Systems Enablers for Sustainable Facilities Management, Repair, Renovation, and Maintenance are critical considerations for any real property portfolio owner. In fact, they dictate how efficiently or how poorly an organization manages facilities stewardship requirements.
The AECOO sector (Architecture, Engineering, Contruction, Operators, Owners) must transition for a linear to a circular system for managing the built environment. Traditional planning, procurement, and project delivery methods are disparate and largely ‘ad hoc’. Focus is simply upon simply accomplishing tasks (correctly or incorrectly) and passing the outcome (good or bad) to the next person/entity in line. Little thought is given to holisitic impacts on the players or the final outcome. In short, it’s a game of “passing the buck”. We are aware that these practices end with extraordinarily poor results for the AECOO sector.
Systems thinking leads to the following systems enablers.
- Greater collaboration and early engagement between all participants and stakeholders, resulting in integrated internal and external planning, procurement, and project delivery teams.
- Establishing a common data environment inclusive of shared, local market granular cost data organized using expanded CSI Masterformat.
- Robust programmatic process with defined phases, workflows, approval, forms, etc., supported by a long-term multi-party agreement and integral operation manual/execution guide.
- Quantitative metrics/performance indicators.
- Mandatory initial and ongoing training for practitioners and decision-makers to ensure the necessary knowledge to be able to implement organization-wide systems thinking.
A fundamental change in process and behaviors at all levels and all organizations associated with the built environment is required to acheive sustainable activities. All parties must rally behind the common goal to shift from our wasteful linear traditional methods economy towards regenerative lifecycle total cost of ownership asset management. Many of the solutions required to deliver a sustainable methodology are available exist in today’s market and can be implemented immediately.
