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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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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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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When the Lights Go Out – Is your organization prepared with a Business Continuity Plan?

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.

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Now Available: “Managing Facilities & Real Estate” Book by Michel Theriault

My 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…

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Organizational Design for Facility Departments – Functional or Integrated

I’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…

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Managing To Advance Your Career In Fm – Michel Theriault Interviewed by the Editor of CFM&D Magazine

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…

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Sparring Partners – At The Facilities Show, Birmingham, UK

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…

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