Facility management

The American lastitute of Plant Engineers, Cincinnati, Ohio, pubUshes an information services catalog which features Facility Management Eibrary Eeprint Services.Qs. H. Magee, Facilities Maintenance Management, R. S. Means, Kingston, Mass., 1988. 

W. Wrennall and Q. Lee, Handbook of Commercial and Industrial Facilities Management, McGraw-HUl Book Co., Inc., New York, 1993. 

Are nonconformance summaries sent to facility manager at least quarterly ... 

Eagling, D. G., editor, 1996, Seismic Safety Manual A Practical Guide for Facility Managers and Earthquake Engineers, UCRL-MA-125085, September. 

Coordinating Construction/Maintenance Plans with Facility Manager May Deter Unexpected Problems and Accidents, Safety Note DOE/EH-0127, U.S. Dept, of Energy, Washington, D.C., Apr. 1990. 

Prime mover Oversees initiatives, sets goals, supervises resources Facility Manager GM-EHS Product Manager Other Facility Manager Facility Technical Staff... 

Make sure your expectations for senior management and others are consistent with your company s operating style. For example, a CEO who is accustomed to delegating most decisions is unlikely to accept a role that seems to take away divisional authority, while a facility manager with little functional autonomy will probably be leery of taking a highly visible role without approval from a superior. 

Division president —Other facility managers —J acility safety professionals... 

As this list suggests, the first priority for this facility is its own people, who will require the most comprehensive information and who should receive priority attention. Others on the list have widely varying information needs and levels of interest, all of which the facility manager must take into account in developing a communications plan. 

These progress reports will be circulated to facility managers for review, comment, and input at each stage, to assure that the end result fully reflects local concerns and capabilities. 

At Division A, the Facility Managers Council has accepted similar responsibilities, under the direction of the division s Vice President of Environmental, Health, and Safety. We expect ongoing interchange between the two task teams, which will facilitate the process throughout Company X and help us take advantage of the full range of our process safety experience. 

Put the system Into practice. Pilot sites will be selected in collaboration with facility management, to test the new PSM system. By this means, we can assure that the system works and identify any areas needing refinement, in a cost-effective manner. 

The Facility Managers Council has responsibility for developing a recommended PSM system for facilities, under the direction of the division Vice President for Environmental, Hearth, and Safety. 

Division D added process safety to the Facility Managers Council s standing agenda at the suggestion of their in-house auditors. 

While a multidisciplinary team approach is ideally suited to PSM design and installation, it is not the only way. PSM goals can be achieved through the efforts of a single professional, or a small homogeneous task group (for example, facility managers or safety specialists) the process is essentially the same as described here, but on a smaller, more limited scale. 

Team composition Multidisciplinary, including full range of PSM customers," i.e., facility management, process safety, engineering, research and development, occupational health and safety, others to be determined. [Who]... 

The Task Force s mission is to design a state-of-the-art process safety management system that will support all of Company X s varied business operations, and to install it at a pilot site to be determined. The team will maintain ongoing communication with Division C s Facility Managers Council, which has accepted responsibility for focusing on the division s process safety management systems. 

On a smaller scale, a facility manager may rely on participatory management techniques, such as quality circles or task teams, or may pursue a more traditionally hierarchical approach. Similarly, a division may display entirely different management styles in several different function areas the sales organization may be highly structured, while research and development is more collegial and informal. 

How many layers of our organization are involved in this system The final authority of a given management system maybe a facility manager, a division president, a corporate safety expert, the chief executive, or a plant superintendent. All of them may be involved at some stage of the process. 

Buy-in" of facility management. Cooperation of facility-based staff and managers strongly influences the effectiveness of baseline PSM assessments. The assessment phase may be the first visible manifestation of your company s PSM initiative at the local level, and should be properly understood by those participating—especially those whose PSM activities and programs are under review. An assessment method with which local personnel are at least somewhat familiar, conducted by professionals whose skills they respect, will more likely gain buy-in and cooperation. 

In the absence of explicit criteria, the seven characteristics listed below may be useful in evaluating management systems. Keep In mind that these characteristics are not absolute requirements facility management systems may vary significantly and still be capable of achieving the desired results. 

Based on the audit findings, the team typically issuesa report that summarizes the status of current management systems and identifies pacesetter programs and areas of non-compliance or exceptions. These findings should be provided both to the facility manager and to the PSM team, for consolidation into overall recommendations. A sample audit report is shown in Figure 4-5. 

G Does facility management or supervision review, measure, and evaluate results achieved against established criteria ... 

For example, a facility manager may be confident that PSM policies and procedures are in place, but line personnel may indicate in the same survey that they are unaware of them—suggesting a gap that your implementation plan should address. 

As with audits, survey results form the basis of a facility-specific report for circulation to facility management and the PSM team. This report may follow the questionnaire format, with responses tabulated and analysis and commentary provided at the end. If necessary, baseline PSM assessments can be performed by a single individual using a survey method. 

Audits and surveys yield two reports one to the facility reviewed and one to the PSM team. While this dual reporting maybe more time-consuming than simply collating information for future reference, it is likely to be time well spent. Providing audit or survey results (appropriately condensed to protect confidentiality) to facility managers not only provides valuable feedback, but also helps to underscore their involvement in the PSM initiative. 

The centralized team(s) will approach PSM element by element. The teams develop detailed guidelines, procedures, and standards for each PSM element, which can then installed by facility management. Howevei in handling one PSM element at a time, teams must be careful to incorporate a consistent approach to those elements that are interrelated (e.g., training), and to the management system characteristics (e.g., documentation) that apply to the whole PSM system. 

Facility-specific implementation requires formation of a local team at each of your company s facilities. As a general rule, these teams comprise resident staff and report to the facility manager. A typical local teeim would include the facility scifety manager and representatives from operations and engineering. 

More often than not, teams such as these benefit from outside assistance, either from other company experts or from consultants or engineers who can supplement their expertise. In any case, these teams, either directly or through facility managers, should report to a company PSM manager or champion to monitor progress, assure consistency, and facilitate cross-fertilization of efforts through exchange of experience. 

If an element has no system at all, it may indicate that the facility manager does not fully understand what the element requires, or is for some reason unable to cany his/her responsibilities. In addition, a weakness in corporate oversight, direction, or resource allocation may contribute to the problem. Either way, the plan you develop must take these gaps into account. 

Each of the tasks and subtasks that make up the work breakdown structure should be relatively simple to estimate in terms of time required. If no one on the PSM team has specific experience with a given task, find someone else (for example, a facility manager) who does, and ask for his/her input. Once the time requirements for each task have allowed you to define the overall time required for each element these estimates can be combined to give a total program plan. 

If the answer in both cases is "yes," then consider the locd climate. Local cooperation—or lack of it—may he the single most important determinant of site selection, since without it you cannot field a valid test. However if you have kept facility managers informed or involved as the PSM process has gone forward, you should have some ideas about which of them would be par-ticulariy enthusiastic—or otherwise. In addition, having identified site-specific benefits may help you win the support of a manager who might otherwise be reluctant to participate. 

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