APPA

FACILITIES MANAGER MAY/JUNE 2017 31 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO San Francisco, California Submitted by Jodi Soboll, Director of Infrastructure and Utilities Services, UCSF, and Meredith Hargreaves, Senior Lean Practitioner, Haley & Aldrich, Inc. FACILITIES INVESTMENT NEEDS: STARTING WITH THE CUSTOMER In June 2016, UCSF's Facilities Services department faced a vexing problem. It identified annual Facilities Investment Needs (FIN), but the data had historically been inconsistent and unpredictable, leading to last-minute changes, incompleteness in the list, and occasionally, costly "active failure." is was frustrating to Facilities and its cus- tomers. e Infrastructure, Utilities and Energy Manage- ment Group within Facilities attempted to change this. Key customers and stakeholders participated in a workshop using Lean to develop a shared understand- ing of whom the list was serving, what the process (and its problems) were, and how to improve things. Together, they created a well-defined process for developing a com- plete and reliable FIN list with the right amount of detail from customers. Since then, the team has implemented the process, and it's proving to be effective. Patti Mitchell, associate director of capital programs, says, "e new process has delivered a much more com- plete FIN list with additional information not previously provided. e new information allows for a thorough review, [done] quickly and completely." By having a stable process that proactively engages customers, the university will avoid liabilities, decrease unscheduled maintenance, and shorten the list, thereby increasing customer satisfac- tion. us far, it has been a successful customer-driven experiment. ■ UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO Boulder, Colorado Submitted by Curt Huetson, P.E., RPA, FMA, Director of Facilities Planning, Operations and Project Management HFS CULTURE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE Housing Facilities Services (HFS) is a service organization at the University of Colorado Boulder that is devoted to customer satisfac- tion. To support this, HFS sends an email survey to customers after each work order is completed to ensure they are satisfied with the work, technicians, and timeliness of the repairs. HFS has a 92 percent satisfaction rate; below are examples of the positive comments from customers: "Technicians were very timely, identified and fixed the problem quickly, and were very kind. An excellent experience overall." "Everything is in even better condition than it was before it broke!" Yet HFS goes the extra step to ensure that all customers are satisfied with their living and/or working areas by personally following up with those customers who did not rate us highly. Supervisors reach out to clarify the concern, if it was addressed, and if not, find a solution. HFS has found that many of these low ratings resulted from the roommate miscommunica- tion, or because the issue had already been resolved after the customer submitted the survey, or from other communication issues. Occasionally, specific feedback also leads to improvements in our service processes. Customers appreciate our follow-up and are even more satisfied after the follow-up than those customers who rated us highly. ■

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