Is Your Facilities Department Becoming Leaner?

5 Survival Strategies for FMs

Has one of your peers retired or moved on and corporate decided not to replace them? Have you been asked to take on 20-30 more locations recently – most of them in a totally different region of the country? Is your Director or VP asking you for more timely, transparent updates on projects?  

At a recent tradeshow, an industry leader shared some numbers in one of the breakout sessions. With a little bit of mathematics, we were able to back our way into the fact that most facility managers are responsible for as many as 100 locations, spread across huge geographies. 

The "less is more" strategy is predicated upon the ability to push transactional responsibilities down the supply chain to your most trusted suppliers. Consultants who encourage this approach come up with the “what to do” strategy, but rarely offer a blueprint for “how to do it.” Sometimes we see the entire execution strategy dropped in the lap of the Facility Manager – literally left to sink or swim.

For the lean facility department strategy to work, there are several factors to consider:

Segment your Suppliers

What suppliers do you trust and deem capable to handle this additional responsibility? These trusted suppliers must have the reach and skill to handle increases in volume, but also expanded geographies.

Identify Activities for these Suppliers 

What tasks can you delegate to trusted suppliers? In order to make these decisions for large quantity concepts, accurate and timely information on projects is critical. Project management software can manage which projects are complete, in process, scheduled, or awaiting approval. Delegation to suppliers flows easier with well maintained processes for project management relative to budget.

Understand Budgetary Demands Affect Workflow 

These trusted vendors must possess the ability to throttle the work load in accordance with your budgetary demands. They must have the financial strength to be able to slow down when your corporate “keepers of the purse” make last minute decisions to re-allocate funds to a new system or offering. And they must also have the ability to ramp up quickly, if needed, when urgency demands faster responses, or quick budget utilization. 

Provide Preemptive Planning and Communication

 Competence is a non-negotiable. The supplier must be able to see behind the problem, adequately plan and communicate reality to you, minimize surprises, and eliminate cost overruns. For example, if your dish ring has some discoloration between sheets of stainless backing, and you are due for an equipment upgrade in that system, is your contractor preparing you for the reality that there are probably moisture issues in the wall behind the stainless that will need to be addressed after demo, and before the equipment goes in? This is difficult to accomplish by a “maintenance call center” who makes a living taking your calls and dispatching general service techs across the country.

Verify Suppliers Qualifications and Versatility

Do your key suppliers have the requisite insurance, licenses, and the ability to work in both non-union and union environments?

Are your key service providers proactively anticipating this shift in responsibility? These companies should be investing in robust project management software, and the internal processes needed to support them. They will need a quality system that ensures work is completed consistently and to your tightening specifications. Your brand is everything, and turning it over to 15 different regional providers, or worse, a call center, is becoming less and less attractive to the Brand Manager and those she reports to. The provider you select also needs robust HR processes that are constantly recruiting and training for growing demand in additional regions.

Historically, facility departments were dominated by regional Facility Managers, whose rolodex of local providers made them critical to the corporation. In those days, selecting a service provider involved ensuring they got the job done on time and on budget, with minimal disruption to operations. With the introduction of technology, and the desire and ability for brands to leave their regional footprint and expand into other areas of the country (think Wawa, Culvers, and Cooper’s Hawk), companies are expecting their Facilities Department to handle this expansion with existing resources, which requires more and more dependence on a robust group of service providers, that possess significantly more capabilities than the regional providers you have grown accustomed to using.

Are you working with a General Contractor in your Facilities Department who is built for this reality? If not, I encourage you to get in touch with an RFS® team member who is ready to assist.