Description

Ian recounts his experiences of dealing with problems of Facilities Management which could have been easily prevented at the design stage at project outset. He will discuss plant replacement access, changes in lifts to the floor of a building, plant room size, accessing security installations, security control room locations, wall finishes, heating systems, installations featuring glass stairs, maintenance access, lamp changes and cleaning, all problems he has experienced in his 40 years of construction. Pointing out the plight of Facilities Managers working with buildings designed and built without their involvement, Ian recalls pitfalls that you can avoid at much earlier stages.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Issues occur when the designers do not correctly consider the impact of their decisions on future operations.
• At the design stage of a large 18 story complex, the ability to replace the plant equipment at the top floor had to be considered as the required crane to complete the task could not be accommodated or constructed in central London.
• A hospital lift being relocated resulted in the contamination of clean ward areas by laundry facilities, a situation completely unacceptable to infection control.
• A Health Centre, designed without a Facilities Managers input, had to be refitted just before completion due to an air handling units maintenance access for filter renewal being placed directly against a wall. 
• Emulsion paint applied in the high traffic areas of, for example, a school would result in repeated cleaning and repainting avoided by using more washable finishes, a situation obvious to a Facilities Manager.
• These examples demonstrate that for the whole life of a facility to be respected in both its operation and maintenance, a Facilities Manager should be involved in the design process at the earliest stage.

BEST MOMENTS

‘So really, it's an awareness process I'm looking at rather than a critique or criticism per se. So how it impacts on the day to day activity of the building an operation and how it's run and maintained.'

‘So I said we need to look at this again, and they went away and came up with a redesign that allowed us to remove the plant later on.'

‘And the design team glibly saying whether other lifts available to get all the waste and clean linen and other elements in and out of this area would have meant going through Ward areas, because there was no designated FM corridor, which you can't clearly take waste out through a ward area. Infection control would have gone mental over this.'

‘We're on the hook for air quality and maintenance and all these sorts of things. So a significant retrofit had to happen post handover when the building was supposed to be going operational. So this was an expensive refit to  allow simple maintenance to be undertaken. Again, this should have been thought through at design stage. And if an FM had been involved from the very beginning, it would not have happened.'

‘So I've been involved in a number of highly trafficked facilities, for instance, police stations, schools and all that sort of thing. Where main corridors have not been thought through from a finishes point of view.'

VALUABLE RESOURCES

https://www.ianjrogers.com/

ABOUT THE HOST

Ian Rogers is an entrepreneur running businesses in the Real Estate, Construction and Facilities Management arena. Ian has over 40 years' industry experience, as he was effectively born into construction with his father having his own building company and Ian spending time working on sites from the age of 11!. As a result Ian has seen the industry from a trades person perspective, as a chartered quantity surveyor working on large commercial projects, as a project manager and then working on structured project finance through PFI/PPP deals. This has given Ian a unique whole life approach to any project by considering the end game at the beginning.

CONTACT METHOD

 https://www.ianjrogers.com/

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