Taking Facility Management Service to the 3rd level
Issue 35 - Oct 07



The number of stakeholder groups and complex mixed-use
requirements make the management of university facilities
uniquely challenging. Best way to deal with it? Customer service.

As Director of the Office of Facilities Management, Singapore Management University, Goh Thiang Hock has the responsibility for providing space for a diverse range of student entrepreneurial activities. This includes everything from space for student ‘push carts’ in thoroughfares so they can ‘hawk their wares’ to providing support for student ventures, technical information about the facilities, and allotting office space as ‘incubation labs’ to house start-up activities. Be they public or private, he says that universities are set up to foster learning and, everyone, including the people who manage the physical infrastructure of that facility, should be involved.

Setting up these systems takes time and patience and, while universities or higher learning institutes may be limited in number, each poses its own unique challenges, Ho Thim Seng pointed out when he was Director of Facilities Management at the Singapore Management University. Many laboratories and technical subjects require close communication between the teaching staff,
supporting staff and, in some cases, regulatory bodies, he says.

strategic approach
Donald Aw Tuan Kee used to teach facilities management at the Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, and is now poised to head up a new strategic FM centre for the Polytechnic’s own facilities. The strategic approach has been necessary to deal with developments caused by a growing student population. Aw points out that the subjects offered by the universities affect the way the campus is designed and the resources required to manage it.

Goh points out that it is not just customer activity that regulates university FM but also location. As a city university, SMU campus is designed to be an “accessible,
free flowing compound for both the university community and the public. Whilst providing a conducive ‘sanctuary’ environment for academic endeavours like a ‘campus in a park’, it offers an open environment in the heart of the city allowing seamless exchange of activity and traffic between the university and the surrounding community” he says.

As a result, one of the challenges he faces is maintaining the balance of access flexibility for the students, faculty and visitors, while at the same time providing adequate security to these users and safeguarding against unwanted intruders. As such, he continues, security is managed on two fronts.

• Security infrastructure: CCTV surveillance, physical barriers (turnstiles) for restricted areas, security pass access for inner restrictred areas;

• Informal holistic network consisting of: Security watchgroup information sharing with police, surrounding building owners and the neighbourhood community. Watching out for distressed students: SMU Peer Helpers (students trained in counseling skills managing a Student Wellness Centre, alerting security
concerns if any); ‘ International Buddies’ (volunteer students easing freshmen into the new environment).

Unlike in other types of facilities, university FMs can generally predict when new users will challenge existing facilities. For Goh this is during the new intake of
students in August each year, and he designs facility orientation programmes around this influx. Other problems relating to users hindering the FMs’ efforts, he
continues, exist year round. Goh’s team manage misuse or abuse of facilities “with judicious facility use policy guidelines” which regulate usage quotas of different facilities and equipment, charging and penalties. He also notes that a quick response to correct the misuse or abuse helps control the problem. Working with other departments, having mutual understanding of different
functioning needs in fulfilling stakeholders’ requirements and having joint synergistic initiatives and projects also makes for smoother sailing.

a customer-centric approach
The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) has recently released its Development Blueprint (http://www.ied. edu.hk/blueprint/) where they outline their goals for improving and developing core offerings, and the FM department is supporting their customer service delivery goals in a number of ways. The department has set up a service where clients can send in enquiries, requests and complaints by fax, by telephone, via online e-form, or by calling on the Estates Office in person.

Understanding their service as “customer service”, a separate Administration and Logistics Team of the Office handles the receipt of enquiries and complaints. After receiving an enquiry, the duty staff forward it to the corresponding service team with reference to its nature and score.

As in many institutions, there are different specialists in the Campus Management Team and the Building Services Team on call to look after tasks that are related to security and lighting respectively. Besides making use
of the enquiry hotlines, clients can also seek assistance by calling the 24-hour hotline offered by the Security Control Centre. The provision of IT services is handled by the staff of the Office of Information Technology and Services of the
Institute. The estates office has found that the majority of enquiries and complaints are related to the repair and maintenance of building fabrics and building services.

building partnerships
Ian Tan Eng Kiong, Senior Manager (Estate Maintenance Services) Office of Estate & Development, National University of Singapore, says his team tries “to formulate our processes with customer service as main driver,” and as such they have a call centre dedicated to handling maintenance related requests, which are prioritised as “normal” and “urgent”. Most of the requests the team field are air-conditioning and electrical related.

One of the HKIEd’s Estates Office’s missions is to serve the campus community professionally and advocate “partnering with mutual understanding”. This involves a pledge to communicate, collaborate and share with their clients “persistently”. To do this better, Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) has been adopted to administer all enquiries, requests and subsequent works. The system was developed by Lexco, an external Hong Kong based CMMS developer that specialises in FM systems.

At the NUS, a similar approach is taken so that incidents can be logged and
performance can be tracked and improved. Additionally, NUS has “specialist
contractors that can be activated when necessary”. Management of customer service is in this way very sophisticated in university environments. The reason is simple, guidebooks rate universities on issues such as security concerns, hygiene and pleasant surroundings.

Rather than just tracking past performance through technology many institutes, such as the SMU, also actively canvas customer feedback. Goh obtains this from:
• Feedback forms
• Periodic service satisfaction surveys
• Online feedback
• Service calls via phone or intercom
• Regular engagement sessions with students and faculty Guidebooks rate universities on issues such as security concerns, hygiene and pleasant surroundings. benchmarking and the human touch

Benchmarking FM in universities takes place both regionally and within cities and some of the most widely subscribed and successful benchmarking groups are in education. Despite the differences between institutions in terms of size, location and subject offering. The commitment to serving the customer remains strong, Tan feels it can be encapsulated in the following quote by APPA Executive President E.Lander Medlin, writing in March/April 2004 issue of Facility Manager magazine:

“Our culture seems to claim that, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” In my
opinion, that focus is askew. It is not the number of toys we have, but the number of meaningful relationships we create. It is not the number of toys we have, but impact we have on others. These things come from realising and intensely focusing on value of relationships.” RFP

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