Responsibilities grow for those in facility management
Facility management has come a long way from the days 20 years ago when facility managers, then called building superintendents, were tucked away in a remote corner in the basement of the building and were mostly responsible for maintenance.
Facility managers today are responsible for making workplaces a place where employees can be the most productive while keeping heating, air conditioning, power, maintenance and other costs as low as possible, said Jerry Ludke, a retired facility manager for the city of Colorado Springs and Colorado Springs Utilities, who last month took over as president of the Pikes Peak chapter of the International Facilities Management Association.
Ludke, who also managed facilities for the state of Colorado, El Paso County, Digital Equipment Corp. and Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, replaced Pam Cornella, a strategic planner for the Midwest regional of Verizon Communications’ corporate real estate unit, as president. Current and former members will celebrate the chapter’s 20th anniversary Wednesday at the Cliff House in Manitou Springs.
The chapter meets monthly for networking and education, and also hosts professional development seminars and offers online courses for members to be certified as either a Certified Facility Manager or a Facility Management Professional. The group also presents Colorado Facility Awards of Excellence to recognize owners or tenants for reducing their environmental impact, adapting buildings for a new use and using “leading-edge elements.”
Question: What is facilities management?
Ludke: Facilities management is a varied profession. A facilities manager could be responsible for maintaining an existing building or designing and constructing a new building. You typically work for the building owner and you are the owner’s representative. Facilities management departments are organizations that provide services to the occupants of a building and you have to make sure the occupants are as productive as they can be. There are many job titles that fall into this profession and you can be involved in duties as diverse as architectural design and space planning.
Cornella: The job is taking care of the facilities, the grounds and the people in the facilities. Typically a facilities manager does building maintenance and takes requests from people in the building, such as the temperature being too hot or cold or handling fire alarms. We manage space all across the country and the span of what we do is increasing. I manage property in Pennsylvania from Colorado Springs. We look for opportunities to provide cost savings for Verizon.
Q: How are facility managers making their buildings more green?
Ludke: We have been increasing our educational offerings on going green. Our members are asking us to do more and more education in this area. There has been a growing focus on getting Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Our members want to know how to apply for LEED certification and use green design, not just in new buildings, which is pretty easy, but also in existing buildings. You can reduce your environmental footprint by up to 50 percent by doing things like installing more efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems or putting solar cells on the roof. Green design is starting to take off because the return on investment is faster than it has been in the past.
Cornella: LEED certification has become the industry standard for new buildings or retrofit projects. Even if you don’t get LEED certification, you can still save your company money by using LEED-certified lighting, bamboo flooring and a lot of recycled construction materials.
Q: What impact has the recession had on your profession?
Cornella: We have to do more with less because budgets are being cut and maintenance is being deferred. We have to justify every dollar we spend.
Ludke: A company might migrate from cleaning the building five days a week to doing it three days a week. We also have seen reductions in facilities management personnel.
Q: How has the facilities management field changed?
Ludke: Twenty years ago, our chapter had maybe 30 members and there were very few vendors involved in the organization, but all of the major employers were represented — Digital, Hewlett-Packard, Cray Computer, Ampex, TRW and the city and county. Now we have more than 100 members with about a third representing vendors.
Technology has changed the way we do business. We didn’t get service requests or order supplies by wireless device 20 years ago. It has made us faster and more efficient. We didn’t have facilities management systems (software) 20 years ago. You don’t run facilities without an automated system today. These systems identify what work has to be done, what it costs to accomplish that work. You can’t lose sight that every dollar spent on facilities management comes off the bottom line because we don’t produce revenue. That tends to get lost in what we do.
Q: How do you see the field changing in the next few years?
Cornella: I look for a continued search for more efficiency and cost savings. New technology in lighting, heating and cooling will bring more efficiency because the industry demands it.
Ludke: I expect there will be more emphasis on people working at home or spending less time in the office, which should drive space requirements down, or at least space requirements won’t grow as much as they have in the past.
—
Questions and answers have been edited for space and clarity. Contact the writer at 636-0234.
