Retrocommission for a Better Building

This is an excerpt from a Buildings article.

Want to improve your building’s performance but don’t know where to start? Use existing building commissioning (EBCx) to shine a spotlight on inefficiencies and create a list of improvement options.

Whether your building is 5 or 50 years old, chances are the property has been modified over time – changes to interior layout, shifts in occupancy, or structural alterations. These adjustments can weaken performance by slowly chipping away at energy usage, water consumption, equipment life, and occupant comfort.

“The purpose of existing building commissioning is to use a structured process to confirm that the building is operating in a manner that meets the current facility requirements,” explains Paul Levy, a certified commissioning professional with Kirlin Mechanical Services, a subsidiary of the John J. Kirlin Group.

To read the full article, visit Building's website.

What You Don’t Measure You Don’t Manage: Taking the Guess Work Out of FM Performance

This is an excerpt from a Facilities Management Journal article.

At a recent breakfast briefing held at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) HQ to discuss the benefits of benchmarking FM performance, the very clear message from the speakers was “What you don’t measure you don’t Manage”.

According to the event speakers, the implication of neglecting to measure, is, at best, that you are not in a position to outline ways of improving your performance, at worst, your decision is a guess which can simply end up costing your organization more money.

Whether you are using in-house or a third party FM provider, the need to benchmark remains the same. It allows you to identify the value for Money you receive from your FM provider or to develop the business case to make any internal investment.

During the event all the speakers had a variation on the same message, to drive up standards and drive out inefficiencies you had to first know your current status, which means measure how you are currently performing. This also allows you to identify your objectives and formulate your strategy for delivering on your objectives.

The full article is available at fmjdata.com.

New Research Identifies Trust As A Business Critical Issue

This is an excerpt from an article posted on todaysfacilitymanager.com.

A new report prepared by Working Families and Lead Research Consultant Susanne Jacobs (and in partnership with Unum) has revealed not just the importance of the sense of trust between businesses and their employees in creating a high-performance work culture, but also what drives this trust and how it can be applied in a practical manner. The report, entitled Trust: The Key to Building Well-Being and Performance in the Workplace, describes the advantages of creating trust in the workplace for wider communities and societies.

The study examines the importance and influence of key external factors—work-life integration, workload expectations, and flexible working alternatives—as they relate to well being. In particular, work-life integration supported by flexible working was shown to provide a significant boost to operational performance.

Linda Smith, HR Director of Unum, says, “Given the unprecedented demographic, social and technological changes that have transformed the workplace over the last 30 years, businesses need to be smarter than ever about how they hire, develop, and retain talent. The report shows that any effective strategy needs to deliver an integrated approach that focuses on the issue of trust. By embracing flexible working, freeing up communication, and providing a balanced employee benefits package that delivers long-term financial security, firms can create a high-performance culture that delivers a real, competitive advantage.”

In the report, the benefits of a flexible working culture were shown to be equally important to both genders; they were also equally important to those with or without dependents. It also dispelled the myth about flexible working, demonstrating that there is no link between flexible working and “work centrality”— the importance employees attach to work in their life.

The full article is available on the Today's Facility Manager website.

Water Efficiency

This post is an excerpt from an issa.com article.

Americans have been blessed in the sense that, for most of our history, a shortage of water has just not been a big concern. Except for the Dust Bowl period in the 1930s and short-term droughts over the years, water has been plentiful and relatively inexpensive. However, this appears to be changing and, as it does, the shortage is likely to impact both consumers and companies, including those in the professional cleaning industry.

As far as the business implications, Marc Levinson, an economist with JPMorgan Chase, complained back in 2008 that most American companies are simply not taking water shortages or the cost of water in the United States seriously. According to Levinson, many firms filling out loan applications or seeking investors “provide a great deal of information about potential risks to their operations, earnings, [and] profits, but they don’t do an adequate job of disclosing the risks they face in the event of water shortages—even short-term ones.”

Furthermore, Levinson believes that the few companies that actually do think about water supply risks remain very shortsighted. “They figure they can truck in water,” he says. “But not only is it very expensive to truck in water, but they’ll be in competition with scores of hundreds of other [companies and consumers] scrounging to get water at the same time.”

The end result: The cost of water is going up in many parts of the country and will likely continue to go up, potentially impacting a company’s competitiveness, and in worst-case scenarios, threatening its ability to survive. In fact, many experts now believe companies closing plants or going out of business entirely due to rising water costs, water shortages, or the lack of dependable water supplies will become more commonplace in years to come.

And as the cost of water goes up, so too, will the cost for many agricultural products, including those used to manufacture green cleaning products. And as these costs escalate, those increased charges will be passed on to end customers.

The the full "Water Efficiency" article is available at the ISSA website.