TOUGH CALLS

Building Operating Management, Nov 2004 by Zimmerman, Greg

The first step to making RECAPP a national standard for corporate real estate was to do some corporationwide research. Through client portfolio planning meetings, Berry worked closely with senior leadership of SBC business units to make sure strategic goals and plans were consistent with those of corporate real estate regarding facilities. Working with the business units was essential to ranking the importance of facilities, which in turn is key to evaluating the priority of projects.

"We feel like we are in lock-step with them in supporting them to meet their corporate goals," she says.

Based on the priority of the facility at slake and answers to customized questions about the project, RECAPP calculates a score that Berry and her staff use to rank different projects against each other. Unfortunately, doing so requires a "rob Peter to pay Paul" strategy, but at least Berry and her staff now have a systematic and standard approach, which has been an essential element to cutting costs. Every decision-maker across the country, including Berry and her regional directors, evaluates data the same way. Money isn't wasted on projects that aren't of pressing concern.

"Five years ago, when we felt like we had adequate funding, there probably wasn't lhe level of prioritization there is today," she says. "Today, the line of demarcation between priorities is very crisp and clear."

"We're assured of allocating scarce capital to the more critical projects," says Mark Schleyer, vice president of corporate real estate, design and construction. "This enables us to score projects according to the type of facility and prioritize consistently."

Schleyer and Berry work closely together on projects that overlap their organizations. "She is basically my client on replacement projects that require engineering," says Schleyer. "Our teams coordinate closely with each other to prioritize."

KNOWING WHEN TO DO WHAT

The confluence of standardization, prioritization and cost cutting is the modus operandi for Berry's preventive maintenance operation as well. Prior to each acquisition, the acquired company had been using a different system to schedule work, pay bills and respond to occupant complaints, among other things. Berry recognized thai to be a standardized organization, corporate real estate needed a single system to plan and execute these tasks across the portfolio.

Berry began by creating field teams with representatives from different regions of the company that met to discuss the optimal way things should be done.

"Through those discussions, the best practices surfaced," says Berry. "All voted and agreed, and business requirements were written. As a result, an adopted process may not have even been one that one region was using. The teams may have created a new process."

The solution was a system that Berry calls the "heart of our property management operation:" an off-the-shelf building management system software package that was dramatically customized to reflect the discussions by the field teams and the unique needs of SBC's vast portfolio. The system includes four integrated modules: contract management, bill payment, call service center, or dispatch, and field operations - for Berry's organization, the most important component.