Assignment Task
Activities
Throughout this Study Guide you will notice a range of activities. These are intended to contribute to your learning by encouraging you to be active and involved. None are compulsory. They are intended to help you to learn but are not part of your formal assessment.
Facility practice and procedures
Managing a facility is more than making sure everything runs smoothly. In today’s competitive marketplace, sustainability is the buzzword. So how do you manage a facility, meet the sustainability expectations of the marketplace and keep the stakeholders happy with the economic bottom line?
Assessing current practices
In 2001, BIS Shrapnel estimated that the overall cost of maintaining infrastructure, non-residential buildings and industrial facilities in Australia amounted to $20 billion per year.1 This is a huge cost to the investors that has to be recovered from the users of the facilities.
So, how do you make changes to the cost of running a facility? It is clear that until you challenge this question, nothing will ever change in your facility, let alone its running costs. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, ‘If you want a different outcome, you have to do something differently’.
In the Facilities Management world, substantial change is usually not simple or ‘painless’. Don’t be surprised if changing is not easy, especially in a company with a change resistant culture (i.e., the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ company). But as professional Facilities Managers we must learn to navigate both operational and political minefields in order to ‘sell’ the change by providing the Executive with a compelling argument that by changing, the company can reach its objective of reducing facility running costs. The motivation for the change will come when the ‘pain’ of the change is less than the ‘pain’ of staying the same.
First, the starting point is to firmly cement in your mind that addressing running costs of a facility can only be considered in a ‘whole of life’ view of a facility. In other words, we need to examine the life cycle of the facility from the day it is acquired to the day of its disposal. Keeping life cycle costs as low as possible is a key factor to remaining competitive in the commercial market.
The lifecycle of a Facility consists of 4 key parts:
1. Procurement: whether, why, what, how and when to buy / acquire it
2. Usage: how, where and when to use it
3. Asset Management: what, when and how to manage and maintain it
4. Waste Management: who, where and when to dispose of it. The next step is to assess your current practices in each of the life cycle steps.
Lifecycle management (LCM)
Lifecycle management is a strategic management system that identifies the social, economic and environmental impact of a product or service at each stage of its life from design or inception to disposal. An LCM is not a replacement for an Environmental, Risk or other Management System (EMS), but rather can be run in conjunction with an EMS to improve the sustainability of the facility.
What is a life cycle?
The life cycle is all the activities that go into making, selling, using, transporting and disposing of a product or service. In Facilities Management, LCM can be applied to all products and services that are utilised by the facility. By being better informed as to the social, economic and environmental impact of various products and services, Facilities Managers are able to make more informed decisions on which products and services to purchase and use. To do this, Facilities Managers need to work closely with suppliers and engage them in LCM initiatives.
Case study
Assume a new facility will have an estimated useful life of 30 years. The facility has an LCM system in place and the life cycle of all assets and products coming into the facility have been assessed. The owners are assessing which refrigerators to put into the facility. They have two options, firstly, a refrigerator with a 2.5-star energy rating and an expected life of 8 years, or a 4-star energy rating with an expected life of 15 years. The price difference between the two refrigerators is $300, with the first being cheaper.
In this case, the owners of the building may decide to buy the more expensive refrigerators, as the long-term savings in energy and replacement costs will ultimately save money. The reduced energy consumption and savings on waste to landfill of using one appliance in 15 years rather than two, ticks the boxes for sustainability and environmental responsibility
A useful approach to problem-solving any gaps or inefficiencies is the following five-step method:
1. Identify the problem, gap or inefficiency–what is known, what are the givens, what are the assumptions, what other things impact on this situation, what other things does this situation impact upon, what are the issues, and what are the concerns. If you are solving this problem with others, you should brainstorm these questions and jot down the responses.
2. Analyse the problem–there are a number of analytical tools, such as a function diagram or cause/effect diagram, that are very useful here. Essentially, you seek to understand the causes of the problem, who is involved, and what the outcomes and effects are. Again, if you are working with others on the analysis of the problem, get a brainstorm session going and note the responses, say, on a whiteboard.
3. Create ideas–this is another brainstorm session which encourages people (yourself if you are working on this alone) to call out whatever comes into their mind, however bizarre. It is often the odd idea that leads to the desired solution. Again, just get the ideas down without judging them.
4. Assess ideas–Now you can encourage people to start considering the ideas put forward–some of which we know will be discarded because they were over-the-top–but others will be worthy of merit. In the first pass, you identify each idea as being worthy of further consideration or not. You may make two or three passes before you agree the ideas that you wish to take forward to a solution.
5. The fifth step is development–Here you take the ideas (plus any others that have formed along the way) and develop potential solution/s. You may develop more than one potential solution; in which case you will judge the merits of each before coming up with what you agree is the optimal solution. If someone further up the chain has to decide on the solution, you may pass the options to them plus your recommendations for their consideration.
Improving current practice
Facility management and planning is a collaborative activity. Planning to implement improvements should occur in consultation with any clients, management and staff to ensure that the functional operations of the facility are not disrupted (or cause the minimal possible disruption) during the process.
For example, an implementation plan can outline your recommendations for particular functional areas (e.g. check circuit breakers on the weekend when the machine is not running).
This ensures minimal disruption to operations when the plans are implemented and those who are required to provide approvals for the actions being implemented can see how each improvement can enhance the organisation and its daily operations along with the details of each action. When developing the implementation plan, the Facilities Manager may also need to consider, and if necessary, liaise with, other stakeholders including government bodies, community groups and environmental groups as part of a stakeholder needs analysis or simply outlined in your implementation plan.
Question
1. The best way to monitor current use of resources is through an audit. What are the two ways this can be conducted? Select all that apply.
- using stakeholder feedback
- in-house
- checklists
2. To evaluate the current workplace practices against the information obtained regarding current trends you will need to access and review workplace policies, procedures, strategies and records including those detailing:
- Budgets and financial plans
- Plans and specifications relating to refurbishment and capital upgrade of plans for the maintenance of assets, plant and equipment
- Procurement including engagement of consultants and contractors
- Work, health and safety
- All of the above
