Facilities Management Costs and Best Practices, from FM BENCHMARKING

Getting Started Guide, Section 1 of 3
Getting Started Guide: Section One, Section Two, Section Three

All Modules: Introduction—Required Data Fields
Cost Module: Super QuickStart Data Fields
Sustainability Module: All Data Fields

The first Section of this Getting Started Guide focuses on what you'll need to do to get up and running with FM BENCHMARKING in the least amount of time. It is grouped according to the three primary tasks you will do:

Collecting your data.

Inputting your data.

Comparing your data to those of others.

Each of the tasks is broken down into what you will need to do for each the Costs and Sustainability Modules of FM BENCHMARKING. After defining the terminology you will need for all the Sections, this section focuses on just the data fields designed to give you basic benchmarking results, namely those that are "Required" and those that we have classified "Super QuickStart"—each of these terms are defined below. In the case of the Sustainability Module, because it is fairly easy to implement, we describe it in its entirety in this Section.

The second Section of this Guide takes a similar approach to this section, but focuses on the next most critical data fields for you to collect, input and analyze, namely those that we call "QuickStart". The best practice data fields also are included in this Section.

The final section of this Guide addresses all the other data fields that FM BENCHMARKING provides. Some of these will be very important for some buildings, but not for others. We'll try to help you understand how best to use these data.

1. Collect Your Data

The first step is to collect your data—that way, it will all be in one place when you are ready to input it. FM BENCHMARKING makes it easy for you to input the most critical data first, so you don't need to look for every data record before you start.

FM BENCHMARKING handles the data a bit differently for the Costs and Sustainability Modules. This is because much of the former is measured by costs and consumption, and most of the latter is measured by which green practices are being followed.

FM BENCHMARKING groups the data fields to be input into five areas for the Costs Module:

Required
There are not many of these, and you will know most of them without having to look up anything. These fields are required to ensure that everyone will have certain very basic data about each building.

"Super QuickStart"
FM BENCHMARKING has identified the data that you should be able to access very quickly, and also give you immediate benefits from FM BENCHMARKING. It is expected that these fields should take you no more than 30-60 minutes to input. If one doesn't have all the data available, it doesn't have to be input, or may be input later.

"QuickStart" (see Section 2)
This data will take you another 60-90 minutes to collect, and most subscribers will have ready access to the data. Once these are input, subscribers should have all the basics they will need to make informed decisions based on their benchmarking data. If one doesn't have all the data available, it doesn't have to be input, or may be input later.

Best Practices (see Section 2)
Best practice data is a key part of FM BENCHMARKING, and enables subscribers to know not only whether they are performing better or worse than their peers, but why and what they can do to improve. Most best practice questions are simply "yes" or "no", require very little or no information other than familiarity with one's building, and should take 45-75 minutes to input. None of these fields are required.

A few best practice questions are included in QuickStart above; the remainder are included in the second Section, under Best Practices. These should be should be not only easy to complete, but should be done as soon as possible after QuickStart so that you'll be able to determine how to improve building performance—inputting the best practice fields is the only way in FM BENCHMARKING for you to see how to improve performance.

Other(see Section 3)
As a rule, the remainder of the data fields are more important for larger buildings than smaller ones. They will enable one to fine-tune conclusions drawn. For example, if one is spending more on maintenance costs than most others who manage similar buildings, it will become known exactly where the extra money is being spent (e.g., through electrical trades, etc.). For most people, FM BENCHMARKING recommends that subscribers initially input only those fields that are easily known, and then input others when it becomes apparent that they would be helpful for the type of analysis required for the specific subject building.

FM BENCHMARKING groups the data fields to be input into three areas for the Sustainability Module:

Required.
As with the Costs Module, there are not many required fields for the Sustainability Module. If any of the fields are the same as in the Costs Module, they will automatically be populated with what you had previously input.

Sustainability Best Practices.
Most of these fields are very easy to input and involve a "yes" or "no". They should take you 30-45 minutes to input.

LEED-EB.
These fields also are easy to input, and tie in directly to LEED-EB criteria, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. Examples are provided to simplify your responses even further. This portion should take 45-60 minutes to input.

Types of Records You Will Need

Where records are needed, you will need them for the previous 12-month period. We recommend that you input records from the most recently completed fiscal year. If you are 6 months into a new fiscal year, input the records from the previous year; then, when the new records become available in 6 or 7 months for the current fiscal year, you may input those as well. The system will keep track of both sets of data and provide you with some trend analysis, comparing performance between the two years.

Before starting to collect data, we recommend that you look at the two surveys (Cost and Sustainability) and see which fields we require, and which are identified as Super QuickStart and QuickStart. That will provide you with the exact information you will need to collect to take advantage of FM BENCHMARKING. At that point, you may decide whether to just go with the Super QuickStart for your first phase, or go for the more complete QuickStart.

Most of the data you will require should be available from your maintenance management system, financial information system, utility bills, and your contractors.

Here is a summary of the most important information you will need to get started with the Costs Module:
Required Data

Building Demographics:

Fiscal year — most participants input data for their most currently completed fiscal year
Gross area of the building(s) covered by your subscription¹
Primary use — if there is more than one primary use select the dominant usage for the benchmarked facilities.
Occupancy number — this is an annualized weighted average of full time equivalent employees; the survey forms explain how to calculate this if there is not a uniform distribution.

Super QuickStart

These fields will allow your benchmarked site to appear on most of the key performance indicator output reports.

Building Demographics — Completion of the Super QuickStart allows you to select filters for your output reports.

Building age — use the weighted average for your facility if it was constructed at various times.
Climate type — many cities are listed, but if yours is not then select a nearby location that matches your climate type.
Setting — select one of the three choices.
Hours per Day of Operation — if this has varied during the year, then calculate a weighted average based on the full year.
Days per Week of Operation - if this has varied during the year, then calculate a weighted average based on the full year.
Ownership — select one of the two choices (leased or owned).
Floors above grade - — select one of the three choices. If you have facilities of different heights then calculate the weighted average.

Utilities

Costs for: electricity, gas, water, sewer, etc. If you all you have is the total cost of utilities you may enter that value, but the benchmarking reports will provide more details if you can enter the costs of the various utility services separately.²
Consumption quantities: electricity - kwh, water — gallons or liters, etc. If you don't have all the information needed, the important value is your kwh consumption.

Custodial

Costs for total custodial services is an important input. If all you can obtain is your total costs, then input that amount. Providing more details here helps with the accuracy and produces more useful information on the output reports. If you are able to break down your costs for internal and contracted services, that is helpful.
Area cleaned is also important, as that allows FM BENCHMARKING to normalize your data in the output reports. If your services are mostly contracted, the contractor will know the area cleaned. If you perform some or all the work with in-house staff then you will need to obtain this value. The area cleaned is nearly always less than the gross area of the facility, so be sure to check that you are entering a value less than the gross area.

Maintenance

Costs for total maintenance services is an important input. If all you can obtain is your total costs, then input that amount. Providing more detail here helps with the accuracy and produces more useful information on the output reports. If you are able to break down your costs for internal and contracted services that is helpful. A critical indicator is the amount of corrective vs. planned maintenance, so, if possible, try to break these costs down.

Security

Costs for total security services is an important input. If all you can obtain is your total costs, then input that amount. Providing more detail here helps with the accuracy and produces more useful information on the output reports. If you are able to break down your costs for internal and contracted services, that is helpful.

Here is a summary of the most important information you will need to get started with the Sustainability Module:
Required Data

Building Demographics:

See Building Demographics for the Cost Module above.

Super QuickStart

These fields allow your benchmarked site to appear on most of the key performance indicator output reports. The only Super QuickStart fields in the Sustainability Module are in the Building Demographics area, and they are the same fields as in the Building Demographic area described in the Cost Module above.

2. Input Your Data

To be sure that you input data in a way that is comparable to what others are inputting, we strongly recommend that you pay close attention to our definitions of each data field, especially the first time that you input your data (even if these definitions may not be the same as some of the ones you are using internally). Otherwise, you will not be able to compare "apples-to-apples", as they say.

When you input your data, the types of units assigned for your building will be automatically determined by the location of your building (i.e., if you are in the U.S., water consumption will be in U.S. Gallons and natural gas will be in therms). However, you will be given an opportunity to modify these terms if you wish, before you complete the input of your initial data. The FM BENCHMARKING system is very powerful, and will automatically convert your units and those for other buildings to standard units (usually KWH for energy consumption units) for comparison purposes in our database; but when you look at a report for your building, the units will automatically be converted back to whatever unit you have assigned to your building.

To start using FM BENCHMARKING and making benchmarking comparisons as quickly as possible, look for the Required and Super QuickStart fields.

First, input all the Required fields in the Demographics section.

Then input as many as you can of the Super QuickStart fields that are shown on the Demographics, Utilities, Custodial, Maintenance, and Security sections.

TIP! To turn on Super QuickStart for any of the sections, you will need to click on the Super QuickStart button near the top of that page; if you want to turn it off, just click the button again. You will need to repeat this action for each of the sections (e.g., Demographics, Utilities, etc.).

WARNING! When inputting data, note that some of the data fields are shown with "000" after them, and others have "in thousands" on the top of their column. In both these cases, FM BENCHMARKING automatically multiples the number you input by 1,000, so be careful not to include the last three places in your number. For example, if you are inputting 250,000 sq. ft. by a box with "000" after it, you would input "250".

TIP! We encourage you to input as many of the Super QuickStart data fields as you can. Your reports will include only those fields for which you have input data, so if you omit a data field from your data entry sheet, you will not be able to see what others have done for that field. If you don't have current access to an input field, you may always come back to it and enter it later.

There are no Super QuickStart fields in the either the Sustainability Best Practices or LEED-ED Worksheet forms. Both of these input forms can be filled out very quickly based on your personal knowledge of the FM organization and corporate plans (if you are not familiar with all aspects of the building, it would be helpful to have a facilities manager or building engineer nearby when you input the data).

Sustainability Best Practices Worksheet

This worksheet is a very easy input form to complete, as nearly every question is just a checkmark or question regarding your plans. It covers subjects such as:

Current LEED Certifications
Future plans for LEED Certifications
Energy savings targets and initiatives
Water savings targets and initiataives
Recycling objectives and initiatives

LEED-EB Worksheet

This worksheet follows the official LEED-EB worksheet, and is designed to be completed in a very short time by those who don't have a detailed knowledge of LEED-EB, but would like to see approximately where their facility ranks on the LEED-EB scorecard. It is not a replacement for LEED-EB certification, but rather serves as a guideline to aid in your decision-making priorities and processes to improve your facility's sustainability.

Photos and descriptions of the LEED guidelines make it very easy to complete. Many facilities may qualify for LEED-EB certification, but if your portfolio is extensive, you may not know where to begin to apply resources..

All questions in this section are "Yes," "No," and "U/C" (under consideration), so the time needed for this survey is very short. Completion of this worksheet will provide you with a good idea of:

Where you currently score on the LEED-EB 2009 Operations and Maintenance checklist.
What items you could implement to improve your LEED score and what rating that would produce.

3. Compare Your Building's Data to Those of Others

Go to the Analysis button and select the appropriate analysis report for the benchmarking output you want to consider.

Filter sets, provide you with the flexibility of determining to which other buildings you are being compared.

Select filters to reduce the comparable facilities to less than 500 sites.³

Select filters that include your site's demographic data. For example, if your facility is greater than 600,000 SF, then select the gross area filter of either "Any" or "600,000 and greater", or any combination that includes "600,000 and greater". You may hold down the CONTROL Key as you select multiple choices for any filter.

Select filters for only those building conditions that you believe will impact your situation and the type of report you are generating. For example, you will not want to filter out buildings that have a secure area for analysis of your utility costs, but you may want to include that filter when analyzing your custodial or security costs. Applying more filters will result in fewer buildings in your analysis report. If you were to apply every possible filter, you may end up with only one building in your filter set—yours! As you become more familiar with our powerful filtering tool, you will learn which filter sets work best for your building.

One you run your initial report, you may find that you may want to run another related report, to begin to fine-tune your results. For example, if you discover that your maintenance costs are considerably higher than those of others, but you don't think you are that out-of-the-norm, you may want to apply a filter of Union versus Non-Union Laborers, since you have Union Laborers in your building. Once you filter out the Non-Union Laborers, you may discover that your costs are more in line with those of others; but if you don't show that finding, perhaps you are indeed spending more than you should, and ought to try to apply other filters or input more detailed data to find out where.

Always pay close attention to how many other facilities are in your filter set. The filter function will show you instantly how many buildings you will be comparing yours to as soon as you select any choice for any filter. If your filter set has 200 other buildings in it, your data will be more meaningful than if there are only 5 other buildings. We recommend that you end up with at least 30-40 buildings in your filter set when you finally run your report. For some types of improvements, it will not be as important to have a large filter set to get meaningful data, so never let FM BENCHMARKING "analyze" your data. You will have to do that; all FM BENCHMARKING can do is present the tools you will need.

Each chart and report has been developed to provide you with the information that will be most helpful to analyze and improve the management of your facilities.

All output information in FM BENCHMARKING is confidential. Your site is shown in a distinctive yellow color, so we recommend that you use discretion when sharing your output reports with others.

Costs Module

FM BENCHMARKING offers two ways for you to compare your cost data to those of others:

Charts:

Most FM BENCHMARKING charts provide you with data normalized on a per unit area (e.g., square foot) or per occupant basis.
Each vertical line on the graph indicates a building in FM BENCHMARKING.
Your facility is shown in yellow.
The buildings will be arranged from the best-performing to the worst-performing, with the vertical scale being whatever you selected (e.g., cost per occupant, kwh per gross square foot, etc.).
The four quartile ranges are shown in different colors so you will see how your building is doing compared to those of others.
The median is shown in a dark horizontal red line.
The legend shows the numerical values.
You can hover over any of the individual buildings to see its value.

Reports:

The first section provides your input values — check to be sure these values are consistent with what you intended to input. A common error is to enter the decimal point in the wrong location.
Review your normalized consumption and cost values. Most FMs have a general idea or range for these values, based on their organization's activities. If any of these values look unusual to you, then you should go back to the input section and update your values.
Best Practices: Input of Best Practices isn't included under the Super QuickStart fields, but you will be able to see how other participants in your quartile and the next better performing quartile scored on these items. You should complete the Best Practices data fields as soon as you can, so you can identify how your facility can improve its performance.

Sustainability Module

There are two sustainability reports, one that focuses on sustainability best practices, and the other that focuses on LEED-EB compliance.

Sustainability Best Practices Report

This report provides the following information:

Current Certification status and plans for Certification of others in your filtered group. You will able to filter the results further by:

LEED Certification Rating.
Energy Star Rating.

Energy Savings Targets are a very important issue. You will be able to see and filter how others are planning achieve their savings targets and how this compares with your plans with others having LEED certification.

Energy Savings Initiatives allow you to see what others have done and which initiatives are planned. The participants are asked to identify the top four initiatives and you will be able to filter those results to see how you they compare with your top four initiatives.

Water conservation and savings will become more critical to nearly all facilities. You will see how others plan to achieve their savings from key areas and the relative percentages from each. Applying the climate zone filter to these results may be useful for comparing your plans with others.

Recycling will continue to be an important issue. You will be able to compare your filtered responses with others for:

What you are currently recycling.
How others plan to increase their recycling percentages by key functional areas.

LEED- EB Report

This report provides the following information:

Your responses to each question.
The percentage of non-LEED-certified and LEED-certified facilities that responded yes to each question.

A quick review of the responses will show you where those having LEED certification have implemented various strategies and achieved LEED points. This is invaluable for developing your strategies to improve your LEED score and obtain certification.

The overall summary shows:

Your current LEED-EB score based on your data.
Your "Projected Score" if you were to implement all items that you listed as "under consideration."

¹If you have a campus-type of setting, you will have to decide whether you want to have one or multiple subscriptions to FM BENCHMARKING. While one subscription will give you an excellent overview of your total performance, it may not provide you with enough detailed information to pinpoint potential areas of improvement. For example, if there are five very similar buildings on your campus, and if one of them is consuming much more electricity than the others (on a per square area basis), you would not be able to detect that if there were just one subscription. On the other hand, if there are no sub-meters and your entire campus is on one meter, then breaking the campus down into different buildings would be impossible.

²For example, if you discover that your overall utility costs are much higher than our average utility costs, you won?t know if you are higher with just electricity, water, etc. or any combination, unless you break the costs down.

³The system will not allow you to compare your building to more than 500 others.

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