
The Next Evolution of Tenant Service
Building Engines announced its plan to release its Operations Performance Management (OPM) system at BOMA’s Every Building Conference & Expo in line with the events theme of “achieving high performance through innovation.”

Work Order and Asset Documentation in the Palm of Your Hand
According to Michael Crowley in his article Handheld Computing Devices Improve Managing Work-Order Data, what businesses were not planning for, however, was for handhelds to merely speed up the collection of poor-quality work-order and asset data collection. Even then, data was only coming to the companies who were using handhelds regularly.

Maintenance Mania Reveals The People We Need
What can you accomplish on-the-job in two minutes? Local maintenance supervisor, JP Davis can control test a deadbolt key, replace heating coils and drip pans on a stove, install a ceiling fan and carbon monoxide monitor, covert a toilet to a water-saving dual flush system, and replace valve stems on bath faucet. In 2 minutes, 11 seconds. And he calls that “a pretty good time.”

The iPhone Turns 5! Leaves a Wake of Changes in CRE
On June 29, 2007, Apple released the first iPhone to the public. People gawked over the innovative touchscreen interface and quickly became mesmerized by the ever-growing number of apps that work to ease everyday tasks… or help procrastinate from them.

New Webinar: Introducing Operations Performance Management
If you are using a traditional work order system (or no system at all), you aren’t positioning yourself to perform at the level your tenants expect and demand. Watch now to see how Building Engines has moved beyond traditional work order systems to the next generation of software that enables you to perform, not just work.

How Well Are You Meeting Your SLAs?
So your company signed a ho-hum SLA with your tenants. It outlines the level of services that are expected and details around your company’s standards to preserve and maintain the property and its related services to the occupants. You’ve set the parameters of your responsibilities and deliverables and the tenant is reassured and content to enter an agreement. Sounds like the basis for a good and fruitful partnership, no? Not if you can’t guarantee all those services you outlined are being met.

Are Your Response Time Metrics as Accurate as They Should Be?
In order for a response time report to be truly representative of what is happening in the field, the engineer overseeing the work order needs to be updating it in close proximity to their actions. Unfortunately, teleportation still hasn’t been invented [NASA, what have you been up too??] and in the real world, property managers frequently bear witness to a complex work order progressing from new to complete in a matter of minutes. This should raise a flag redder than Turkey’s.

Buying a Building Operations System? You’re Thinking About It Wrong
You have the right idea, but you’re missing a key component to achieving your desired business outcome. The key stone to top-notch property and tenant management is not the system. It’s the service. Here’s how to think about buying a vendor, not a system.

10 Steps to Simple Benchmarking
I recently wrote about the basic principles and objectives of Benchmarking. In particular, proposing that a simple definition of benchmarking is to compare your current results from a procedure, task or process, against a standard. While there are many complex benchmarking strategies you can employ (Six Sigma, TQM, ASQ, etc.) for most organizations, those are […]

Green Jobs are Good Jobs
The U.S Commercial Office market is suffering unprecedented vacancy rates which are expected to hit 18.6% in 2010 – close to the historic high of 19.3% set in 1990. We are facing a “jobless recovery” as employers focus on workforce efficiencies and try to do more with less…or fewer. Arthur Jones, Senior Economist, CBRE Econometric Advisors […]

A Successful Climate Bill Means More Jobs!
I am particularly interested in the new climate bill that is before the US Senate. It’s called the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” – which is a mouthful, even from a bunch of American politicians. Before I’d finished reading the title of the Act, I knew someone had flipped the dial to the […]