Defining the facilities manager of the '90s.

Defining the Facilities Manager of the '90s

The early 1990s are clearly the years in which Americans anticipate great change: After the spending, lending, and building binge of the previous decade, it's time to hunker down. With the nation's economy limping along and no quick rebound

in sight (the unavailability of money is making recovery from this recession a frustrating and slow process), Corporate America is finally getting serious, promoting a back-to-basics campaign for all to embrace. Perhaps the biggest change in business today can be found in the commercial buildings industry, where the age of the facilities manager - a person or department charged with nurturing building systems, productivity levels, and asset performance all at once - has definitely arrived.

Just what is a facilities manager? Though someone has yet to come up with one all-encompassing, universally accepted definition, experts in the commercial buildings industry agree facilities management is a little bit of a lot of disciplines - all pertaining to the effective, efficient, and return-producing management of facilities. Confused? Here's something else to consider: Within this realm of facilities management - truly just coming of age at a time when Corporate America is doing inventory and cleaning house, so to speak - tasks and responsibilities differ depending upon facility type. To further cloud attempts to define this relatively new field (12- to 15-years-old by some people's estimation), not all professionals with the title "facilities manager" do what their job title implies. Even more baffling, some people directly responsible for facilities management don't have a "facilities manager" title at all. So who's on first?

That's precisely what the Building Owners and Managers Institute (BOMI), a not-for-profit, Arnold, MD-based corporation providing adult continuing education to the commercial office buildings industry, tries to determine through detailed student enrollment forms for any one of three facilities-related designation programs: Real Property Administrator (RPA), Systems Maintenance Administrator (SMA), and Facilities Management Administrator (FMA). According to Antoinette (Toni) Cassidy, BOMI's vice president of Marketing, the vast number of job titles to choose from on the enrollment form (BOMI tracks what job title each enrolling student declares for any program) reflects the still ambiguous area of facilities management as it relates to job description, title, and responsibilities, and how these factors interface with BOMI's designation programs. Among the titles: owner, partner, director of Facilities, director of Property Management, building manager, building engineer, space planner, facilities manager, chief engineer, asset manager, or other.

Out of 541 recent enrollment responses spanning all three programs, here's how the students - all involved at some level of the facilities management hierarchy - describe their job functions: For those registering for the RPA program, the most common job title is "building manager" (183), while the second most common selection is "other" (180); among the SMA respondents, the most popular title is "building engineer" (160), distantly followed by "facilities managers" (23); for the FMA designation program, the title "facilities manager" ranks number one (72), followed by "other" (55) and "building manager" (40).

Apparently, this disparity between titles and responsibilities is a major part of the debate over what is actually involved in facilities management. So back to the question at hand: What is a facilities manager, and, perhaps more so, what will help define this burgeoning profession? "If in print the same words are used consistently to mean the same thing, that will in time make the definition," Cassidy says, adding that Corporate America's increased recognition of the value of its collective real estate holdings is helping to put greater emphasis on the facilities management profession. "As things [in the economy] tighten, the role of the facilities manager becomes more and more important because that's one of the ways organizations can save money - through the wise use of space, and when the inevitable churns happen, that it's handled most efficiently."

The history of buildings and

management

Prior to a heightened awareness of the benefits of facilities management, however, Corporate America wasn't so savvy when it came to its real estate holdings. The critical role of today's facilities manager can historically be traced back to the days of the building or property manager, typically either employed by a building owner/developer (generally responsible for the effective management of one building), or a fee-driven management company. "Property managers had to spend a great deal of time getting the property management profession established. Over the years, property managers worked for owners, developers, or fee management companies. With the advent of facilities management, it's another evolutionary step in property management. ... The generally accepted accounting principles do not provide for buildings to appreciate, yet we all know that buildings do appreciate. Therefore, one of the bigger jobs that has become facilities management-related is the whole area of asset control," says Tricia Weller, BOMI's director of Communications.

But just as building or property managers had a difficult time establishing their profession, so too will facilities managers. "With the evolution of the [phrase] facilities management, we're going to have the same problems for awhile that the original property managers had," Weller points out.

What facilities managers of the '90s have working on their side is education, something Weller says was sorely lacking in the early days of property management. In 1908, when the Chicago Building Managers Organization was founded (now Washington, D.C.-based Building Owners and Managers Association [BOMA] International), there were no educational opportunities available to hone one's skills as a property manager, which ultimately contributed to the formation of BOMA (it underwent a few names changes prior to its current title) as a means of discussing and exploring the building management profession. "There was no base of education; you couldn't go to school to become a property manager like you could to become a doctor or a dentist," says Weller.

Recognizing the tremendous growth of the building management field over the years, LeRoy Varner, a BOMA member for 40 years, founded BOMI in 1970. According to Weller, one indication of the increased educational level of facilities managers today can be found in BOMI's FMA enrollment statistics: FMA students are not only mostly 4-year college-educated, but many have done graduate work. In addition, they have about twice as much experience in property management when they begin the FMA program.

How facilities management

was born

A number of factors figured heavily in the evolution from buildings to facilities management, not the least of which are technology and a vastness of real estate portfolios. Different from days gone by, present-day facilities managers must perform a variety of responsibilities ranging from ensuring smooth building systems operations to space planning to increasing returns on real estate - most recently, lo and behold, for Corporate America's newly discovered asset. Today, facilities managers can not only manage the building which their company occupies, but a whole host of facilities in various states of construction. "In my mind, facilities managers manage property for corporations whose main business is not their property (real estate) - it's something else. So a facilities manager's responsibility centers around maximizing the use and value of facilities that are not the primary sources of income," says Sarah Lewontin, director in charge of Research for the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) based in Houston, and area manager, Real Estate, in the Seattle office of US WEST. "In other words, facilities managers are there to support other sources of income."

As part of her responsibilities for IFMA, whose international membership now totals 10,426 members, Lewontin says research is aimed at getting information to facilities managers to assist them in job effectiveness. For US WEST, Lewontin is in charge of planning, acquisition, and disposition of properties for five states (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Utah), which total 12.7 million square feet in approximately 1,600 facilities.

Though Lewontin disagrees, facilities managers do not solely plan, renovate, or manage facilities that belong to owner-occupiers. Somewhere amidst the facilities management mania, there still lurks someone working directly for owners/developers of multi-tenant buildings, and he sometimes calls himself a facilities manager. So the differentiation, it seems, has to do with whether the building is the prime source of income or a facility to support (house) another source of income - and it depends on who you ask.

Focusing on dollar value

Ten years ago, the emphasis in facilities management was on energy management; now, to the delight of many, the emphasis is on dollar management. So much so that successful facilities management requires a tremendous grounding in finance. Hence, the birth of yet another of the facilities manager's responsibilities: asset management. "Facilities are taking a critical role for many corporations in determining their cash position... Because of that attention, more and more companies are recognizing, on an ongoing basis, their ability to use facilities as a potentially liquid asset," says Lewontin.

What does this do to the big picture in Corporate America? "[A facilities manager's] goal is to make a |home for productivity' so that the people who work in that building can achieve their mission - the primary goal of the corporation," says Larry Jacobson, president of BOMI. "The trick is to help them achieve that mission and still get some respectable return on the real estate asset."

As such, the facilities manager's role is two-fold: He has to ensure an office environment conductive to productivity, while minimizing the overhead costs to keep the building operating. Ultimately, Jacobson says that he believes the destiny of facilities managers will be to report to the treasurer of the corporation. "... It's gone from a job of merely housing employees to a job of getting a positive return for the corporation, and the guy in charge of relating that positive return to his stockholders is the corporate treasurer."

Beyond the obvious role facilities managers play in charting the destiny of properties as assets, the job title in many cases calls for a jack-of-all-trades approach to things such as space planning, renovation/modernization, building systems operations, productivity, environmental concerns, risk management, etc. By the year 2000, facilities managers could be the hottest commodity in Corporate America, colleges and universities, healthcare, government, and development/management companies.

How facilities managers

see their roles

As the facilities management profession continues to evolve, one thing is clear: The role of the facilities manager varies with building type and function. Certainly, those charged with managing owner-occupied facilities are faced with quite different demands than those of multi-tenant facilities. What separates the duties of one from another? According to Bob Mullen, western regional manager of Building Asset Management for Chevron Real Estate Management Co. (CREMCO), the San Francisco-based real estate management arm of Chevron Corp., pleasing occupants of owner-occupied space is definitely more of a challenge. "The demands that our tenants (Chevron employees) make on us [are different] than from third-party tenants. We never hear from our third-party tenants, but our family - they want more, they demand more, and they expect more because it's their space."

On the development/building owner side of the commercial buildings industry, pleasing a multitude of tenants - and keeping them happy - is critical to the performance of a property. Romanek Properties, a 30-year-old, Chicago-based real estate investment/development company is just one of many companies nationwide that regularly competes to retain tenants in its Class A office space. The key to its success? Romanek Properties, currently developing 633 St. Clair Place (a 535,000 square foot, green Brazilian granite and glass Class A office tower), manages all its properties. "Today's office tenants - people who rent and utilize space ... have become more sophisticated [and] educated in the last ten to 15 years. Poor management, in view of some of the complaints we see and hear repeatedly from people we ... bring into our buildings, is very often within the first three or four items on their list when they're dissatisfied with their present quarters," says Anthony Volpe, AIA, director of Development for Romanek Properties. "When you establish a very strong tie where your management people actually know the tenants ... you begin to establish a more personal relationship, and we have found it a very strong weapon in attracting tenants, keeping them, and getting higher renewal rates."

In years past, college and university facilities were often overlooked by presidents and boards of trustees. With land and real estate commanding so much attention during the '80s, however, facilities management has grown on the educational side of the business as well. According to Walter Schaw, executive vice president of Alexandria, VA-based APPA: The Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers (formerly the Association of Physical Plant Administrators of Universities and Colleges), the evolution is a welcome one. "Much of our emphasis has been on the dimensions of the job or skills needed to manage facilities as capital assets as a first line of responsibility. You can hire folks to do maintenance and be your [building systems] efficiency people, but the person at the top of that organization has to be skilled as the manager of a capital asset. ... We have to account for space utilization, space costs, and condition of asset as it relates to the priorities of the institution. ... Four years ago, [the issue of facilities as a capital asset] didn't rank in the top ten when presidents and boards of trustees in higher education were polled. For the last two years, it's been the number two issue, exceeded only by enrollment."

Perhaps nowhere is the art of facilities management more interesting - and important, considering American taxpayers pick up the tab - than in the skillful operation of government-owned buildings. Consider, for example, that one facilities department is responsible for the management of landmark buildings in Washington, D.C., such as the White House, Pension Building, and old Post Office Building, as well as office buildings in and around the District area. With approximately 70 million square feet of space in the General Services Administration's (GSA) national capital region, the Real Property Management division, part of the GSA's Public Buildings Service, has facilities management tasks that almost go unrivaled. Though 35 million square feet of this total are under delegation of authority to the agencies occupying these buildings - hence, Real Property Management isn't responsible for it - the remaining 35 million square feet is plenty to keep Director Jack E. Babcock and his facilities management people hopping.

Of the 35 million square feet that Babcock's division is responsible for managing, about 50 percent is government-owned (there is a move afoot to further reduce its leased inventory). In addition to managing office buildings and monuments, the Real Property Management division operates two heating plants and 7.5 miles of steam tunnel, with which all government buildings in the region are heated. Asked how he views his division's facilities management duties, Babcock says, "I look at it (being a federal employee) personally as a public trust. ... The government-owned [buildings] we have are mainly monumental [ones], in the 50- to 60-year-old category, that are on the [National] Historic Register and will be maintained in government inventory for as long as possible. So we have a dual function of not only housing federal employees in nice space, but also maintaining the building in the historical framework in which it was built."

Like others in the facilities management profession, Babcock sees education as the key to successfully meeting the future challenges of the field. "Last year, we (Real Property Management division) spent $750,000 on training; this year, I want to spend over $1 million."

And those same education demands, says BOMI's Jacobson, are true for Corporate America in coming years. "There are an awful lot of guys out there who fancy themselves moving up the ladder in facilities management that have no idea there's a huge, huge gulf in front of them for those who have not gotten a first-rate business education. ... The facilities manager who is pressured now to do all kinds of spending just to make people happy isn't the guy that's going to be successful in the future. The guy in the future is going to say ... |Happiness or unhappiness, what will be the ultimate return to the corporation?'. ... But the stress is, what's the bottom line here - where does the rubber meet the road?"