Institutions of higher learning have been embedded in human history for thousands of years, initially educating society’s privileged. Buildings were elegant stone or crude structures, but their teachers made marks on history. We know people by name, but most facilities are lost in antiquity.
 South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Photo: University Public Relations at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology |
In the 17th to 19th centuries, colleges were singular in purpose: to educate students (mostly male) in classical subjects. These involved classrooms, a few sports fields, living quarters and occasional science labs. University architecture migrated from Europe to North America during those times to support this narrow mission. What campus doesn’t have an old main with turret towers, drafty windows and squeaky stairs?
Institutions were primarily driven by traditional education methods: lecture, recitation and study. Even labs were teaching types with biology samples, microscopes, geological rocks and/or bubbling liquids over a Bunsen burner. Faculty offices were sequestered in classroom facilities or nearby homes. Campuses were often natural, forested or grassy.
Mission changes
This picture, in most settings, has significantly altered—due to the expansion or insertion of new facilities, but mainly due to a multitude of changing missions. These evolved complicated roles for the facility managers in charge of these physical environments.
Consider the space program. If it had to design a ship which was to orbit Earth, journey to Mars, fly by the sun and jaunt to the outer planets, multiple requirements would pull the design in many directions. These diverse missions would be almost technically and economically impossible to achieve in one spaceship. But that’s the situation higher education (HE) finds itself in today with their facilities and services.
Many changes occurred in America with the GI Bill after World War II, which brought veterans by the thousands to campus. Society ramped up its expectations of needing a college sheepskin to succeed and there was a significant increase in baby boomer students. Government and private funding established facilities and programs that transformed most universities’ functions, physical assets and lives.
Why are facilities so important in the HE world, requiring both increased capacity and new capabilities?
- Growth of multiple fields of study and degree levels offered.
- Competition for funding from many sources.
- Recruitment of first-class faculty and quality students.
- Demographics changes and societal expectations.
- Impact of EHS (Environmental, Health and Safety), ADA (American’s Disability Act), EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and other codes/regulations.
- Emergence of sustainability and public accountability.
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Diverse demands
Consider how traditional college buildings have evolved due to the following drivers and how they shaped changes in the facility management profession managing them:
Classrooms: Multiple sizes, many audio-visual tools, wireless laptops/tablets, team and individual projects/assignments, extended hours, distance learning and
new teaching methods.
Labs: Heavy-duty research, multi-disciplinary research and development, integration with instruction, intense instrumentation, computerization/automation, safety/environmental and funding requirements.
Meetings: Lecture halls, conference rooms, after-hours usage, seminars and workshops, student resource centers, campus and non-campus utilization and global connections.
Student unions: Public usage, charge-outs, food service amenities and options, socialization/recreation centers, book/gift stores and year-round business.
Residence halls: “Home away from home,” non-traditional students, safety and security, summer conference housing and personal/family expectations.
Sports: Larger and more complex, multiple types of sports, public relations center for city and alumni, income sources, crowd management and variable utilization.
Higher education facilities also have significant roles to play in other vital areas:
Attraction: For students, faculty and funding, it’s a competitive world. To obtain highly-qualified people, buildings can make or break acceptances. Lab funding may depend on facility performance. Parents eye residence halls critically and all facilities play a role in student recruitment. Appearances are important.
Budgets: They are squeezed as traditional funding sources tighten down and/or dry up completely. It’s different for public versus private funding. Alumni may generously donate millions for a new building, but none include money for operations and maintenance (O&M) or major repairs. Each new facility has long-term impact on expenses and capital for university budgets.
Public perceptions: These are about safety, social responsibility, student rights and asset stewardship. Neighbors challenge unsightly conditions, parking, new architecture and noise. HE must emphasize LEED® buildings for be challenged.
| FM megatrends |
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IFMA recently updated critical trends that heavily impact facility managers, with expected changes to the profession and challenges for practitioners. Some are particularly vital for HE and the loads will not diminish: Linking FM to Strategy: Facility managers are moving from solely services to integrating their roles with university strategies. These drivers are critical to precede master planning, projects and operations. Linkages are financial, operational, architectural and complex. Emergency Preparedness: HE has difficulties with emergency planning/response due to the nature of campus buildings and students. Hours and activities are quite open and many doorways invite penetration. Recent campus tragedies highlight needs for both prevention and reaction. Emerging Technology: HE is aggressively wireless. It’s not unusual to see students gathered in a student union, courtyard or laboratory. They’re using laptops/tablets to record notes, do simulations, send e-mails or solve problems. These advancements will evolve how courses are taught, if Web resources will replace books, how labs collect/analyze data and how students live with their proximity cards. Broadening Diversity: The campus is a mirror of our newer generations whether they involve differences in ethnicity, gender or age. Non-traditional students are increasing in number and female students are now the majority. Continuing and distance education bring experienced and savvy students to the classroom. Attitudes and motivations are different. Aging Buildings: Campuses struggle with old buildings; deferred maintenance has grown into billions. A 150 year-old facility may be a historical landmark, which is tough to maintain, but impossible to demolish. Condition monitoring is key, with a dynamic database for capital/expense planning. New buildings are constructed with cost constraints, which affect lifecycle decisions and compound operations and maintenance. |
Customer-driven
Given a multi-headed-hydra mission profile, HE facility managers can capitalize on leverage. If human costs are 85-88 percent of the total budget, the facility-related cost will likely be the balance. Leveraging 12-15 percent to maximize people productivity then becomes a significant philosophy driving facility managers. This affects how organizations are set up and are deployed—as well as to how multiple services are to be delivered in a complex environment.
Universities (and other sectors) are learning that a customer-focused operation has inherent advantages when dealing with multiple missions and fragmented user groups. It’s not just one building with different types of occupants; it’s an entire campus with diverse buildings, often with multiple user characteristics. Rather than aggregating customers and buildings unnecessarily, HE facility managers are viewing their clients as discrete markets. This positive experience helps facility management to better position the second largest campus cost to leverage the first.
Imagine a spreadsheet with building types across the top and service metrics (time, quality and cost) down the side. Within a facility type, there may be sub-divisions of different user groups as well. When this approach is used to gather information about user needs (versus wants), there will be common threads and distinct differences. This process is iterated with users and providers until reasonable service level agreements (SLAs) are arrived at. If a service cannot be provided by campus staff, this same SLA can be used for effective outsourcing.
The second approach to being customer-friendly is the contracting process for major repairs or changes. When facility managers meet users about the request, it’s an opportunity to establish an agreement as to when the task will be completed and for what cost. For instance, no one drops a car off to be serviced with keys and a credit card saying, “Why don’t you work on it for a while, let me know when it’s done and just charge it.” Why should end users expect any less? A similar get-together with customers to verify satisfaction after a large job is also a service delighter.
Customer-smart tools
These are a few tools achieving good results in servicing multiple missions:
Staff deployment and training plans
Demographics is hitting HE facility management—especially with long-experienced trades and technical work-forces reaching retirement age. Hiring is more problematical as people numbers and abilities are shrinking. Some universities have constraints with outsourcing, which further exasperates job balancing. Knowledge about systems in old buildings and informally getting things done are added losses when employees depart. In addition to supply situations, skills gaps need development, which is a time and cost investment that may be lost when trainees are recruited away. This suggests that successful HE facility managers will ensure that a staffing plan is supplemented with sound training. There may also be opportunities to outsource hard-to-justify skills such as elevator or fire alarm testing. A facility management organization might consider the pros and cons of deploying service teams by geography to better serve end users. Finally, training for many facility managers takes on elements that are non-technical (writing/speaking, problem-solving, diplomacy). This is in addition to those in advanced controls, computerization, CMMS utilization and predictive maintenance.
Workflows and CMMS
It’s an intriguing exercise to gather facility management providers and end users in a room and map out processes such as work requests. In HE, there is often a lack of education or even interest by users in the intricacies of FM—any work processes must consider that. CMMS can be misguided by multiple entries for the same job, as users hope one is a hit for a desired response. Lab faculty might go to a hardware store to keep their graduate students gathering data. Both groups will benefit from a credible work process. Revamping key facility management workflows for internal activities and external presentation is critical. Similarly, a CMMS should be tailored not only to being end user-friendly, but also facility management-efficient. Systems don’t exist that simply consist of buying, installing and turning on. They have to fit desired workflows and reporting. This requires staff with both facility management and information technology backgrounds to implement them successfully.
Metrics
It is interesting to note the difference between metrics for internal facility management efficiencies versus external user effectiveness. It is like keeping “two sets of books.” An internal one measures how well facility management does in several facility dimensions—including costs-per-square foot. The other ledger tracks metrics that users watch, such as lab turnarounds, job completion to contracted time/cost and overall customer satisfaction. While we are stewards of internal metrics, users significantly judge us by external statistics. A finishing touch is to display key results for end users electronically or in the facilities they use.
Marketing and communications
One has only to review several HE Web sites to see how many good facility management tools and approaches are being used. They stress easy access for users’ inputs. Information is proactively and generously shared, and user connections with facility management people are visibly stressed. Good Web sites lead a casual user to satisfaction. Both horizontal and vertical communications are also becoming more critical for HE facility management, particularly with dispersed staffs and service teams. Despite reliance on e-mails and phone calls, face-to-face engagements are more effective with a trades-intensive organization. Facility managers in operations must communicate thoroughly with project management teams, environmental health and safety staff, campus leadership and other stakeholders too.
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Top-notch facility planning
Higher education represents a country’s future by educating its people—young and seasoned—to develop new skills and knowledge and enhance those that exist. A campus environment and its extensions demand top-notch facility planning and user-smart services—particularly with multiple missions. For this journey, facility managers must maintain best campus traditions and adapt optimum tools and practices for the university future.
Their goals have to be truly customer-driven. Will there be 100 percent satisfaction? Not likely. However, these types of philosophies, approaches and skills will bring delight to most HE users and satisfaction to facility management providers. To fulfill this role, facility management leadership is essential, requiring strong assertion to change while thriving in the crossroads of communications. Confronted by these multiple missions, HE facility managers continue to serve many, often and well.
About the author
Dr. Doug Aldrich spent 18 years in facility management with Dow Corning, after varied technical and management jobs with them. His global responsibilities with laboratories included design, construction and operation. He has been active with universities in many capacities including strategy, recruiting and consulting. He is a CFM® and IFMA Fellow and served as IFMA chairman from 1998-1999.
Aldrich is also a member of the Information Technology Council and Research and Development Council of IFMA.
