Focus on Management

The reality of the Facility and Property Management industry is that most managers and staff have strong technical skills but less experience and training in the management and business skills they need to fully benefit from their technical knowledge, improve their careers and benefit their employers. The need to focus on non-technical aspects of Facility…

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Top 10 Issues

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…

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Serving Up Quality

My recent magazine article on getting the right service level from your outsourced (or subcontracted) service provider has been published and already I’ve received positive feedback. This article came from a startling statistic from a recent IFMA research report that said getting the right service was an issue with 78% of the facility executives surveyed.

Learn from Wal-Mart about the value of Information

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…

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Make Your Memos Hit The Mark – Featured Article in Buildings Magazine

My 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.

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KPI’s aren’t the answer to getting Performance in Facilities Services

Having 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…

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5 Ways to Develop Better Procedures and Practices for Facilities Management

While I deal with many Facilities clients who have little if any documented processes, policies and procedures, simply writing detailed documents isn’t the answer. Having them will definitely improve results, improve consistency, enable training and cross-training, make it easier for someone to fill in for an absence and provide a means of explaining / defending…

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