Facilities Maintenance and Operation Cost Optimization for Commercial Buildings - Research Paper Example

Facilities Maintenance & Operation Cost Optimization for Commercial Buildings Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Hypothesis 4 Purpose & Significance 5 Literature Review 6 Outline Questions 11 Questionnaire for Employees 12 Questionnaire for customers 13 Conclusion 14 Works Cited 16 Introduction Facility Maintenance deals with the interdisciplinary field that is linked with the infrastructure, coordination of space, organization and people, that is often associated with the office blocks, shopping complexes, schools, convention centre’s, hotels, hospitals, etc. The facility management is associated with a large range of non core functions rather than just business services. The areas which are the concerns areas for effective facility maintenance is emergency preparedness, communication, business community, sustainability and environmental stewardship, finance and business, operation maintenance, and technology. The operational phase of the commercial buildings has proved to be longer compared to the construction and design phase of the project. Such a longer operational phase of the buildings makes it much cost intensive, this gives rise to evolution of high performance buildings so as to meet the sustainability goals, and energy efficiency. Facility maintenance covers all aspects of the proper operations of such commercial buildings in order to create a safe, optimal, and cost affective environment for the employees. The major divisions within the facility maintenance are operations, contracting, and maintenance, custodial, commissioning, and landscaping. The operation cost seems to be an ever increasing factor because of such maintenance facility. This research paper deals with the challenges that come in proper facility maintenance of such commercial National Bank buildings. The paper encloses a literature review on the mentioned topic and even some outline questions that are commonly asked by the audience. The main goal of this research paper is to analyze the ways in which proper facility maintenance can be conducted in such commercial buildings with a total optimization of the operation cost. The paper deals with the various aspects of proper equipment maintenance and operation system so that it meets the goals of the facility maintenance team. The maintenance of the building equipments such as heating air conditioning, lighting etc and the hospitality for the employees incurs considerable amount of operating cost that can be only optimized through high performance building operations. Hypothesis Hypothesis for a research paper is set of propositions that are constructed as an explanation for some phenomena. It is rather a provisional conjecture in order to guide the investigation for a particular topic. Hypothesis is often termed a mere guess or assumption. The title for the research study is to determine the facility maintenance of National Commercial Bank buildings and the possible ways of operating cost optimization. The hypothesis for the research study would be that – operation cost optimization cannot provide good quality facility maintenance for such commercial buildings. The major factor concerned with such projects is the high operational cost. It is often misinterpreted that cost reduction is linked with quality compromising but some research study states that there are specific designing capabilities that optimizes such operational cost and even provides the best facility maintenance for the employees of the organization. This research topic is very interesting as it encloses the concept of high performance work buildings, in such kind of buildings it helps operating cost optimization and provision of the best facility management in the system (Rondeau, Brown and Lapides, 2012, pp. 67-73). The buildings should be always maintained and operated with security, safety, health, comfort, productivity of the occupants of the building in mind, and designed well to adapt to the changing environmental issues, as well as with the understanding of recycling and reuse of the building components by the next generation occupants. In terms of suitability this topic helps to generate knowledge regarding the ways a commercial building can optimize all its operating cost and provides the best of the facilities to its employees (Wireman, 2004, pp.211-213) . The topic even helps to analyze the areas of maintenance of these commercial buildings, and how the operating cost is directly linked with the proper facility maintenance of such commercial buildings. Purpose & Significance The purpose of this study is to determine the various ways to provide facility maintenance to these commercial buildings. The topic enables the scope for the reader to explore the areas through which these buildings can be provided with the best of facility maintenance. The topic even relates to the maintenance activities that are associated with the building equipments it even relates to other facility maintenance activity such as providing the best of hospitality to the employees, and even ensuring proper cleaning and safety for the employees. The aim of the study is also to determine the areas where such commercial buildings compromise on their facility management in order to lower down the operating cost. This cost is always an increasing factor for any building and in such cost the major contributing factor is the facility maintenance. The target audience for the study would be the employees of the commercial buildings, their facility management team, and even those students who are pursuing their course in the facility management. This study even encompasses some relevant questions that the target audience would encounter after going through the entire study. The major purpose of the study is to combine various sources related to the topic of the facility maintenance and optimization of operating cost in commercial bank buildings, so as to give it a comprehensive structure as to what are the facility maintenance activity that needs to be considered for such buildings and the ways of optimization of the total operating cost (Rodrigo, 2007, pp. 89-94). Literature Review A sustainable construction and design of the building is not enough but in order that it remains there is requirement for proper maintenance and responsibly operated. Project planning and development process includes maintenance personnel and ensured operation. There are issues regarding to the failures in proper facility maintenance which includes usage of toxic products that disrupts the indoor air quality. The entire building life cycle should ensure the following areas of concern such as training the facility managers, building occupants, staff on in sustainable design methods and principles, usage of automated monitors in order to control waste water, energy, temperature, ventilation, and moisture, using such cleaning devices that are non-toxic, bio-degradable, and are resource efficient, reduction of waste through recycling to avoid the disposal of-site, and finally supporting teleconference and telecommuting programs to minimize travel (Alwaer and Croome, 2010, pp.799-807). The Royal Academy of Engineering paper by Evans, Haryott, Haste and Jones states the overall lifetime cost of the commercial buildings can be quoted as 1:5:200, where 1 is the construction cost, 5 is the building and maintenance operating cost and 200 is the total business operating costs. This proportion of the lifetime cost of the buildings is not supported by any other study. The ratio is often considered at the initial stage of the building design when the lifetime costs of the building are taken into account (Atkin and Brooks, 2000, pp.67-69). Ray Evans in his study has stated that “construction cost includes the professional fees, and land acquisition cost in which the finance costs is excluded, maintenance cost includes the decoration, general maintenance cost, and energy costs, whereas the operating cost specifically includes equipment, staff, consumables, and the other business operating overhead cost. Seeley (2001) in his study clearly stated that the design of two buildings are not the same as it encloses the various operating cost and other maintenance activities that cannot be identical (Axcell, Procter and Fennell, 2001, pp.56-57). Skitmore Marson (2000) in his study evaluates all the cost models to determine the appropriate costing for all the activities that are associated with the maintenance of the commercial buildings. He states in his study that the actual cost and the cost ratios are different from one building with that of another, which would be an appropriate source for this kind of research study. The high performance building is a newly derived medium of effectively meeting the operating cost or rather the maintenance cost of the buildings and to provide the best of facilities to the employees (Elmualim, 2009, pp.132-133). The high performance building is concerned with areas of improving hospitality for the employees, to use the best of non-toxic cleaning devices for cleaning facilities, and certain activities that enhance the maintenance of the building equipments. A commercial building is termed as an intelligent building that integrates process, people and technology in a sustainable and efficient manner with the use of integrated technology so as to enable the best of facility maintenance at the lowest cost of the building lifecycle (Gallaher, Conner, Dettbarn and Gilday, 2004, pp.54-56). Such a building helps in providing a balance between the community and cultural sensitivity and at the same exploring the much of internal resources. According to the Brundtland report ‘Our common future’, the commercial buildings often pays less attention to the facility maintenance (Ashrae, 2009, pp.123-125). The buildings often have the lack of facilities that are required to be maintained to enhance the hospitality of the employees. The operating cost is an essential factor for such commercial buildings and often optimization of operating cost is going on at the cost of the maintenance facilities. Thus the study of the Brundtand report clearly states that the buildings should be design and constructed in a way that it could meet the changing needs of the present without compromising on the future needs (Himanen, 2004, pp.34-36). The integrated technology that offers the best of facility maintenance is automated controls systems for automatic fault detection, and thermal mass for the heating and cooling facilities in the building. Often technologies such as automated lighting, electronic sensors are not well known by the facility managers this result into increase of maintenance costs (McCaffer, 2010, pp.56-58). The benchmarking in order to set some improvement goals is often beneficial for the buildings. These would set a standard as to where the buildings are currently operating and sets the path for further improvement. These standards would help the facility management to improve their way of operations by improving upon the ways of maintenance. This in turn would ensure that the operating costs are not subjected to a gradual increase and is rather optimized without any compromising on the effective facility maintenance (Ring, 2008, pp.131-132). Maintenance of a building is a day to day activity required to retain, preserve, or even restore the building equipment in order to support a condition where the equipment can be used for any intended purpose. Proactive maintenance encompasses predictive, reliability centered and preventive maintenance. Another kind of maintenance that is incurred by the buildings is preventive maintenance that refers to the maintenance of the building that is scheduled over time. The preventive maintenance is where the main concern of the commercial buildings would be not to increase efficiency but to keep the equipment running safely and reliably. The main objectives of this specific kind of maintenance are reliability, efficiency, durability, and safety (Robathan, 2000, pp.104-106). The preventive maintenance is concerned with the stable equipment condition. The philosophy of the preventive and proactive maintenance is to balance the overall operating cost and the equipment failure implication so as to provide better facility management at the lowest cost possible. According to Wood (2005) the maintenance factor is often over looked by the high performance building (Sapp, 2008). Proper maintenance is very essential n order to keep the building equipments operate more efficiently. It is a major issue that the finance decision makers and commercial buildings owners often avoid the maintenance cost from their budget (Wood, 2005, p.165). The process of the correlation of the various building parts so as to make it a whole is often termed as systems thinking. This kind of approach is very essential at the time of system or major equipment replacement or in that case even up gradation (US EPA, 2010). Like for instance if more efficient lamps are imposed on the office areas of the commercial bank buildings than it would ensure the overall load reduction on the chiller. The amount of heat reduction due to efficient lamps usage, the chiller control and its operational parameters leads to more efficiency of the chiller at the work place. According Tom (2008) the cost reduction or the control on such devices cannot be executed at the cost of the comfort level of the occupants of the commercial building. The main function of the building is to provide productive, safe, comfortable atmosphere for the occupants and healthy environment (Tom, 2008, pp.18-26). These functions cannot be neglected by the facility management in order to save energy and to gain sustainability. Tom in his studies on the facility maintenance states that keeping the building at a relative humidity and comfortable situation is essential for the satisfaction of the occupants of the commercial building. In order to ensure that the hospitality of the employees is maintained along with the efficiency of the operating devices it requires striking a balance between comfort and energy consumption. The measurable element is the energy which is concerned by the facility managers but often the comfort element is neglected as it cannot be measured and depends on the perceptions of the individuals. However construction of high performance building that incorporates all such issues is difficult to be implemented with the existing facility management team as the team has to look into a diverse number of tasks that are essential for the proper functioning of the building equipment, and there are less research study that are conducted on the operating cost optimization and facility maintenance compared to the construction of the buildings (Wong, 2000, pp.16-24). This makes it almost impossible for the team to incorporate some specific standard into the policy formulation. There is availability of CAFM which is a computer aided facility management to enhance proper maintenance of such commercial buildings (Stapenhust, 2009, pp.76-79). According to the literature review it is very clear that often the facility managers in order to overcome the operating expenses compromise on providing the best of facilities to the employees. However e building equipments are maintained properly but the hospitality service to the employees is the area which is adjusted maximum. The common questions from this research process would be analyzing the various ways through the operating costs of the commercial buildings can be reduced but not at the expense of the proper facility maintenance. There may be questions such as how far the method adopted by one building can be flexible enough to other commercial buildings. The research process deals with the methods of providing the best of facilities to the employees which would include hospitality services, proper building equipment maintenance, and the best of cleaning services. There can other questions such as such optimizing techniques can be adopted in real time or not, and whether the maintenance cost can achieve such optimization (Evans, Haryott, Haste and Jones, 2008, pp.167-169). The other related question to the research process is that whether the hypothesis selected is the ideal choice on which the investigation on the topic is to be conducted. The learning outcome from the research process would be learning the ways of successful implementation of proper facilities in the commercial buildings, and the ways in which bio-degradable and non-toxic cleaning elements can be used to provide a better healthy environment. This research process would even help me analyze the key issues that are taking into consideration by the facility management, and it would even help me to analyze the desired optimizing techniques that are applied on the operating costs of such commercial bank buildings. Outline Questions The particular research is been done targeting the customers who visit the banks and also the managers and employees working in the banks. The customers are the one who will have a clear idea with regards to the proper utilization of the resources and the facilities they get. The employees and especially the senior managers working in the banks are the one ho have clear idea about the facilities that are present in the bank buildings and the various ways in which the cost can be optimized to increase the profit of the banks and also increase the productivity. For making the research different questionnaire is been made for the customers and different for the employees working in the banks so that the target customers to ask the questions can understand the questions easily and don’t ate their time in thinking much about answering the questions. The total number of sample been selected for the research are 30 customers who visit the banks and 30 employees from different banks. The response obtained from the targeted people will help in understanding the way the facility management is important and how the overall operations cost optimization helps the banks in increasing their performance, productivity and also revenue. The operation cost optimization will help the banks to reduce their overall costs and the better usage of the facilities that are available in the buildings will also help in reducing the cost and also in improving the productivity of the banks. This will help the banks to utilize all the resources in the best possible way and thus reduce the wastes to a great extent. The questionnaire that is used for collecting data with respect to this research is been given below for both the students and also for the bank employees. Questionnaire for Employees 1. What are the facilities available in the building? Lift Stair case Wi-Fi 2. What are the facilities available in your banks? Printer Systems Air-conditioner Fire extinguishers 3. Are the resources been utilized in the best way in your bank? Yes No 4. What better facilities can your bank implement? First-Aid Box Separate counters for handicapped and old aged 5. Do you have the correct facility to encounter emergency situations? Yes No 6. If yes, than what are the various facilities that are there for emergency situations? 7. Do you have the facility to tackle huge crowd leading to huge cue in the bank? Yes No 8. If yes, than how do you tackle the situation when there is huge crowd? Questionnaire for customers 1. Are you happy with the facilities provided in the building? Yes No 2. Are you happy with the facilities in the banks? Yes No 3. If No, then what are the improvements you want to see the bank to implement? 4. Are the facilities available in the bank been utilized in the most optimum way? Yes No 5. How can bank utilize the facilities in better way? Conclusion The research topic is about determination of facility maintenance and operation cost optimization for a National Commercial Bank. The hypothesis that is adopted for the research process is that when there is operating cost optimization conducted by any facility management it affects on the facility maintenance. The facility maintenance is not only concerned with proper maintenance of the building equipment but it is also linked with providing the best of facilities and comfort to the employees. The facilities that this research paper includes are cleaning, hospitality of the employees, and even maintenance of the building equipments. The ratio stated in the literature review clearly indicates that the major proportion of the overall building lifecycle cost is the maintenance or rather the operating cost. Often the teams of facility management try and allocate the maximum of resources for the proper efficiency of the building equipments. In this research topic proactive maintenance is the best approach as it would not only ensure efficiency but even reliability and sustainability. The main question that is there regarding the topic is that whether the process would be yield a feasible outcome or not, as there are not many research studies on this particular topic, which has resulted into not a standard method for all the facility managers. A more of integrated approach to the facility management can be applied with ensure giving importance to equal areas of maintenance, operation, infrastructure, space, that would help to optimize the usage and facility efficiency. The research topic would help the audience to develop certain key standards so as to optimize on the operating cost and would ensure that the facilities that are desired to be offered to the employees of the commercial bank buildings is offered without any compromise. The research will be dealing with the areas of concern for proper facility maintenance and would even aim at achieving a balance between the present scenario and the desirable future outcomes. Works Cited Alwaer, H., Croome, D. J. 2010. “Key performance indicators (KPIs) and priority setting in using the multi-attribute approach for assessing sustainable intelligent buildings.” Building and Environment. Vol. 45, pp. 799-807. Ashrae.2009. The Decision-Makers Guide to Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings. Atlanta: Ashrae. Atkin, B., A. Brooks. 2000. Total Facilities Management. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Axcell, A, Procter, A., Fennell, B. 2001. A national survey of total office costs. Real Estate Finance and Investment. City University Business School: London. Elmualim, A., 2009. Application of computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) for intelligent buildings operation. Vol. 27, pp. 421-428. Evans, R., Haryott, R., Haste, N., Jones, A. 2008. The long term costs of owning and using buildings. London: Royal Academy of Engineering. Gallaher, M.P., Conner, A. C., Dettbarn, J. L., Gilday, L. T. 2004. Cost Analysis of Inadequate Interoperability in the Facilities Industry, National Institute of Standards and Technology. Gaithersburg: Maryland. Himanen, M. 2004. “The intelligence of intelligent buildings,” Intelligent Buildings: Design, Management and Operation. Thomas Telford: London. McCaffer, R. 2010. Innovation: Imagination and Knowledge. Sixth International Conference in Innovation in Architecture, Engineering and Construction. University Park: Industrial Press, Inc. Ring, P. 2008. "Maintenance in Moderation is the Most Efficient Method." UK: Trade line Inc. Robathan, P. 2000. Building Performance. Facilities Management Theory and Practice. London: E & FN Spon. Rodrigo, D. 2007. Optimal Operational Strategies for a Day-ahead Electricity Market in the Presence of Market Power Using Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms. America: ProQuest. Rondeau, E, Brown, R and Lapides, P. 2012. Facility Management. New jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Sapp, D. 2008. "Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS).” Available at: www.wbdg.org/om/cmms.php [Accessed on 29th March 2014]. Stapenhust, T. 2009. The Benchmarking Book. Oxford Butterworth-Heinemann. Tom, S. 2008."Managing Energy and Comfort." ASHRAE Journal. Vol. 50(6), pp.18-26. US EPA. 2010. Basic Information, Definition of Green Building. Available at: www.epa.gov/greenbuilding/pubs/about.htm [Accessed on 29th March 2014]. Wireman, T. 2004. Benchmarking Best Practices in Maintenance Management. New York: Industrial Press. Wong, K. C. 2000. Valuing the Refurbishment Cycle. Property Management. Vol. 18(1), pp. 16-24. Wood, B. 2005. “Innovative building maintenance.” Conference Proceedings of The Queensland University of Technology Research Week International Conference. Brisbane: Australia. Read More