CURRENT ACTIVITIES OF THE FACILITY MAINTENANCE & OPERATIONS COMMITTEE

Facilities are increasingly seen as one of many tools necessary to accomplish a business objective or agency mission. Construction costs receive much attention but over the life of a facility, 95% of the cost goes toward supporting the occupants. It is now understood that operations and maintenance activities which improve occupant comfort and productivity can pay very large dividends.

In 1996, the Facility Maintenance and Operations Committee (FMOC) was established as an outgrowth of the NIBS CADD Council. The FMOC, a body operating under the auspices of NIBS, provides industry-wide, public and private support for the creation of higher quality facilities through improved maintenance and operation and attention to the full life-cycle of buildings. The FMOC has established the following three objectives:

• To increase maintenance and operations influence in the facility acquisition process;
  
• To promote the sharing and integration of facilities maintenance and operations procedures and information; and
  
• To identify and disseminate "best" practices for the maintenance and operations of facilities.

In 1998, the FMOC published a document highlighting remarkable success stories at several federal agencies: Excellence in Facility Management: Five Federal Case Studies.

In October of 1999, the FMOC cosponsored with the Federal Facilities Council a workshop at the National Academy of Sciences Linking the Construction Industry: Electronic Operations and Maintenance Manuals. The workshop introduced and promoted implementation of an SGML - DTD (Standard Generalized Markup Language - Document Type Definition) created to standardize the preparation and format of operations and maintenance manuals in electronic format. This DTD will allow equipment manufacturers to deliver Electronic O&M Manuals that may be entered directly into CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Systems) eliminating the expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone process of manual data entry.

Further the FMOC designed and secured a grant for a pilot project to examine the full range of complexities involved in implementation of the DTD process. The pilot project will include participation of groups across the broad spectrum of the building industry; architects, facility managers, owners, software vendors, publishing companies, and others. Follow-on activities contemplated are [1] planning and implementation of procedures for requiring vendor manuals to be prepared in standardized language for electronic distribution through CCB to federal agencies and [2] development of standard language and procurement language for vendor manual submittals through guide specifications. The committee maintained close liaison with the NIBS Total Building Commissioning effort that will eventually develop a range of DTDs for other construction systems, e.g., Fire Protection, Plumbing, Conveying, etc.

In 1999 the FMOC investigated "best practices" in two new categories. At its regular meetings a range of organized methodologies for performing systematic Condition Assessment of facilities were reviewed. Comprehensive condition assessment surveys and resulting databases allow large building owners to more effectively understand, manage, and budget for both critical and routine repair of their facility portfolios. The FMOC also initiated an effort to address Healthy Building issues in bio-medical facilities (hospitals and research laboratories).

Model Services Contracts

The NIBS FMOC decided to pursue the development of three model service contracts through its consensus process (see consensus rules and procedures). These are:

• HVAC Operations and Maintenance
  
• Waste Collection, Disposal and Recycling
  
• Integrated Pest Management

We have excellent model contracts as starting points, so this should not be an overwhelming effort. It is anticipated that most of the work can be done via internet, email, FAX and telephone, so the cost of travel should not be a major factor in participating. At the end of the six-eight month review process, there will be a meeting at NIBS offices to reach "consensus."

Persons with knowledge and interest in participating in the development of one of these "best practice" model service contracts, should contact either Earle Kennett at NIBS (202) 289-7800, e-mail - ekennett@nibs.org; or Bill Brodt at NIH (301) 496-4941, e-mail - BrodtB@des13.od.nih.