Quick Guides provide condensed, key information on important topics that enable Facility Managers and Property Managers to quickly implement improvements and get results.

They are based on our experience, workshops, articles and other material and are specifically written and formatted into concise, two page guides with key points, executive tips and traps to avoid.

Notice: Our Quick Guides for FM series has been discontinued since the material has been incorporated in our new book "Managing Facilities & Real Estate" If you are interested in the topics below, we encourage you to learn more about the book.

This is a complete list of the original Quick Guides series.

1. Promoting FM in your Organization
   Facilities represent a large part of any company's assets and expenses yet don't typically receive the same attention that other parts of organization receive. Having a professional facility management resource to provide strategic direction and stewardship is critical to getting results, lowering costs and minimizing risk.
2. Total Cost of Ownership Saves $
   Initial costs represent only 15% of a building’s total cost. If you ignore this when developing a building are wasting the other 85% of costs. Keeping the initial capital cost as low as possible seems right, but it’s costing you a lot more over the life of the building.
3. Talking Numbers with your CFO - To get results, you need to get attention and approval for your initiatives from the decision makers at your company. Since facilities cost money and money is the bottom line for any company, a key decision maker is the CFO. Unfortunately, the drivers at the corporate level may not line up with how you think about facilities costs.
4. Influence with your Writing - Facility Managers write to influence others. You want them to agree to your proposal, follow instructions or look favorably on you and your organization. Many traditional ways of writing don’t work when trying to influence someone in the modern age.
5. Developing Satisfaction Surveys
   Measuring satisfaction is key to making decisions and implementing changes to improve your operations and deliver services your company needs to be successful.
6. Customer Service in Corporate FM
   The trend is to model the commercial service industry, even though providing and managing space for corporate use doesn’t exactly fit the commercial model, which is based on money for service. The tension between customer service and costs are complicated by the three levels of customer the FM serves: Individuals, Departments and the Corporation.
7. Developing KPI's for FM and PM
   Now you can influence performance like never before, by writing it into your service contracts. Performance Measurement – and getting the results you need - has been a struggle for almost every organization, because you don’t have as many levers with internally provided service as you do with service contracts.
8. Facility Cost Allocation to Drive Behaviour
   Real Estate costs money, and money is the bottom line for any company. Facilities Managers who recognize this can raise their profile and contribute to the success of the company by accurately establishing facility costs and positioning the information for better corporate decisions.
9. Developing Effective RFP's
   Once you've made a decision to outsource or subcontract, or if you are about to renew, the next step is finding the best service provider using a Request for Proposal (RFP). With an RFP, you invite service providers to propose a solution.
10. Evaluating your RFP
    Issuing the RFP was just the first step. Once you receive the proposals, you need to evaluate the service providers.
11. Selecting a Janitorial Service Provider
    Cleaning is one of the top two services in it’s importance to your occupant’s satisfaction, just behind HVAC. It can also represent a significant portion of your annual facilities costs.
12. The Outsourcing Stay-Back Team
    Successful outsourcing doesn’t just mean selecting the right Service Provider; it also means having an effective Stay-Back-Team (SBT) to guide the initiative.
13. Communicating Energy & Environment
    Energy conservation and environmental responsibility are important topics, yet the challenge of getting occupants to buy-in to your initiatives and actually change their behaviors remains difficult
14. Adopting Outsourcing's Best Practices
    Facility Management Outsourcing Companies manage a huge amount of Real Estate on behalf of their customers, which include some of the largest corporations, government and institutions. The space under management is increasing, so they must be doing something right.
15. Surviving the Integration Trap
    Integration can save you time and effort, providing you with information that is coordinated between applications and linked to various operational processes, enabling cost savings and better strategic decisions. That’s the sales pitch. Generally, it’s true, however rushing into integration can sometimes be costly and counterproductive.
16. Developing Great Mission, Vision and Value Statements
    Mission, Vision and Value statements can be a powerful tool to provide guidance and direction to your organization if they are carefully developed and follow some basic concepts. Use them to motivate staff, guide decisions and frame your strategic plans.
17. Walk of the VIP - Customer Service
    Everyone gets a little complacent when they have been in the same place for a while. It’s as simply as seeing something deteriorate very gradually over time—you don’t usually notice the change. By getting someone else to use a fresh, critical eye, you will catch things that you may not have recognized as problems or have filtered out for various reasons. Use this process to improve results.
18. Leadership for Facility Management
    Whether you recognize it or not, as a facility manager, you are in a leadership role. To effectively provide facility services, you have to take on a leadership role in the many areas you touch upon daily, whether it’s a current matter or a long-range issue.
19. Wringing out Performance
    Performance is about improving results and reducing costs using a wide variety of techniques, including technical resources, systems and most importantly, management techniques.
20. Intelligent Benchmarking
    Benchmarking is a form of measurement – where you measure against something else to see where you are lagging, identify the areas and take corrective action. This is the essence of benchmarking, but Intelligent Benchmarkinggoes well beyond the numbers.
21. Writing and Producing Building and Facility Newsletters
    Let's face it, communicating with occupants is often at the bottom of a long list of priorities Facility Managers deal with on a daily basis, yet effectively communicating with the people who use the buildings is critical. The newsletter is an often-overlooked tool for communicating