Building & Facilities Operations

There is a scene in the movie Field of Dreams when the voice that originally convinces Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) to turn his cornfield into a baseball field now instructs him to “Go the Distance.”   Ray was feeling somewhat pleased with himself at this point in the movie having built the field and locating Terrance Mann (James Earl Jones,) but there was still work to be done in order to realize the ultimate vision, and he needed just a little more prodding to get there.

I thought that this was the same situation as I read through both the BOMA 360 certification program life safety components and the recommendations in the National Preparedness Month notice on how property professionals can maximize preparedness.

Both the programs and recommendations are excellent and go a long way toward helping guide property professionals with regard to what they need to have in place in terms of emergency and risk management guidelines, processes, manuals, training, etc. But, owners and manager need to understand that creating and documenting alone does not mean the objectives of risk management and preparedness have been fully met.

In order to “Go the Distance,” professional owners and managers must also:

• Effectively share and make the information available throughout their organization-  This means that it cannot exist in manuals on someone’s shelf, or in documents sitting buried on a network drive

• Make the information actionable

• Educate people (employees, tenants, vendors/service providers) on how to implement and ultimately execute on all of the procedures they have put into place.  You don’t want to be practicing this stuff during an actual event or emergency

This is extensive process that requires commitment, and often a partner, to help guide you and support your teams.  There is little question that effective and well thought-out risk management and preparedness plans are essential components of today’s property management reality, just make sure you Go the Distance so that your efforts deliver the Field of Dreams you’re hoping for.

Related resources you might be interested in:

On-Demand Webinar- Managing Risk & Life Safety With Effective Pre-Plans

Best Practice Definition

Methods and techniques that have consistently shown results superior than those achieved with other means, and which are used as benchmarks to strive for. There is, however, no practice that is best for everyone or in every situation, and no best practice remains best for very long as people keep on finding better ways of doing things.

~ Source: BusinessDictionary.com ~

Where do we go to find best practices? It’s a question most managers have asked themselves at one time or another.  At some point, we recognize that we don’t always have the answers we need for improving operating performance.  And with that recognition comes additional questions about where to look to get those answers.

Finding the best, and most relevant, sources for our particular problem can be challenging.  While there is no shortage of access to information these days thanks to the Internet, the volume we have to wade through can be daunting.   In addition to the Internet, there are industry associations, various publications and people we know whose opinions we trust and value.  I think one of the most overlooked sources of information on best practices is often right under our very noses, and that is the service partners that we work with every day.

We recently hosted a Webinar for our clients: “Field Service 2.0: Bringing Best Practices To & From the Front Line…Everyday.”  The webinar featured a company, UGL-Unicco, that provides facilities and maintenance services to the real estate and facilities management space.   While it would be easy to classify UGL-Unicco as a “cleaning company” at its core, that would be simplistic. They are an international powerhouse, a market leader in their space and are as sophisticated in their operations and business practices as any of the companies they serve.  They have achieved their place in the market through a relentless commitment to continuous improvement and managed the change required to support it.  They have successfully created a system for scouting  pockets of excellence and best practices from across their organization, as well as a means for sharing them with any of their clients to apply to many areas of their own businesses.

And the effort has certainly payed off.  In an industry where companies change vendors more than clothes, UGL boasts a 95% client retention rate.

The real beauty of looking to your suppliers for guidance on best practices is that it is in their best interests to help you- and doesn’t that help define what a true partnership with your service providers should look like?

The next time you have an internal discussion about process or business improvement and you are making your list of information and other resources, don’t forget to look internally and consider involving your service providers in the discussion.  Sometimes the answers are right under your nose.

“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ ~Samuel Beckett

While I don’t think the Irish writer and poet ever owned or managed commercial property, you can certainly apply his quote to what we all do in the course of running our businesses or doing our jobs.

This may be especially true now, given what the industry and economy in general have been through over the past few years. There have been some spectacular failures (Bedford-Stuyvesant anyone?).  But, there are also those who have weathered the storm well, such as Normandy Real Estate, and many signs of life are rising from the ashes and companies are trying different approaches to partnerships, financing, filling space, manage operations, etc.   In other words, “trying again.”  Not all of these attempts will be successful, the “Fail Better” part, but what are the alternatives?  This is what we do.  We move on, we try again, we fail again, we get better.

Much of the value we promise to deliver with our products and services revolves around the concept of helping our clients become “more efficient.” It’s a phrase we use liberally, but what does it mean and where is the real benefit to any organization?

Property or facility managers and their staffs need to manage and complete a large set of common, repeatable tasks on a recurring basis.  These include such things as lease related notifications, generating tenant statements, responding to and managing requests for service, scheduled maintenance, risk management processes such as tracking certificate of insurance compliance, and a host of others. These tasks are fundamental to the operation of any property, representing the blood supply for  successful operations.

The challenge for property operations professionals and their teams is finding a way to keep up with this large volume of required, repeatable tasks while reacting to the host of unforeseen occurrences that invariably pop up on a daily basis.

I recently returned from the BOMA annual conference in Long Beach and had the opportunity again to observe and listen to the things our clients deal with. Although they were away from their properties, they were constantly tied to their Blackberries and dealing with a never ending stream of unforeseen and unplanned-for events:  cut telephone lines, power outages, bad weather, crime, accidents, etc…the list goes on.  The image of the property manager as a fire fighter is one that truly fits.   But like a fireman, these are the issues that require training, experience, knowledge and skill.  They are the daily occurrences that require people, not systems and is where the effective manager and team shine.

The problems that arise out of these realities of operating and managing a building and those inevitable unforeseen events are that they constrict the time and energy available for the mundane, repeatable tasks.  These things that are necessary for a healthy property are often pushed aside, delayed for another day, and handled incompletely or inaccurately.  In addition to the fact that these tasks generally represent less than fulfilling work for any employee, the inconsistent completion and management of them is unhealthy for any organization.

The way to approach this reality is to ruthlessly automate the mundane.  Cut a 12 step process to 6.  Look at every set of rote activities you can that don’t require real thinking and use a technology solution to streamline them where possible.

Finding solutions to help you do this is the easy part. Finding the right provider to help you understand where you can make improvements is bit harder. The hardest part of all is understanding where your value and your team’s value truly lies, and making the decisions and commitment that will allow you to spend more of your time doing that. That is what efficiency is all about.

Next week, we will attend and exhibit at the Building Owners & Managers Association (BOMA) 2010 International Conference in Long Beach, CA. This is our 8^th year at the event which serves the primary market we operate in.

When everything these days is driven by a need to justify expenses and deliver an ROI, there is a lot of discussion within the marketing departments of any business on the value of attending and exhibiting at association trade shows. There is a substantial cost both in real dollars and resource focus for a company to attend these shows.  In addition to the direct costs, there are opportunity costs.  Where else could you be spending these dollars and your time to more effectively reach your target audience?  These are valid concerns that should be evaluated.

However, that hard dollar evaluation doesn’t account for the ancillary benefits you receive by attending and exhibiting at a trade show.  There are also intangible costs for not attending that should be considered, including:

• Meeting your customers in a “neutral” environment and having the opportunity to get to know them on a personal level.
• The value of having many conversations in a single place.
• Seeing what your competitors are talking about.
• Meeting and developing relationships with potential partners.
• The possible perception created by not being there.
• Hearing firsthand what the issues are that your clients and prospective clients are concerned about.

A perfect example relates to the last point and being in the “know” in regards to client and industry concerns. We know that difficult economic times, coupled with an overall emphasis on “Green” operations over the past several years,  has lead many of our clients to consider energy data management systems to help them understand and better control their energy costs.  We have worked to support that effort by sponsoring a recent Webinar presented by eSite Energy on “Energy Management Systems that Reduce Costs”  and have released a White Paper this week called “It’s all about the Data: Demystifying Energy Data Management.”  Additionally, we have partnered and integrated with companies like Mach Energy for mutual clients like Normandy Real Estate Partners to take their energy use spike alerts and turn them into actionable requests delivered to a building engineer.

All of these actions resulted from conversations and information we picked up attending industry events over the past year.

So, while the hard dollar questions certainly need to be answered and will continue to drive many of our decisions, don’t forget to consider and balance those costs against the harder to measure, but often equally important “soft benefits” of attending and participating in industry trade shows.

I do not mean winning a new customer, which is normally the primary focus of my job.   I’m referring to a recent project where we helped an existing client improve building security and a tenant service related issue, and solidified (secured) our relationship with that client in the process.   This is equally important to the health of any business…keep the clients you have happy.

The brief background on this project involves a client of ours in New York  (a very large, prestigious property) who uses the majority of our operations and maintenance platform, but was not using our visitor manager module.  They weren’t using it because they had previously installed a very expensive custom integration years before we got there that allowed their tenants to pre-authorize a visitor to the building as well as deactivate visitor passes, enroll new employees for access card activation and deactivate terminated employee’s access cards from the building’s security system. While the process worked, it required multiple applications for both tenants and building staff to use.

Additionally, the integrated configuration they had in place required the visitor system provider to make programming adjustments every time their security system provider made a change or upgrade to their system. This proved to be expensive, unmanageable and resulted in multiple system failures. – With a pending new required security system server upgrade coming, building management knew they needed to make a change and asked Building Engines to help.  Thanks to our terrific engineering resources here and a great partnership effort (which I’ll get into) we delivered a solution to the client that eliminated the need for co-managed upgrades and provided their tenants with a single application to use and a far better user experience.

…We also saved the client a significant amount of money over time by eliminating the annual cost associated with the other application.

The security system provider at this property is Lenel, a UTC Company and provider of the technology-leading “OnGuard” system. Pulling it altogether at the property was Henry Brothers, New York’s leading systems integrator.  In addition to being a complex project, what was interesting about this effort is that it required detailed cooperation from these two service providers.   Lenel & Henry Brothers bent over backwards to help us and the client achieve their objective.  The effort went so well that we joined Lenel’s partner program and they recently participated in our Webinar program and delivered an outstanding presentation free of charge to our audience entitled “Integrated Solutions for Enhancing Building Security.”  We find this kind of cooperation to be rare, particularly when the other service providers are larger and the effort doesn’t necessarily represent immediate revenue for them.  We look forward to the opportunity to work with both of them again.

While it’s great to win new business and that emphasis won’t change, helping existing clients and solidifying those relationships with this kind of effort is every bit as important to our long term health.  It’s also rewarding to work with partners who share the same values and commitment to customer care, service and quality work that you do.

Earlier this month, Building Engines sponsored a breakfast in Chicago featuring Michael Nenner, Director of Rooms at the Four Season’s Ritz Carlton Hotel as our guest presenter.  This event was part of our Executive Briefing Series which we hold at various cities around the country every quarter.  – Mr. Nenner’s presentation was titled “Be My Guest: Why Hospitality Matters in Commercial Real Estate.”

This was truly one of our better presenters and topics as Mr. Nenner provided a condensed version of the famed “Four Season’s University” course that companies send their executives to from around the world to learn about the customer service program and techniques that have made Four Season’s the brand it is and the Ritz Carlton a winner of the Best Hotel in America award 7 out of the last 15 years.

He provided many entertaining stories of “over the top” customer service as well as detailed examples of how Four Season’s set’s detailed standards for service and measures them at many levels and in great detail.  For instance, one of their most important set of standards relates to cleaning a room.  The Four Season’s room cleaning standard has 247 items!  These include the position of the note paper and pencil on your desk.  – Go to any Four Seasons hotel in the world and you will find the paper and pencil positioned exactly the same way. In addition to the training of their staff to know and perform these standards, Four Seasons has inspectors and inspectors for the inspectors. – It all represents a truly impressive commitment to quality.

The point that Mr. Nenner stressed the most and that ties everything all together is that everything begins with their people. – The Four Seasons hiring and training process is as detailed and well thought out as anything else they do. Sure , the physical property and amenities are important and they have leading systems and technology in place to support their efforts. But, they fully understand that if so much of the value of their brand is dependent on the interaction between staff and guests, then they absolutely have to hire the right people for the job. – People who are positive, upbeat, have high energy, take pleasure in service.

They evaluate people in interesting ways, beginning with the interview when the applicant is filling out paperwork; they’ll send someone into the room and observe the applicant…did they say “hello” and introduce themselves without prompting, interact with the person, or offer them assistance if the person pretended to look “lost?”   As important, if not more so, than the information that they put down in their application, it is this ability to connect with people on a personal level and the desire that makes someone qualified to work at Four Seasons.

At a time in the commercial real estate industry where so much is out of your control, and tenant retention is absolutely critical to survival; Michael delivered a powerful message that customer service is entirely within your control and can make all the difference in the near and long terms.  It takes a commitment to the creation, maintenance and measurement of standards and an understanding of the type of people you need to deliver on those and create your brand of service excellence.

Walking on the beach one morning while on vacation last week, I saw a man in the distance digging a hole in the sand. As I got closer, I realized that this man, a maintenance worker for the property at this spot, was digging holes in which to bury the seaweed that he had previously raked into neat little piles.  There was a lot of beach and many piles.

I’m not quite sure whether this would qualify as a reactive or preventative maintenance task, but I do know that it couldn’t possibly be a very fulfilling task…pun intended.

We all have “filling hole” types of tasks that occupy parts of our day and most managers are guilty of creating and assigning them to their employees.  – You know, creating the reports no one ever looks at, the manual processes that might be automated and of course, the many meetings without purpose or clear objectives.

The insidious thing about of these types of  tasks is that although they generally begin with the best intentions, they tend to gradually accumulate and lose value until like a tick, they have embedded themselves and worked to suck the joy out of our jobs and those of our employees.  Additionally, our most precious resource, time, becomes the host for these low value parasitic chores.  It’s important to recognize these types of tasks and do what we can to clean them out of our daily lives and those of our employees.

As for the resort and the poor soul filling holes with seaweed in the hot sun; assuming a seaweed-free beach is a valuable aesthetic and important to their guests, what could they possibly do?  – Here are just a few ideas:

• Provide better tools – there must be some kind of power tool that could make this job easier.
• Share the task and cost of an automated pick-up system with their neighbor resorts.
• If they are really limited to the rake and shovel method, at least make sure the chore is spread among several people.

Much like spring cleaning, periodically review your own regular, recurring tasks and those you have created for your employees.   Figure out a way to improve the way you do the ones that you still consider valuable and discard the ones that offer no real value or have you just filling the holes in your work day.

We recently sponsored a Webinar titled “Sensible Solutions for Leases During Challenging Times.” Our presenter, Larry Haber of Colgate Real Estate Advisors, spoke about Lease restructurings, modifications & workouts.  It was a very successful Webinar and was well attended by many of our clients and other commercial real estate professionals. Larry is a terrific partner for us as he both provides information that is valuable to our clients and is a practitioner of the modern approach to business that we embrace- delivering constant value and content that supports the market we both work in.

Although Building Engines’ core maintenance, operations and risk management application and service has very little to do with lease negotiation, we recognized that this is an issue many of our clients are struggling with in today’s market and the importance of offering relevant, value-added information  in any way we can.

At Building Engines, we recently  launched a new Website where we will deliver much of that help in the form of content we make available through our “Inner Circle” resource program, events and Webinars similar to the one we held with Larry.

We hope you visit our site from time to time and suggest any topics or subjects you would be interested in. We love feedback and want to continue to provide educational resources on content that you are interested in!

Additionally, if you have a need for lease issue consultation, I urge you to visit Larry Haber’s site. He offers very valuable insight and knowledge in the hope of earning your business for when you have a more specific need. He is certainly the type of provider that I would like to do business with.

Marianna Perry of the National Crime Prevention Institute at the University of Louisville has a solid article in Buildings Magazine this month about Proactive vs. Reactive Security.  The premise of her position is that business owners need to change the way they think about security (the proactive part) and do a better job of connecting policy to process.

Her guidelines for making changes to a security plan include the following steps:

1. A vulnerability assessment.
2. A cost benefit analysis
3. System tests for anything you decide to implement (hardware, processes, etc.)

This is all logical, sound advice and any property owner/manager would benefit from following Ms. Perry’s guidance and recommendations.  However, the one piece that is missing from her outline that ties everything together is effective, integrated data collection tools.

Both the vulnerability assessment stage and ongoing evaluation, post implementation of systems or processes is only as good as the data you are evaluating.

Building Engines customers use our suite of risk management tools for collecting data on visitor activity,  incident tracking and reporting, fire & life safety event management as well as certificate of insurance tracking.

The daily use of these tools, connected to the policies and procedures our clients, creates the opportunity for data-driven analysis and decision making.  No single tool or process can promise to dramatically  improve the risk profile of a property or portfolio. The best chance of achieving your goals and seeing dramatic results comes from a combination of effective and thoughtful planning and the implementation and use of data collection tools by the operations team.