by Richard Stukey — The world of the facilities professional is changing and becomes more complex every day. Building systems today – including lighting, energy and emergency power – rely more than ever on sophisticated electronic controls. Maintenance work is planned using elaborate building information computer programs residing on laptops and iPads that rival the power of mainframes from only a few decades ago.
The new technologies are bringing exciting opportunities. They are also helping building operations and management professionals to operate commercial and government facilities in a more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. But there is a catch. The higher degree of building system sophistication means that building professionals must possess much more knowledge and training than they did up until recently.
Who is Mike Rodgers?
Mike Rodgers, CPMM, began his career 32 years ago as a maintenance mechanic at The Charles E. Smith Companies, which included Consolidated Engineering Services, Inc. (CES); EMCOR Group, Inc. acquired CES eight years ago. He “worked hard to elevate himself in the profession” and sees his focus on training “as a way to give back to the profession, and to help the men and women who pride themselves in providing outstanding service to our customers.”
For businesses like EMCOR Government Services (EGS), a subsidiary of EMCOR Group, Inc. – which provides building services for more than 70 federal agencies (including the U.S. Army Medical Command and the U.S. Department of State) and commercial facilities (such as the World Bank) – there are added complexities. Among others, there is the need to provide detailed cost data and to adhere to strict energy efficiency and sustainability requirements.
So how does an organization like EGS meet these challenges and also provide the kind of customer service that prompts clients to refer them to other organizations? One of the ways that EGS continually meets and exceeds client expectations is by developing one of the most comprehensive training programs in the industry – a training program that excels in developing skills of the trade, and then goes even further. “At EGS, we don’t just consider the cost of training,” stated Mike Rodgers, CPMM, EGS’s senior vice president of Facilities Management. “We see our training investment differently – we look at what it would cost us if we did not invest in training our people – and the cost of not training them is easily 10 times the cost of training.” He added, “The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is not training them and keeping them.”
As has been well documented, some of the potential costs associated with the lack of or inadequate training include workers’ compensation and legal, contract performance and OSHA fines if safety standards are not followed. “There is a tremendous amount of potential fallout from a single wrong decision,” Rodgers said, “and fallout can be prevented or minimized with the right training.”
A ‘Vast Array’ of Training Choices
EMCOR Group, Inc. manages a significant, cross-company employee learning program that touches many levels across EMCOR’s 75 operating companies, 170 locations and 26,000 employees – a program comprised of hundreds of different programs and addressing myriad individual needs and objectives. The program represents a major and long-term commitment by EMCOR to its employees.
A number of organizations offer some of these programs. Included among them is the Association for Facilities Engineering (AFE) and its Certified Plant Maintenance Manager (CPMM) review course, and a portion of the Safety and Quality training programs. A great deal of EMCOR’s Safety and Quality training, however, is done across EMCOR’s more than 75 operating companies by the company’s internal, award-winning team of experts.
What also sets EMCOR apart from other specialty construction and facilities services companies is that it provides employees with what Rodgers calls a “vast array” of training programs that “go beyond trade skills and includes such things as customer service and communication courses to enhance interface with our clients.”
Strategies for Success
In some cases, the training might not seem – at first glance, anyway – to have anything to do with the employee’s job description. For example, over the past two years, more than 150 EGS employees have completed a 12-hour course based on the teachings of the famous author and speaker Zig Ziglar. These courses are facilitated by Migs Damiani, CPE, of EGS, who devotes a significant effort toward training, focusing on the principles of Ziglar’s Total Quality Management (TQM): Customer Focus, Fact-Based Decision-Making and Continuous Improvement.
Although Ziglar is best known as a motivational speaker whose teachings have transformed struggling sales people into prosperous, successful sales professionals, as Damiani notes, his bestselling books and programs are as much about building people up as they are about building professional skills. “Everyone wants to be successful, both professionally and in their family lives,” said Damiani, who has taught the author’s “Strategies for Success” and other programs to people both inside and outside EGS. “The formula for achieving that success, whether in personal or professional life is: Success = Attitude + Aptitude (skills and knowledge) – where Attitude is 85 percent of the formula,” said Damiani.
Damiani believes that success in one area of a person’s life “tends to spill over into other areas of life, whether personal or professional.”
The EGS training program incorporates many of the same concepts that make up this success formula: 1) Attitude — by building up the attitude of facilities professionals about themselves and the importance of their profession; 2) Skills — through 100% Preventive Maintenance, ISO 9000, safety, CPMM and other training; 3) Knowledge — through courses like the AFE CPMM review course – designed to help facilities professionals build on the knowledge they have gained through work, expand their horizons in areas like computerized maintenance management systems, planning, indoor air quality and sustainability, and to help them understand the “bigger picture” of what the profession is all about.
Damiani added, “We’re not only interested in training our workers to do things right – we’re interested in training them to do things better.”
Doing the job “better,” according to Rodgers, means getting it done safely, on time, and with excellent customer service. The broad scope of training at EMCOR is essential because facility technicians, supervisors, managers and other employees are responsible for the cost-effective and environmentally sustainable operations of tens of millions of square feet, with equipment valued in hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Excellent communication and interpersonal skills are essential for many reasons,” Rodgers noted. “Building operations workers are skilled technicians and, with training, they improve in other areas, such as developing annualized maintenance plans and budgets. Further, training helps develop them in other areas, such as technical and writing skills, which are important because, as a government contractor, all of our communications have to be clear and concise.”
A ‘New View’ of Building Operations
Another goal of the training is to help building operations workers have more pride in their profession. “Most people have a very limited view of what maintenance people do,” Rodgers said. “As a result, very few people grow up saying ‘I want to be in maintenance.’ But as the field becomes increasingly complex, we need to continue to attract people who want to train and work hard and take on the challenge of operating complex, sustainable facilities in a cost-effective manner.”
One way to help EGS workers take on those challenges is to provide them with “success strategies” embodied in the program that Damiani teaches at EGS:
- Planning to win
- Preparing to win
- Expecting to win
The course also helps employees overcome common fears, such as fear of failure, rejection, confrontation, change and public speaking – fears that need to be overcome for facilities professionals to achieve real success in the profession.
Planning to Win
Planning is a word used continually at EMCOR Government Services. “Planning is essential for a number of reasons, including cost, safety and efficiency, and customer satisfaction,” said John Egan, CPMM, EGS’s assistant vice president of Operations, to a class of employees taking an in-house AFE CPMM review class. “We don’t want to be running around inefficiently, when we should be thinking about how best we should be doing something,” he said. “When we are doing a job, we need to ask questions such as, ‘What else should be on the list of things to be accomplished? What length of time and resources are needed to complete the work?’ That is where planning becomes so important.”
CPMM Training at EMCOR Government Services
EGS employees who participate in the AFE Certified Plant Maintenance Management (CPMM) certification program receive comprehensive building operations training on the following topics:
- Introduction and Maintenance Management
- Preventive Maintenance
- Purchasing and Materials Inventory
- Maintenance Planning/ Scheduling/ Estimating
- CMMS Systems
- Training and Work Culture
- Predictive Maintenance
- Reliability Centered Maintenance
- Total Productive Maintenance
- Return on Investment and Site-Based P&L
- Safety and Health
- Documentation/Communication
- IAQ/Water Treatment
For more information about the AFE CPMM program, visit www.AFE.org/certification
Planning is also an essential element of the “100% Preventive Maintenance” module offered to employees of EGS. A few of the topics covered include:
- What is preventive maintenance
- Analyzing how and why equipment fails
- How reliability is measured
- Effective use of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to achieve better performance
Participants are also taught how to communicate the need for preventive maintenance (PM) to clients, and how to plan and implement the PM program once it is accepted. The implementation includes selecting equipment schedules, and reviewing mechanical drawings and heating and cooling data. Tasks have to be defined and descriptions developed that include a number of variables, including safety precautions and manufacturers’ recommendations.
Starting the preventive maintenance program means “getting the support of everyone involved,” Egan told his recent CPMM review class. “It means you have to get management involved in order to secure their financial support and to help them understand the return on investment they can get from a preventive maintenance program. It also means making sure engineers and technicians are involved and have ownership of the PM program.”
Expecting to Win
“Expecting to Win” plays an important role. Taking a cue from Ziglar’s famous quote, “You were born to win, but to be the winner you were born to be, you have to plan to win and prepare to win.”
According to Damiani, this positive attitude is even more essential in a field where frustrations include challenges that can be caused both by human error and weather-related emergencies. “You cannot be successful without a positive attitude,” Damiani said. “You can’t control every situation in life, but you can control how you respond to those situations.”
Partnerships with AFE
EGS is providing AFE’s CPMM course to EGS employees, using in-house trainers, over the next two years. The CPMM certification program is now in its second decade and represents proficiency in the field. “The course is customized for EGS and covers 13 units that are aligned with the chapters in the CPMM review manual,” Damiani noted.
An open book exam of 200 questions (100 true and false questions; 100 multiple choice questions) is given at the end of the program in order to reinforce what was learned, and ensure that the employee grasped all of the concepts. EGS anticipates that more than 120 employees will earn their CPMM by Fall, 2013.
Training: The Key to Quality and Safety
Most companies these days will tell you that safety is a “priority.” What distinguishes EMCOR Group, Inc. is the level of importance the company places on safety, both in its training program and on job sites. “At EMCOR zero accidents will continue to be our enduring objective, an objective which is reflected in the actions of our dedicated management across the organization,” Rodgers said.
“This objective permeates every level of the organization, resulting in increased productivity, higher morale and a better working environment for all our employees.” He concluded, “While our incident rate is one of the lowest in our industry, as tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, EMCOR is unwavering in its belief that every employee should return safely home to their families and friends at the end of each workday. Therefore, constant improvement in safety will remain a key focus and passion for us.”
Richard Stukey is senior editor of the Facilities Engineering Journal and business development director for the Association for Facilities Engineering.