12/3/2021

EM 01542 Facilities Management

Week 7
Managing Quality Facilities, BIM, Information Systems, and the
Future of Facilities Management
Chapter 27: Managing Quality Facilities
Chapter 28: Communications and New Facility Management Skills

Alejandro Rodriguez, D.Eng.

Week 5: Facility Emergency Preparedness

Chapter 27:
Managing Quality Facilities

Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Pulse Points
• The customer, and the customer alone, defines the quality of the product or
service provided.
• Do it right the first time!
• Measure efficiency, effectiveness and response.
• Develop a profile on each customer.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• The five Pillars of Quality

• Quality services start with customer service. Only the customer will define
whether you are performing the right service and how well you are doing it.
• You must be committed to continuous improvement.
• You must be willing and able to measure and be measured.
• Employees must be empowered, must be held responsible, and must view
themselves and their jobs within the broader context.
• Quality service should be both recognized and marketed inside and outside
the company.

Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Customer Service
• Basic to the practice of TQM is customer service, and the bedrock of
customer service is that the customer alone defines the quality of the
service or product provided.
• Many facility managers have difficulty understanding this customer-centered
principle.
• However, the facility manager does have dual responsibility for both
customer service, and the judiciary responsibility to reduce cost and meet
the FM budget.
• One of the easiest way to resolve this dilemma is with full, well-administered
chargeback system.
• For this reason, managing customer services in FM is really managing
expectations.

Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Customer Services
• Sample customer opinion of every major event, such as the relocation of a
department or the construction of a new facility.
• For normal work orders, we prefer to sample every order for a set period—
say, one month each quarter—rather than a percentage throughout the
entire year.
• There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach, but when
sampling customer response to every single service order during a fixed
time period, we pay particular attention to the geographic distribution
(building/location) and organizational distribution of the sample.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Customer Services
• One practice is to use a response card for service orders that only require
the customer to rate five things:
• Did we do what you wanted us to do?
• Did we do it well?
• Did we do it in a timely manner that was acceptable to you?
• Did we look good and clean up after ourselves?
• Did we check with you to ensure that you were happy?
• Using focus groups is another way to gain information but review about
one-third of your services every three years, rotating respondents and
questions.

Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Continuous Improvement
• Perhaps the easiest way to understand constant improvement is to discuss the
Shewhart cycle: plan, do, check, act, try again with new information, and then repeat
the process.
• This process is simple to draw and comprehend but difficult to implement over a long
period of time. Two human reactions enter the equation.
• First, people get bored, and instead of seeking meaningful improvement, they
bureaucratize the process.
• Second, unless service workers and supervisors have truly bought in to continuous
improvement, they will manipulate the system and the data so that improvement
appears to be happening but really isn’t.
• Those kinds of attitudes and actions will disappear only if there are total buy-in
throughout the workforce, in-depth quality service training, and adequate incentives
and disincentives tied to superior quality management.

Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Measure, Measure, Measure

• As instructors and observers of other facility managers, it is apparent that we have
part of the measurement equation—efficiency—well in hand. Due perhaps to the
emphasis on benchmarking, more and more departments have developed metrics
to measure their costs (e.g., total facility costs per square foot, utility costs per
square foot, total costs per occupant).
• Some facility managers are doing a good job of measuring response. How long
does it take the WRC to answer calls? How long does it take the engineering force
to answer a complaint that the office is too hot or too cold? By category of project,
what is the cycle time? Response is a major factor in customer service and quality
management (one of the factors where customers are most dissatisfied with their
facility department).
• The facility manager should install systems and procedures to monitor response by
type of work and track it over time.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Measure, Measure, Measure

• Measuring effectiveness seems to be the Achilles’ heel of most facility quality
management efforts.
• It is ironic because it does not matter how efficient or responsive the facility
department thinks it is; effectiveness is solely determined by customers, and the
biggest challenge is to figure out how to measure their opinions.
• No one way will work. In fact, every vehicle for measuring customer perception of
facility department effectiveness seems to have declining usefulness, which
makes it very difficult to compare results over time.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Measure, Measure, Measure

• Facility managers need to become familiar with the techniques of sampling and
the practical applications of statistics. Terms such as median, mean, standard
deviation, and normal distribution should be as familiar as HVAC, leasing, and
churn rate.
• Once statistics are gathered, facility managers should be able to display and
analyze data using such methods as histograms, scatter diagrams, Pareto charts,
and trend charts. We suggest that facility managers take a basic college statistics
course.
• Six Sigma, a methodology to make business processes better by eliminating the
variations in them, is a newer focus with a number of specific tools to enhance
continuous improvement.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Benchmarking
• The key to good benchmarking is having accurate data, particularly cost
data. Consistent programmatic budgeting makes that so much easier. We
also need to know what the true costs of each service is, including
overheads. Whether we benchmark externally or not, we need to know our
true cost of doing business.
• Do not confine benchmarking to costs. For instance, it can be important to
you as a manager that 96 percent of service orders in one geographic area
are completed within three days, while only 67 percent are completed in a
similar facility in another area. That discrepancy should cause you to
question why and to seek operational improvements.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Benchmarking
• We like to benchmark against an organization that is as close to our own business
organization as possible, even if it is a competitor.
• Then we like to benchmark against a facility department that is as like ours as
possible.
• Finally, we like to benchmark against the organization that is considered best in
class in the function being benchmarked.
• Benchmarking is a concept of TQM. Applying good TQM principles, we measure
(benchmark), then make necessary changes, implement, and measure again.
• This internal benchmarking is a valuable tool for plotting the success of
management changes over time.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Reengineering
• Often, we see facility manages tinkering with their organization's policies
and procedures to try to achieve major improvements. In fact, what is
needed is an entirely new approach.
• Implementation of reengineering is fully as important as design.
• The most common errors that contribute to the failure of reengineering are
trying to fix a process instead of changing it, not focusing on the business
process, ignoring everything except the process design, neglecting people's
values and beliefs, being willing to settle for minor results, and quitting too
early.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Empowerment and Engagement

• Here are three rules in this area:
• If a worker can fix something, he should do it right the first time.
• If health, safety, or operations is involved, make sure that the worker is
empowered to take responsibility for seeing that it is reported
immediately to the right person and that he follows up until the problem
is solved.
• A worker should fix anything that he can. If he can't fix it, he should take
responsibility for reporting it properly and by following up to see that it
does get fixed.

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Week 7: Managing Quality Facilities

• Engagement
• An extremely interesting prospect for many of the FM functions is the research
Daniel Pink has done on motivation and engagement.
• His enlightening book Drive,11 the related TED talk
(http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html), and the animated video
of the same title on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc)
outline the impact that knowledge workers have on the old management
motivation methods.

• What motivates knowledge workers is autonomy, mastery and purpose.

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Week 5: Facility Emergency Preparedness

Chapter 28:
Communications and New Facility Management Skills

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Public Relations
• There generally is no a position on a facility management (FM) organization
chart marked “public relations.” In fact, the main public relations person for
the facility manager needs to be the facility manager him- or herself.
• The key to marketing is setting realistic objectives:
• Increase the awareness of facility services.
• Decrease the resistance to a particular service or set of policies and
procedures.
• Improve the image of the facility organization as a service provider.
• Enhance customers’ knowledge about facility services.
• Disclose specific qualifications about facility services.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Public Relations
• Some tools can make public relations and marketing efforts more effective.
• We strongly suggest that facility managers develop an annual public
relations plan.
• Keep it simple; initially, it should define the target audiences to reach in
priority order (top management, visitors, specific employee departments—
whatever fits the company), and then design one or two simple actions to be
implemented to achieve the marketing objectives.
• For instance, there might be a major effort to improve the department's
image with visitors through better custodial maintenance of lobbies and
better visitor reception training for the security staff.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Public Relations
• Facility managers who cannot speak and write well do their department a great
disservice. Most of our education and training has not stressed effective
communication, and this is the downfall of many technically competent facility
managers.
• The lack of good communications skills is one of the major weaknesses of
facility managers and one that has not improved much over the years.
• Unfortunately, one of the prime educational trends of recent years, online
education, has strengthened the technical knowledge of facility managers but
has downplayed the practice of communicating effectively face-to-face and in
small groups where facility managers tend to be the most deficient.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Communication Vehicles
• Managers must be able to communicate effectively.
• Whether writing a report, giving a presentation, or casually discussing an FM
issue with upper management, facility managers must drop the “FM-speak”
and speak the language of business, principally stating how the proposed
action is cost-effective.
• In formal writing or with a presentation, we can present the financial
justification.
• In casual conversation we must simply state the bottom line and the
justification.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Communication Vehicles
• Remember these rules of thumb: State the problem simply in language
familiar to your target audience, then explain your recommended solution.
• If you have time, present the advantages of your solution, address any
concerns, and then seek approval.
• Be sure that your audience understands your presentation by asking for
feedback and other comments.
• The old adage, “Tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them, and
then tell them what you told them,” is a good one.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Communication Vehicles
• Always be truthful, but don't promise too much, too soon.
• Never try to estimate a budget figure, because once customers hear a
number, they remember it, and, no matter what events intervene, they will
be dissatisfied if you don't meet that number.
• The best way to deal with these situations is to provide a wide range if
pressed for an estimate, and to research and provide a more accurate
estimate within a reasonable time.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Senior Management
• Effective communication with senior management, the “C-suite” of the CEO,
CFO, chief operating officer (COO), and other senior operational managers,
is the ultimate key to FM success.
• Remember that they are busy people, that they deal with a different realm of
issues than you do (and so have a different comfort zone), and that they
expect you to be the FM expert.
• To communicate effectively with them, you need confidence, knowledge, an
ability to speak in terms that they understand, and a few presentation skills.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• Senior Management
• Employee costs and facility costs are the top two expenses in most
organizations.
• The FM department supports the organization and makes it possible for
each employee to have the appropriate workspace for accomplishing
maximum productivity.
• When we communicate these facts clearly, specifically, and in the business
language that senior management uses, we are increasing our chances for
a favorable appreciation of the FM organization.
• Good communications skills—listening, clarifying, probing, speaking,
summarizing, and an ability to articulate succinctly in the appropriate
media—are every bit as important to FM success as is technical expertise.

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Week 7: Comms and New Facility Management Skills

• New Facility Management Skills

• To attract and retain these workers and gain maximum engagement from them
while they are at the workplace, which is no longer the expected nine-to-five
schedule, we also need new analytical and communication skills to anticipate user
needs and avoid unnecessary customer complaints.
• If our building automation systems can record usage and levels of air quality
throughout the workday, are we using these data to preprogram or automate
systems for maximum comfort and user loads?
• Just like our customers, knowledge-age skills of creativity and critical thinking are
becoming more and more essential to FM.
• This creativity can provide efficiencies and more loyalty within the FM department,
especially if we encourage similar skills in our FM staff. If everyone is looking for
efficiencies, improvements, and creative solutions, we all gain.

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EM 01542 Facilities Management

Week 7
Managing Quality Facilities, BIM, Information Systems, and the
Future of Facilities Management
Chapter 27: Managing Quality Facilities

Alejandro Rodriguez, D.Eng.

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