Here are some of the things I’ve done or seen over the years to promote the Facilities Management department and services. They won’t all be appropriate for every environment or organization, but you should implement some of them to raise your profile and influence in the organization. Continue reading »
Sparring Partners : Outsourcing May Not Equal Partnership
Building Operating Management
My latest article was the feature article and appeared on the May 2010 cover. I took a very hard look at what partnership is and isn’t as well as what needs to change in the industry.
Continue reading »
I’ve talked about it before - how KPI’s and other measurements with rewards and penalties attached can lead to behavior you didn’t expect.
While this example isn’t from Facilities or Property Management, it does illustrate the issue quite nicely and has relevance to anyone who is measuring customer or service satisfaction in their property or facilities. Continue reading »
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 your approach to many controversial or unpopular policies. When doing operational reviews for clients, not having documented procedures is one of the biggest issues I find.
Unfortunately, if they are long and difficult to follow, they won’t achieve these results, they will only absorb your time and take up space. Continue reading »
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 passive performance measurement system. In fact, sometimes KPI’s can even drive the wrong behavior if you aren’t careful. Continue reading »
Procuring Facility Management services is not the same as buying widgets or tendering project work. You will live with the results, and the people who come along with the supplier, for the term of the contract.
This means it is just as important to get the right service and the right company as it is to get the right prices. You can’t use a technical approach to procuring your services like you would with a construction project or a simple price based process you might use to procure your office supplies. Continue reading »
Performance measures are relatively common in outsourcing arrangements where project management services are included.
Whether you manage projects internally or use third party project management, you can manage results with a good performance management framework, just like you would apply to other outsourcing company, subcontractor, service providers or internal staff.
Whether performance management is effective or not depends on the specific conditions, since measures can sometimes drive the wrong behavior and cause unintended issues.
For instance, when I was on the supplier side, we had a client who measured each project based on the % deviation of the actual from the budget after completion. For some reason, the measure was +/- the budget, so if we were under budget by more than the required %, it counted against us. It was thought up by someone wanting to measure performance without understanding their goals or understanding the nature of the business they were trying to measure. Continue reading »
Recent Comments