The concept is based on a straightforward assessment of five questions with associated competencies to target for further development:
This month’s post takes a look at step one, reviewing organizational structures, facility management policies, and the all-important step of maintaining a complete and accurate inventory of facilities (and their inherent systems and assemblies).
We hope you’ll follow along in the quest for high performance!
Every journey has to start somewhere, so the road to high-performance for facilities managers starts by answering the question, “What facilities am I responsible for managing?” As basic as the question seems, we’ve been surprised by the number of times our clients have engaged us to complete this essential first step.
Reasons usually include:
Before we take on the policy and organization competencies, let’s dig in to the inventory problem – it’s really the heart of every facility manager’s responsibility these days. The initial response to this question is to do an assessment to determine inventory.
However, the modern definition of inventory has expanded to include the following:
As their experience progresses, facility managers are typically “rewarded” with more responsibility. The process also requires some leadership on their part – they need to take on setting the department’s organizational scope and scale in order to address how the work gets done.
This calls for assessment questions, such as:
The response to that last question will not only help to shape the facility organization, it will also be key to identifying the policies that need to be in place to ensure the work is done effectively and efficiently.
Other questions to ask on this policy competency include:
With the completion of this first step in the maturity model, the facility manager will have already identified opportunities to achieve high performance with the inventory, organizational design, and policies.
That concludes our post for this month. In the next post, we’ll move on to step two, focusing on the competencies facility managers can use to improve decision-making: processes and systems. We hope you’ll join us for that next month!
If you missed the introductory post, click here.