Earnie Leake says there's good practices, better practices, practical solutions, and they add value to the corporation.  It's a cost-effective way of achieving business objectives.  Using Best Practices improves quality of customer service, enhances operating efficiencies, improves the work environment.   IFMA has two, two day best practice seminars a year which is attended by the top 50 facility managers in the country.

Allan Baldridge, of Luminant, talked about the new directions in facilities.  Technology is allowing information to flow faster and be more accurate.  Outsourcing is changing. It's now more focused on finding partners for increase success. Space design is more cost-effective and integrated with everything. More people are hoteling and telecommuting.  If you want a good business model, cruise around at www.amazon.com.  They track customer taste and customize your browsing.  They make it very easy and create an atmosphere so that the customer wont go anywhere else. Another good best practice was the customer feedback form.  Use it often.  One of its benefits is to provide a good outlet for the customer who has a bad taste in their mouth.   A good book is Bill Gates " Business @ the speed of thought".  If you want his white paper, email
If you have Adobe's Acrobat Reader, here are three white papers.
Corporate Portals          Emerging Trends          Strategic Visioning

Dennis Wilson is a roofer.  His objective was to create an awareness of the importance of roof inspection and maintenance.  Have you ever had a leak, and the roofing contractor told you that he could fix it but he couldn't guarantee his patch would hold on your old worn out roof?  With a little education, you can comfortable handle these situations.  

Few people do, but the ones with 'best practices' document.  Dig out the drawings, record the history, keep photographs, and list the materials used for original construction and repairs. Dennis provided some excellent handouts that you can use for inspections, and a sample historical record.  He also told us where 80% of the leaks occur.  You can find out more at  www.mgdcapital.com.

Randy Hooper told us how they looked at critical operations at AMD.  You have to analyze all the things that could possibly go wrong. Failure Mechanisms and Effects Analysis is really a good tool to bring organization out of chaos (quantifying possible disasters).  In a clean room, there are many control points like temperature, humidity, pressure, particle contamination and vibration that can affect yield. How do you know where to begin?   The process is to develop a mathematical model where you have to take many subjective evaluations and convert them to objective details that can fit the model.  His model ranked all the criteria into five levels for severity, occurrence, and detection.  The product of these factors yields the amount of risk of  failure.  With this information, factor in the cost of mitigation, stir, not shaken, and you can get closer to a bottom line in strategic planning.  It can provide justification for budgets and it's a powerful tool to add to your quality tool belt.    A copy of their report is available from Doug Strange.  There's lots of information on the Web and one place to start is at www.fema.com.

Jayne Mortensen asked us some tough questions: How much furniture do you own?, Do you know where it is?  How much is it worth?  If you can't answer these, you are normal, (or should I say average since I really don't know you).  You need to step above the crowd and do 'best practices'.  She provided tools and sources to manage this asset which can easily get out of control.

 Entomologist Dr Bob Davis, of ABC Pest Control, talked about continuous education about pests.  There is no final solution.  You have got to ensure your cafe workers, vending machine fillers, janitors, and of course the building occupants do the right thing to minimize the habitat for unwelcome guest. (For some, snakes, spiders, and wasps are pest, but I see them as the good guys, we don't complete for food).  There are a lot of details, but it boils down to: eliminate food, water, and nesting sites.  As a last resort, spot treat with chemicals.

Agronomist Larry Ryder said that mowing accounts for 75% of the quality of your grass.  To avoid shock, cut no more than 1/3 of the leaf.  Think of the leaf as a food factory.  The shorter the grass, the more often you mow.  The grass on a golf course may be 1/8 inch tall, and therefore has to be cut when it grows 1/24 of an inch. (That's why some people watch grass grow.) You need to raise the mower in summer when growth is high and you don't want to mow every three days.  Cutting the right height produces dense turf.  This reduces weeds because weeds need light to germinate.  If you've got dallgrass, mow higher.  If you only fertilize once, do it in the fall.  Don't worry about a late freeze, there is no down side to fall fertilizing.   You should water the day before the leaves curl from dehydration.  Set out your short containers in the yard and water till you've got 3/4 inches.

Frank Maldonado:   Austin Bergstrom International Airport has many pest problems.  In the US, there are about 17,000 bird strikes every year and many go unreported.  Bergstrom has already had two multiple bird strikes which has caused a study to be done and required them to develop a management strategy to combat the problem.  One thing they do is to maintain the grass within 2000 feet of the airport between 6 and 12 inches.  If it's shorter, the birds like it for better foraging and seeing predators earlier, and if it's taller, mammals like it for better cover.  To keep out animals, they installed two fences. Even at 10 feet, there have been three intrusions by deer.  They are considering 15 feet.  Kansas City has the 'Best Practices'.

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This program was brought to you courtesy of the hard work of Patti May and Amy Bowman and the cast: Earnie Leake, Doug Strange, David Mascorro and Walt Latko.

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Of course there's a best practice organization.
Here's one commercial site among the many that your search engine can find.