Situated in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Fenway Park is a majestic cathedral home to Major League Baseball’s Red Sox since the same week the Titanic sank in April 1912. It’s been built, rebuilt, built on top of, and retrofitted dozens of times. The seats on top of the Green Monster? They have been there for less than 25 years, but it looks like they’ve been there for a century.
If you’re looking for amenities, process flow, or world-class efficiency ratings, Fenway isn’t your ideal ballpark experience. Even with modern fits, it’s cramped, inconvenient, and can be difficult to navigate. Like many closely held businesses today, Fenway was built within the confines of a defined location and space. Improvements happened over decades, as necessary, or when resources and space provided opportunity.
Business operations, more times than not, are constructed, fitted, and rehabilitated several times and within the constraints of time, money, and/or resources. Many times, businesses are built within the confines of what building and land space was available when they needed access. We’ve asked hundreds of business owners “If you were starting over today and had the necessary resources available, would you be in this facility, and would it be set up in its current configuration?” Over 90% have followed with a version of the following, “oh no, but we were in a different place then and worked with the resources available at the time.”
How do businesses bridge the gap between available and affordable with maximizing efficiencies and productivity?
Listen, Plan, Support
Buildings, grounds, and infrastructure personnel are responsible for keeping buildings and facilities clean, safe, and operationally efficient. Facility management and maintenance is an important component of a successful operation that generally gets attention when an urgent problem requires an immediate solution. Often there are latent issues that are neglected until they become an urgent problem requiring a potentially expensive solution. Reactive response limits time, resources, and manpower availability to focus on long-term operational improvements.
What questions and information help assess your facility’s health and long-term sustainability? How do our facilities support our business operations? How does your facility support the organization and its industry reputation? Do you have established processes that create efficient workspaces and clearly understand how the operation works? Are you making facility upgrades and improvements to maintain a competitive advantage? How have you integrated technology improvements and system upgrades within your infrastructure? What kind of and at what cost facility upgrades do you expect to make over the next 3-5 years? 5-10? Is there clear communication between the owner, management team, and facility manager(s)? Do your operational initiatives match your company’s strategic objectives?
Whether you own or lease the facility/property, an owner must understand the property’s needs and requirements to operate the facility in a manner that will enhance the business’s likelihood of success in the marketplace.
Core business – how does the facility management team contribute to the company’s core business and how well do they know the business and how well do they know the team?
Standard – the baseline starting point. What’s the standard and where does the standard come from? Who are we comparing ourselves against? Are we using similar metrics and are we comparing apples to apples or apples and grenades?
Checklist assessment – a checklist of best practices, generated from the benchmark assessment to identify where and how your practices compare to the standard. A checklist will open up the org chart to assessment of any inefficiencies and log jams allowing the operation to streamline and suggest improvements and opportunities to expand or reengineer processes and procedures.
Evaluate – identify corporate priorities and assess where the checklist identifies gaps. The analysis must reflect the organization’s realities.
Change – determine necessary system upgrades and restructuring. Develop practices and training programs that are relevant and achievable.
Key Performance Metrics for Facility Management and Maintenance
Set the Standard. Establish the Expectation
- Regular review of equipment and vehicles allows the management team to properly assess budget planning for future cap ex needs to eliminate surprises.
- Regular and consistent communication with all team members according to their job responsibilities including emergency procedures, energy efficiencies, environmental impact assessment, product and process quality assurance, performance, and staff development.
- Customer satisfaction starts internally. Do we respond efficiently and effectively to customer issues, emergencies, or routine requests?
- Do you have written plans for emergencies that all staff members review?
- How efficiently do the buildings manage energy output, are we minimizing land/building expense overhead?
- What response teams are in place for environmental issues and to manage the company’s environmental impact?
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