a clean sweep Maximizing Expenditures Educating clients on the importance of preventative maintenance should be a priority for every facilities manager. By: Robert Owens T The largest assets of any organization are its physical and mechanical structures. Unfortunately, many property owners perceive maintenance as a secondary need, which simply isn’t true. Raising the level of commitment to these physical assets is essential to achieving long-term functionality, preventing costly repairs and creating a healthy environment for tenants. From the facility manager’s standpoint, an entire team of individuals needs to exe-cute an effective and efficient operations plan during the operational phase of the building’s lifecycle, which normally extends over several decades. By imparting valuable information to property owners, you can work together to coordinate and oversee the safe, secure and environmentally sound operations and upkeep of these assets in a cost-effective manner. Maximizing Available Budgets Often, the toughest obstacle for a facilities manager is operating on a limited budget. By using qualified and well-trained indi-viduals to manage, maintain and clean a building, however, you can create an opti-mal asset management scenario that saves money without sacrificing the lifecycle of the asset. School districts, for example, traditionally have to work around tight budgets and, as a result, officials tend to take the asset management component out of the equa-tion — thinking they’re saving money when they’re not. They often eliminate facilities manage-ment expertise to lower costs, but this deci-sion can come back to haunt them in the form of higher energy consumption, wasted spending and increased asset deterioration. These budgetary setbacks are complete-ly avoidable because qualified mainte-nance professionals can help schools in a variety of ways. Specific examples include: O,R&L achieved actual operating cost savings of $500,000 during the first six months of our contract for a client with multiple facilities on one campus as a result of re-bidding services and implementing energy cost savings measures For another client, we recommended the use of a robotic floor cleaning machine for a school district, which helped eliminate a $34,000 annual salary from operating costs O,R&L located $200,000 worth of paper supplies buried in school base-ments, distributed them to schools in the district where they were utilized and the savings were used to pay for modern custodial equipment In a new high school, O,R&L tracked work orders for 90 days and found that a significant amount of repair calls were being made due to improp-er door function for hardware that wasn’t designed for institutional use. It’s important to share these types of success stories with your potential clients because by understanding the long-term, tangible benefits of hiring a reputable facilities manager, they can avoid the headaches associated with saving a penny today at the expense of a dollar tomorrow. each task is equally important in creating a complete and successful maintenance management program. For example, a janitorial services philos-ophy dedicated to a more thorough clean-ing process and continuous improvements will have a positive impact not only on the longevity of assets, but also on the health and productivity of occupants. At O,R&L, we cut operational costs in our clients’ buildings by an average of 15 per-cent to 20 percent, which is all driven by having the right technical staff to coordinate the process and train people to clean prop-erly and use energy management systems effectively. Our strategy: Constantly integrate new approaches to managing labor and educating occupants about energy conservation. Taking into account the unique nature of each facility, we’re able to come up with specifications needed to maintain the build-ing based on manufacturer’s recommenda-tions for every element, including carpets, floors, walls, windows, doors, fabrics, heat-ing, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units and more. Such attention to detail serves only to benefit the client, who can realize signifi-cant long-term cost savings by incorporat-ing a high level of expertise into their facili-ties management process. CM Managing A Thorough Process In the facilities management business, Robert Owens, co-founder and president of O,R&L Facility Services, has more than 22 years of experience in the real estate manage-ment and construction industries. Under his leadership, O,R&L has become an industry leader in facility management, property management and janitorial services for properties and companies. 56 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • November 2010
CMM – Archives Nov 2010: 56
