IAMFA Benchmarking Workshop notes

Break-out Session

SECURITY GROUP

Special events, galleries, technology labor demands decrease, In-house employees, unionvs.nonunion, less people doing more, security doing maintained tasks, no more watch tours, they are doing other things, lights on lights off tour, SOPs standardized and perfecting the way we do things, regulatory requirements in Canada and UK need to be certified could increase or decrease costs according to what happens there

“Every day we get some kind of cyber probing attack.”

Increasing cameras and anticipating some of the staff

Pam Lowings: director gave us an initiative to reduce security costs. We’re tasked with doing badges

JANITORIAL – John Castle

Three in house

Seven contracted out

Key Performance indicators KPIs – harder and harder to do with less staff for checking

Staff areas getting less attention/Vendor relationships for supplies is very important - bulk purchasing is something they try to do.

ENERGY –George Langford

Reactive to PM because of funding. How can staff be more efficient, staff has ownership of their organization, have ownership of the artifacts and of the building

MAINTENANCE – Sean Dunn

Software inside of systems, costs of upgrades squeeze all that you can get out of the existing system. Had you put in the correct system before? Was the wrong system spec’d out? Right people in appropriate positions?Find out impact of wrong people? New equipment comes in, are the people properly trained? Shared equipment environments – what budget gets hit? Take a percentage from every group so costs can be draw from pool. Special event for extra costs how do you ID funding sources for that?

Account ID to process work order

Environmental Conditions – Hot Topics and Emerging Issues

  • System shutdowns/setbacks in collections storage/exhibit areas. - Jeremy Linden , Image Permanence Institution (IPI)

George Langford - what do you do with mixed medias – gun, wood and metal. Look at shutting pieces of equipment all the way off

Jack Plumb – In the UK, we’ve been working at all these issues for some time, share with conservators, look at seasonal drift, trying to expand the range of acceptable environmental settings

Linda MacMillan – something we’ve learned is, you really, really need to get to know your building.

Rich Reinert– we have a program for seasonal drift.

David Samec – be brave go ahead and shut it off and see what happens. We can hold this building from 6-8 hours. Program rolling outages. There is an impact to the equipment. We’re looking at a softer way to do that so not to impact equipment.

Jeremy Linden – over four years, there has been no problem with impact of shutdowns on equipment, fans, belts; it may not be a problem. However, if you do run into equipment problems, let’s share that information

Kendra Gastright – will hear about this later this week. Conservators privately will say set back is OK, but get them in a room, they won’t vote for it, bring it up, get consensus from conservators is necessary. Panel on Tuesday.

Cecily Grzywacz – antidotal, how much time to you need to make seasonal adjustment, similar to traveling exhibits?You do have to work with conservators.

  • Facilities/Collections input into collections space renovation and new system design. - Jeremy Linden, IPI

I ask the question, because I see it happen both ways. Design or control sequences come back from architects and mechanics designed to totally different parameters and spec. Does not match requested design –

Tony McGuire – lots of thing architects and contractors are going with besides the conservators’ need, such as Energy codes, not used to using the outside ends of large systems. Needs to be defined and extra money needed to design for more stringent T&H. They are designing for the office conditions.

Jeremy Linden – how can we improve? Is it the communications?

Tony McGuire – our profession has to understand – not a standard, but a range

Tony Young -we design systems as if they are mission critical. Design system like a data center.

Rob Waller– many collections have very different needs. Parts of some collections have very specific needs. There needs to be a dialogue back and forth with conservators. Communicate uncertainty around steadiness and system failure and how well we are prepared for that.

Tony McGuire – ideal environmental conditions for different materials, dinosaur bones, fabric, totem poles.

Rob Waller – if we take care of super sensitive items in the collection, then they will be easier to work with you on other things.

  • What is your experience with adjusting temperature and Rh set points?

Jack Plumb – seasonal drift has allowed us to make a real savings, let things happen naturally in summer; Chris Akins presentation on Tuesday

Oren Gray – At the Getty, we’re trying to get a standard. They are very strict this is what they want and this is what they now get +/- five. Have major issues when the Santa Ana winds come in and the humidity changes drastically

ChadReilly, CBT Architects – Collections have their own data loggers that are slightly different from the systems loggers

George Langford – we have good relations with curators – we put our instruments side by side and calibrate

Marc Chretien – In a smaller institution, we get feedback continually -40 +75 T in Canada. It’s a continuous discussion. There are simply some parameters that we are not able to meet and we have to understand that

John Castle– some shutdowns, some that were actually planned, move objects to a place that it would be happier.

Rich Reinert– Data Loggers – how many of us are actually sending those to be calibrated each year? Certificate of calibration.

Jeremy Linden – we build loggers, check every three years. Better than we can achieve with building sensors Rh calibration 3-4 years in typical environment. Temperature-wise doesn’t change much.

Jack Plumb – puts in sensors to space – software predicts conformity levels. That’s my KPI

Todd Keeley – redundancy - 3 or four sensors and average it out for the space.

Energy, Sustainability & Utilities – Hot Topics and Emerging Issues

  • How do you quantify ROI for LEED, BREEAM, Carbon Trust, etc. certifications? What is the real ROI?Positives: leverage funding, kudos vs. Negatives: Cost and time. -Kendra Gastright, Oren Gray, Linda MacMillan

Kendra Gastright - We were going to but it was v-ed out. We all want to do great things, and be most efficient, but there is not enough dollars to do it all. So how do we get a ROI? WE are moving in that direction so we don’t need LEED? How do we quantify?

Oren Gray – not going to pursue LEED, but we do follow LEED guidelines. We did initial certification. What we did initially keeps us moving forward w/out spending the money for new certification.

Sustainably in general – do things because the government tells you, so you get a certificate, you do it because you want to do the right things. Should be the driver, not the cert.

Maurice Evans – we all want to do the right thing,

Keith McClanahan– almost every group, “LEED inspired”

Jeremy Linden – cost of operating building as LEED?

Kendra Gastright – project 2.6 m per year to keep certification

Kevin Manalili – does not cost us more to maintain LEED cert – contractors are usually able to find ways to be cost neutral or less – other than cost of certification

Ari Harding -should not be a lot of cost unless software certification or something like that

  • Energy conservation and collections preservation, which takes precedence? Reducing energy and water use while preserving the collection - Cecily Grzywacz, National Gallery of Art

Communications, people skills

  • Proactive optimization of systems operation for energy savings/ preservation improvement.- Jeremy Linden, IPI

Working properly means working and no one is complaining, or is it operating to the most efficiency

Oren Gray – makes a differenceas to where you work and your abilities to maintain. Small – reactive Getty – do more than manufacturer recommendations

Patrick Jefferson – preserve life of equipment – use manufacturers’ recommendations as baseline and add our technical expertise to optimize

David Conine – temperature and humid changes produce email notifications that filters need to be changes – automated and daily tasks to check as well –

Marc Chretien – Heavily rely on people on the ground to find anomalies

  • Experimented with turning off all air-handling units serving the office spaces that are outside of environmentally sensitive areas during night and weekends.Resulted in using one chiller instead of two because of the greatly reduced cooling load. Because of the great amount of masonry mass in our building, we found that temperature and humidity did not drift outside of acceptable limits. During the winter, we plan to setback temperature set points in unoccupied spaces during nights and weekends. – Guy Larocque, Canadian Museum of Civilization, soon to be renamed the Canadian Museum of History*

Patrick Jefferson – curatorial wing and museum side, installed new BIM shut down curatorial building at night w/dead band that is extremely tight. Worried that drift would be too quick. By doing the test, we realized that the load was so large that the building would not swing in 8 hours. Communicated with curators. You got to know your building, test it, at the end of the day, we should all do it. Key is BAS needs to be top notch

David Samec – Why did you customize the building system (one of a kind) and not take something off the shelf?

Patrick Jefferson - Museum is a one of a kind building

Cleaning – Hot Topics and Emerging Issues

  • What are you looking at for reduction of scope of work for cost savings?

Sean Dunn – I was given a dollar amount, so we cut down staff space to once a week, still emptied trash and cleaned kitchenettes. Carpets from daily to 3x/week. Don’t cut back on periodic.

Patrick Jefferson – experiencing buildup of problems because of cuts of periodic – look at special application, which can save lots of money.

Kendra Gastright – cut back on custodial during shutdown – cut back on visitor space rather than staff areas. Target public areas for cutbacks.

Patrick Jones – the buildings were built 100 years ago – bathrooms on bottom floor in concentrated areas – gender specific cleaners – can’t send men into clean women’s restrooms

Brian Coleman – dining areas are used by upper management for meetings and needed to be cleaned 2x per day. Realized by department heads and made savings

Rich Reinert– Central location waste pickup for staff?

Kevin Manalili – we did – removed all waste containers from all cubicles – under auspices of green with little pushback

Linda MacMillan – Central bins pilot – the Custodial person took over it and that is 200 less bins she had to empty – get you’re cleaning supervisor to do your dirty work for you.

Jennifer Fragomeni – Green Systems Czar at Cal Science? – Sustainability coordinator’s job (and committee) to help with central bins

Ari Harding– remove the bins, they could have waste container and sort trash for 85% diversion rate.

Linda MacMillan – 40% to 75% diversion rate with new bin system, engage others with new process

  • How do organizations negotiate with tenants reduction of service needed to achieve cost savings? – Brian Coleman, Museum Victoria
  • How to tweak hours and keep morale up with part-time hours? Other strategies used with workforce or contractors? –Kendra Gastright, Smithsonian Institution

In-house custodial force, like working in the day, yet to do cleaning efficiently you might want to do it at night, how are you trying to do that change?

Kristy Brosius – we recently went through this and cut, unionized so entire force go hours cut

Rich Reinert– Custodians are not unionized, if you make cut, could bring in union, PR is bad on cuts

  • Lowest bidder for cleaning contract resulting in poor performance – are there better procurement models? -Todd Keeley, Patrick Jefferson, Canadian War Museum

Patrick Jefferson – poor performance – prescriptive contracts in the past. What approach, incentives can we give for better performance?

Martin Leclerc – Contractors need to look at more than square footage. This time around, I will sit down with them for 1-2 hours so they really know what we want. Focus on the details of what I am asking.

High staff turnover

Marc Chretien – try to have supervision overnight – change hours so there is a connection with the cleaners to give them a sense of pride when they do succeed. Morning hours before museum open.

Randy Murphy – contractors that work with hospitals are a good fit for museums. If some contractors work well for us, perhaps they operate in your area.

Isabelle Noraz– we have been successful in choosing contractors – use our estimation of hours. Early evening for offices so they meet people in the office, special events – special rate

Maintenance - Hot Topics and Emerging Issues

  • How do you quantify ROI for plant replacement? – David Sanders

Quantify the running costs to start with and making sure, you show payback period,

Chad Reilly, CBT Architects - As systems get more efficient, get good benchmarks for specific spaces

  • How do you capture changes made to building management systems? A door is removed affecting airflow, a thermostat is disabled, temperature is reset due to bride’s overheated mother… small changes by themselves but over the years, they affect building performance. When we discover modifications years later, we don’t know the reasons for changes. Suggestions? –John Castle, Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library

Kendra Gastright: The person who makes the change, records in system on Siemens, but they don’t. Daily reporting, monthly reporting, what was taken out of regular mode, now a ticket to take care of it? Keep getting ticket emailed until it gets done.

Tony Young - Monthly overrides or alarms

John Lyon - Set up user levels – with alarms. The ones that you can trust

  • Standards of care for buildings. Developing policies, procedures and maintenance routines appropriate to the building - Melody Fetske, Folger Shakespeare Library**

Tony Young – BOMA, IFMA others – A lot of SOPs are there

Patrick Jackson - FM Mutual – insurers – have a large PF inventory that is accessible by the public

Tony Young - (the best – the gold standard) Facility Mutual

Chad Reilly, CBT Architects – Cost of salary to write up standards, hire consultant to do it

Randy Murphy – hired landscape contractors to develop SOP – their expertise saves money

Town Hall Discussion - An opportunity to ask the group about any issue, problem or program

  • How do you quantify ROI for training?Is $4 return for $1 invested in training realistic? – Kendra Gastright, Smithsonian Institution

Certification training, admin training, custodian certification, we would love to prove a ROI on this, training I slow hanging fruit when budget cutting comes

Jennifer Fragomeni – look outside museums or facilities for training data – Apple?

Short-term hire

  • During severe funding cuts, how does the FM organization restructure to align its mission with the available resources? (What gets cut?) –Dan Davies, National Zoological Park

How do you cut without system failure?

Reduction in program, collaboration with all to make it all happen, roll back into critical, systems assessment, run to failure projections,

  • When the FM organization is struck on one end by retirements and other attrition of experienced workers, and on the other end by budget cuts and a hiring freeze, how do you avoid getting lopsided with too many of some skills and not enough of others? (Smithsonian solution may include internal resource leveling.) – Dan Davies, National Zoological Park

Tony Young – retraining someone with appetite, Sempra idem Gumby is our motto

  • Improving facilities management knowledge of collection risks beyond security, light, temperature and humidity.When infrastructure changes can adversely affect collections. - Cecily Grzywacz, National Gallery of Art

There is more than … district steam was going to treat the steam w/something bad for the collections; we started working with GSA, SI and others

  • Collection Risk Assessments: What can we measure – such as the number of (fire) sprinkler head failures reported as a function of areas covered by sprinkler protection – to calculate risk? This kind of data (including time T or RH are out of spec, and number of and collection objects found in bag searches)that could be used to establish incident rates to estimate expected damage to collections due to that specific risk. This potential benefit of facility benchmarking is one I would like to see it better recognized and appreciated. - Robert Waller, Protect Heritage Corp.

Relationship could be better we can come together by understanding the roll of collection management. Facilitates does a big part of that, benchmarking could improve our risk assessment.