A Return to the Sandbox
In a return to the sandbox, Montana State University will share how leveraging an opportunity to inaugurate active learning spaces with enhanced technology in renovations projects has led to additional innovative learning spaces in new construction.The panel will demonstrate through research and analysis, how transforming the space transforms the experience with peer-to-peer interaction and collaboration so that learning outcomes reach beyond mere recollection and achieve understanding of course content toward higher strata of application and analysis.The university’s innovative instructional spaces, such as technology-enhanced active learning (TEAL)classrooms, Makerspace, classrooms in the round, and the Sandbox, all focus on engaged learning that gives students a front-row experience with facility improvements, furnishings, and technology in response to the pedagogical shift.Assessment data of learning outcomes and student success revealed results beyond initial expectations.The presentation includes before and after scenario photos detailing the various types of active learning environments including horizontal and vertical working spaces, various levels of comfort, capacity, and flexibility.
PRESENTERS:David Singel, Associate Provost, Montana State University; Sam des Jardins, Project Manager, Campus Planning, Design, & Construction, Montana State University; Walter Banziger, Director, Campus Planning, Design, & Construction, Montana State University; Randy Stephens, University Architect, Montana State University
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Describe the evolving cultural and pedagogical changes that are affecting faculty and students across institutions today and how they impact design and maintenance of instructional spaces.
2. Take back to their institutions how and at what levels physical design and emerging technology can be integrated into pedagogical models and instructional space.
3. Understand how student success is related to innovative learning spaces, and how leadership can advocate for these types of spaces based upon social and fiscal value for their institutions.
4. Describe how active learning environments and instructional spaces that are student-centered can help an institution achieve their goals of increased student success and retention.
Big Data’s Big Impact on Facilities Operations and Organizations
The Big Data revolution is changing everything in our business and personal lives: credit cards, social media, online commerce, travel, automobiles, and more.Higher education facilities management is just beginning to see the significant impacts and opportunities shaping our work, our facilities, and our organizations. Even though the amount of information collected, analyzed, and acted upon today is staggering, we are only in the early stages of a geometric explosion of change over the next decade.The experiences of the auto industry foretell similar changes that our utilities systems and building operations will experience. We need to be ready for the embedded technology, predictive analytics, and optimization that will require the development of new skills for our existing workforce and the hiring new professionals to transform volumes of data into actionable information.
PRESENTER: Donald Guckert, P.E., APPA Fellow, Associate Vice President & Director of Facilities Management, The University of Iowa
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Gain an understanding of the driving forces behind Big Data and the Internet of Things revolution.
2. Explore the lessons the building industry can learn from the Big Data analytics that fundamentally changed the auto industry.
3. Determine how the emergence of fault detection and diagnostics is quickly moving our organizations into a more predictive maintenance mode and enabling continuous commissioning.
4. Gain an understanding the human resource talents and skills necessary to address the opportunities and challenges with the Big Data revolution.
Branching Out—Growing Employee Talent
In August 2016, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Facilities Planning and Management Department (FP&M) hosted a career resource fair for front-line staff with the goal of increasing employee engagement and retention. The event was a multilingual, multishift program designed to provide information about career advancement tools. The information presented included training resources, tuition reimbursement, English advancement, and job opportunities. Thisresource fair consisted of a series of breakaway sessions and an informational expo. Through the event, employees had the opportunity to learn, network, and collaborate with peers.
PRESENTERS:Meredith Smith, Recruitment Specialist for Facilities Planning and Management, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Rob Shively, Senior Facilities Planning Specialist for Space Management, University of Wisconsin-Madison
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1.Recognize the importance and the unique challenges of developing a multilingual and multishiftevent for a diverse employee population.
2.Understand the positive impact of providing front-line staff with career advancement tools.
3.Acknowledge the benefits of presenting information through a variety of methods toaccommodate multiple learning styles.
4.Recognize strategies for creating an inclusive environment for front-line staff to have theopportunity to experience and practice networking.
Building a Plan for Cleaning
Presenters are custodial managers from large Michigan universities where they have been restructuring the cleaning process to exceed the definitions of “green cleaning and high performance.”Training programs that emphasize process, followed up with enforcement of a standard, produce repeatable quality results.Employees thrive in a system that outlines clear expectations.Effective workloading that sets realistic time standards on common cleaning tasks aids in effective resource management.When the process all comes together, a high performing operation is the measurable result.
PRESENTERS:Steve Gilsdorf, Director of Building Custodial and Support Services, Western Michigan University; Brandon Baswell, Custodial Services Manager, Michigan State University
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Participate in a conversation about what high performance cleaning looks like and the importance of measuring a cleaning operation.
2. Gain an understanding of the sustainable cleaning process.
3. Learn about the elements of an effective cleaning training program.
4. Explore tips on workloading your cleaning tasks.
Building Commissioning for Life
Successful building turnover does not happen by accident. The smooth transition to long-term, high-performance operations has to be planned from the project inception and viewed as an ongoing process. Building turnover issues can often be attributed to poor assumptions, inattentiveness, or lack of a defined understanding of goals, expectations, and requirements of the building. In some instances, it may simply be a failure of communicating the specific characteristics of the project or not identifying and involving all project stakeholders early enough in the delivery process to affect change. If we can define the issue or concern, we generally can manage to a successful outcome. From the perspective of an independent commissioning authority, we can help facilitate success with lessons learned and can drive issues to resolution as required.
PRESENTER:Jeff Nichols, Vice President and Director of Engineering Services, Engineering Economics, Inc.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Explore how a proactive and collaborative owner’s project requirements (OPR) works to improve project turnover outcomes.
2. Understand why facility standards are not equivalent to an OPR and why facility operations needs an early and often place at the table.
3. Learn how to measure building key performance indicators withmonitoring based commissioning.
4. Discuss how will the future look going forward—getting to zero defect projects.
Components of an Intelligent Campus
Facilities management continues to face the challenge of doing more with less.Specific challenges include increasing energy conservation, managing additional square footage with the same or often depleted staff, enhancing the student experience, as well as planning for impending staff retirement.Technology, in the form of intelligent building strategies,is currently being pitched as a solution for these challenges.Since technology alone is not sufficient, a holistic approach is required.A holistic approach is a continuous optimization process that focuses on people, procedures, and technology.Components of this approach include setting standards, establishing key performance indicators, and optimizing building automation and computerized maintenance management systems.The evaluation of job functions such as network security and data analytics, enhanced preventative maintenance procedures, and system performance-based operator training represents an additional and equally important cornerstone.
PRESENTER:Gerry Hamilton, P.E., Director, Facilities Energy Management, Department of Sustainability and Energy Management, Stanford University
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Gain an understanding on how to leverage an institution’s existing investment in software and what are the job functions of the future.
2.Learn about the importance of information technology in facilities management.
3.Learn what abouta data master plan, why facilities need it, and why standards are important.
4.Explore the essential components of an effective facility management training program.
Condition Assessments—How to Keep Deferred Maintenance from Nipping at Your Heels
This presentation begins with a review of existing facility conditions on a campus as aresult of compounded deferred maintenance and focuses on a timeline that correlatescampus growth by decade and current facility conditions. Discussion progresses to thetypical paradigm of underfunding building renewal and the dilapidated buildingconditions and detrimental health and human-related issues that can result. Thepresentation then shifts focus to strategic resolution of these commonly occurring issues:determining the priority and cost of necessary building renewal,weighing the decision of renewal against complete rebuild, and acquiring the necessaryfunding to implement the final plan. The formal segment of the presentation thenconcludes with discussion of mitigating future deferred maintenance byimplementation of annual building renewal planning and touches on maximizingrenewal dollars by implementing ongoing efforts to optimize space usage efficiencyacross a campus. Upon conclusion of the formal presentation, a roundtable discussionwill be encouraged so that all audience members can share their own experiencesand lessons learned and thenbrainstorm ideas for strategic planning heading into thefuture.
PRESENTERS:Christopher M. Kopach, Assistant Vice President, Facilities Management, The University of Arizona, President-Elect, APPA; Henry Johnstone, President, GLHN Architects & Engineers, Inc.; Davin Wang, Mechanical Engineer, GLHN Architects & Engineers, Inc.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1.Discuss the behind-the-walls (normally unseen) results of prolonged deferredmaintenance.
2.Discuss human health and social repercussions of deferred maintenance.
3.Learn the importance of exemplifying the facility renewal planning process.
4.Review strategy for acquiring funding, lessons learned, and planning for thefuture.
Contagious Principles
Contagious principles is the result of Dave Feenstra’s desire to connect with and make the work/life experience better for the maintenance staff at GVSU. This presentation looks at the maintenance staff as a collective group having many different skills and capabilities. The contagious principles presentation is based on a three-year program that looks at the family (first year), the individual (second year), and the team (third year). The goals of this program are: first, make sure that staff members have their families taken care of; second, make sure that all staff members take care of themselves; and third, take care of the maintenance staff together as a team.
PRESENTERS:Jeff Marcinkowski, Maintenance Supervisor, Grand Valley State University; Rence Meredith, Maintenance Supervisor, Grand Valley State University
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Discuss better methods of project and workload coordination.
2. Explore ways to increase communications and garner feedback whether it be positive or negative.
3.Discuss the importance of knowing when staff members should work independently; understand the importance of empowerment in allowing staff members to make decisions.
4.Learn the value of knowing your staff and what motivates them; then you will be able to make the necessary changes or adjustments to current polies and procedures making them more productive.
Crafting Solutions by Taking Our Customer’s P.U.L.S.E.
Every two years or so we launch an “anonymous” customer satisfaction survey that yields some fairlygood but fairly general information on which we can act. To supplement these customer responses in between survey periods, we developed a “real-time,” more personalized tool that is used by managers to drive one-on-one discussions about how our services are being perceived.Titled“P.U.L.S.E,” it is also an acronym for the data topics for which we are mining data:P= performance of management, U= understand/respond to their needs, L= level of cleanliness, S= staff performance andE= everything else. This tool allows customers to tell us anything they think we should know.Join us for an informative session on the value and importance of this type of data collection.
PRESENTERS:Vibha J. Buckingham, Associate Director, University of Virginia; Sandra A. Smith, QA/Staff Development Manager, University of Virginia
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Discuss how the survey creates a tool of “conversation,” providing opportunities to continue building on our relationships with customers.
2.Learn how the survey gives customers a sense of personalized attention that an electronic questionnaire doesn’t provide.
3.Hear of success stories where responses to customers can be done fairly quickly noting what was done to address their concerns.
4.Learn how using numbers, as the responses gives us tangible metrics on which we can act and measure improvement.
Creating a “World Class” Campus
The University of Alabama’s Facilities and Grounds Departments progressed from being non-rated, to assisting our campus in being named “one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation” by myriad of entities such as Newsweek, Business Insider, Porter Briggs, Sightlines, and Campus Insider over a ten-year span.According to Dr. Phillip Waite, landscape architect professor, at Washington State, 62 percent of high school seniors make an institutional choice based on the appearance of the campus buildings and landscape.According to Dr. Earnest Boyer, chancellor of New York State University, admission directors report that prospective students form an opinion of the campus within the first 10 minutes of their arrival, and they decide whether or not to apply within the first 30 minutes.The University of Alabama leadership believes that the appearance of our campus has a direct effect on recruitment and retention of students and the branding of our school.Training, attention to detail, inspecting what you expect, and outstanding leadership at all levels have contributed to the change in culture andtransformation into a “world class university.”Every campus makes a statement.The University of Alabama’s statement is “the obvious choice for the best and brightest.”What statement does your campus make?
PRESENTERS:Duane Lamb, Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Grounds, University of Alabama; Donna McCray, Senior Director of Facilities Operations and Grounds Use Permits, University of Alabama
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Discuss the importance of writing and implementing a landscape and groundsstrategic plan for your campus.
2. Learn how implementing a landscape and grounds advisory group, landscape standards, campus master-controlled Irrigation system, seasonal plantings, tree and turf care policies, and special landscape projects can assist you in developing an aesthetically pleasing campus environment.
3.Learn how up-lighting standards can add to the overall appeal and safety of your campus.
4.Understand how implementing a means for coordinating and de-conflicting activities on campus can help you avoid embarrassing situations, while protecting your university environment and leadership.
Creating a Dynamic Capital Construction Plan
Facilities management teamed with financial services and the Office of the Provost at the University of North Carolinaat Charlotte to create a five-year capital construction plan that addresses building modernization, deferred maintenance, infrastructure, new construction, and student life.The plan synthesized elements of the campus master plan with known capital renewal/deferred maintenance to support the fastest growing campus in the University of North Carolina system.Success required amalgamation of all institutional fund sources over the life of the plan. Funding for the plan included a unique student infrastructure fee that had to be approved by the system Board of Governors and State Legislature.Buy-in from key stakeholders, including the chancellor, cabinet, Board of Trustees, students, and faculty, was key to acceptance of the plan.Plan execution required detailed scheduling of multiple of projects to meet available funding and minimize disruption to the campus. A campus-wide coordinating committee was formed to advise on execution.
PRESENTERS:Philip M. Jones, P.E., Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities, UNC Charlotte; Sherrie R. High, CPA, Director, University Budgets & Financial Analysis, UNC Charlotte; John E. Adams, Auxiliary, Fee & Capital Budget Analyst, UNC Charlotte; Chris Gilbert, Director of Facilities Planning, UNC Charlotte
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Learn how typically "siloed" organizations were brought together to develop a comprehensive plan that supports growth of the institution.
2. Learn how the university gained buy-in from stakeholders for a student infrastructure fee and other aspects of the plan.
3. Learn means and methods of communicating to stakeholders and the campus community.
4. Discuss take away lessons learned from the planning process to include scheduling and management techniques.
Don’t Leave Your Heart in San Francisco
Culled from myriad of heart-centered leadership literature, this presentation will translate those leadership styles and strategies into applicable tactics for the facilities workplace. This session will be participatory in nature. After the presentation of the material, the remainder of the session will be spent discussing the content and applying it to real-world workplace/team issues. Participants should be prepared to share within a small group (or with the entire session audience, depending on attendance) knowing that confidentiality is respected and expected during the session.