Facilities Management, it’s best to start smaller. Many FM’s don’t even have the basic information they need to manage and make good decisions, mostly because they either don’t have an FM system or…
DetailsThe answer is yes and no. First, it’s important to understand where Six Sigma came from. The term itself refers to having less than 3.4 defects per million. It’s pretty well impossible for any FM organization to have that kind of volume for anything. The concept was designed for manufacturing where if you are turning…
DetailsThere’s a lot of evidence that the typical Key Performance Indicator (KPI) methods of trying to ensure you get performance from an outsourced or subcontracted service provider don’t work the way you think. In this Video (see below), Daniel Pink, author of “Drive : The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” presents research that tells…
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