Facility Life Cycle 1: Planning

Course Introduction: Part 1

In this course, you will learn about the nature of strategic planning and real estate issues as you gain an overview of facility management as a profession. You will also learn how leadership style, communication skills, and the ability to work well within an organization's structure contribute to successful handling of specific facility problems. As you do so, you will think about, evaluate, and practice specific communication and interpersonal skills.

Building Skills through Experience

The goal of this course is the development of practical skills. To gain these, you must learn some basic concepts and information. For the most part, you'll get this information from the online lessons, the texts (listed to the right in the Required Reading sidebar), the Reading Resources, and the lesson assignments. The rest of the course will be devoted to helping you apply what you have read and heard to solve practical problems. Throughout the course, your instructor will serve as your expert mentor and coach, giving you regular guidance and assistance, showing you the strengths and weaknesses of your work, and giving you feedback on the kinds of results expected of accomplished professional facility managers. Needless to say, to get the most from this course, you must assume responsibility for completing the assigned reading, and for regularly participating in online discussions and other activities.

Whether you already have some experience managing facilities projects or are new to this process, this course will help you increase your ability to identify facility issues, resources, and alternatives. It will also help you learn to interface with senior management and strategic planners throughout an organization as well as to develop or acquire the leadership skills you will need to manage a facilities team. Finally, completing this course will give you a context for understanding facility issues and processes so that you can successfully complete the UW Distance Learning Certificate Program in Facility Management if that is your goal.

Course Objectives

After mastering the material in this course, you will be able to

• identify distinguishing characteristics of the facility life cycle, the facility management process, and the concept of people-process-place-technology (Lesson One);
• describe the facility function in terms of supporting the core business function of an organization (Lesson One);
• describe the key elements of the strategic planning process and how strategic planning can work within a given organization (Lesson Two);
• identify the differences between long-range and current-period planning (Lesson Two);
• identify characteristics of three different methods of strategic planning financial analysis (Lesson Two);
• build facility operation and capital budgets; (Lesson Three);
• evaluate and recommend possible actions on real estate master plan options, alternatives, and development decisions (Lesson Three);
• describe the uses of various real estate documents (Lesson Three);
• identify features of total quality management processes (Lessons One, Two, and Three); and
• improve your general communications, writing, presentation, and interpersonal skills, including your own code of ethics (Lessons One, Two, and Three).

The Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with students and with your instructor, and links to a rich array of UW Library Services.

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your texts, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communication with Your Instructor and Student Peers

• Online Discussion Forums, designed by the University of Washington award-winning Catalyst team, allow you to communicate with other currently enrolled students and with your instructor. We encourage you to use these forums as opportunities to exchange ideas, resources, and comments about your course work with other students in this course. See Discussion Forum detail below for specific details about how this course uses the online forum.
• You may also use e-mail to ask your instructor course-related, more personal questions, such as questions about your grade or comments about your assignments.

UW Library Services

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Organized by subjects, UW Library Services links you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

In addition, this course offers two other resources specific to Facility Life Cycle 1—Planning

• Reading Resources for Facility Management
• Internet Resources for Facility Management

About the Textbooks

Facility Management (Second edition, 2006) by Rondeau et al. (referred to as Rondeau in the course material) is the primary text for this course. This text was chosen because of its emphasis on planning. In addition to presenting concepts important to facility management, the chapters you have been assigned to read contain numerous check lists and sample documents relevant to the chapter subject matter that I think you will find useful for this course and in real-life job situations. The book should serve you well, both now and in the future, as a solid reference on facility management processes and procedures.

Facility Manager's Guide to Finance and Budgeting. Cotts et al. This is the secondary text for this course. I have chosen this text because of its emphasis on finance and budgeting. In addition to presenting concepts important to facility management, the chapters you have been assigned to read contain information information that is relevant to the financial and budgeting analysis that are part of Assignments 1 and 2-A. The appendices in this text provide spreadsheet formats that you will find valuable in the analysis portions of those assignments.

The book provides good introductory oversight into the use and application of financial and budget analysis. It helps explain the language and vocabulary that facility managers use to gain required funding to accomplish their business plans and to guide operational and capital spending.

The "Reading Resources for Facility Management" includes a variety of articles related to the topics in this course. Most of the articles are from professional journals and have been selected to illustrate practical applications of the concepts presented in course. These articles provide greater depth and additional examples on specific topics.

Being able to communicate clearly in writing is essential for the successful facility manager. Writing that Works covers the basics of organization, punctuation, grammar, and word choice, and is organized in such a way that information on specific topics is easy to find. The book focuses on how you can better serve your reader, including helping you identify and eliminate certain writing "tics" that a reader might find distracting. Finally, and most importantly, the book provides numerous examples from business writing that you can use as models for the kinds of writing you will do in this course and on the job.

Each assignment includes references to topics in Writing That Works related to the assignment and the type of document you will submit. In addition, for further practice or to brush up on your basic grammar and writing skills, you can visit the publisher's Web site for Writing that Works at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/writingthatworks/ where you will find exercises and in-depth information on topics covered in the text.

Course Overview:
Real-Life Facility Management

Imagine the following scenario: you are one of several facility managers at a Level 1 regional trauma center—the only one of its kind in a five-state area. The mission of this medical facility is to serve not just severe trauma cases throughout the region, but also to serve local low-income and immigrant populations. Tied to this aspect of its mission, funding for the medical center comes from the state and from county bond issues approved by voters of the county in which the facility resides.

In your role as facility manager at this medical facility, you are constantly dealing with the problem of inadequate space, outdated equipment, and inefficient space arrangements. Due to the gap between facility needs and the funding approval process, you often find your department operating in a reactive, rather than a proactive, mode.

Now your facility is facing a health crisis. The epidemic you are facing is increasing steadily. It tends to affect some of the populations your medical center has dedicated itself to serving: low-income and immigrant populations. Strategic planners need to act now to carve out enough space in the facility to accommodate the projected number of cases over the next two decades. Will you need an entire nursing floor for these patients? Or will the epidemic have tailed off by the time the modifications to the facility are made? (Note: for this facility, strategic planning goes in ten-year cycles so that as soon as one plan has been implemented, it is time to begin the process all over again.) You are called upon to advise strategic planners on how the space now being earmarked for this purpose will be used should the need for patient space change by the time the new space is built/remodeled. In other words, you are being called upon to help planners build as much flexibility into the plan as possible.

Your Role in the Big Picture

Imagining yourself in this situation, what do you believe your role to be in the "big picture"? You are in a position to advise strategic planners on how to increase efficiencies related to the location of facilities and programs for the delivery of patient care. Further, you are in a position to give feedback on planning projections and alternatives. This is particularly important since facility needs often change between the time they are originally identified, funding for changes is approved, and actual changes in facilities are made. Your knowledge of existing day-to-day issues for the facility will be an essential part of a successful and dynamic planning process.

About the Course

This course—Facility Life Cycle: Planning—is composed of three lessons. As you go through the course, you will complete a required activity approximately once per week. (See the Course Schedule on your online Course Syllabus.) The final assignment, which includes participation in a team presentation, will be due at the end of the course. (See Assignment 2-A.) Each lesson is designed to be completed in approximately three weeks, with one additional week factored in at the end of the course to allow you time to prepare your presentation with your team. The entire course is designed to be completed in 10 weeks.

Besides the lessons and graded assignments, other components of this course include:

• Readings
• Important Points from the Text
• Key Terms
• Online Discussions
• Practice Exercises
• Online Practice Quizzes
• Your Turn
• Case Study
• FLC Mentor

Readings

Each online lesson assigns reading in the text and in the Reading Resources. In addition, you are required to read the online commentary for each lesson. The commentaries serve as introductions to the readings. It is recommended that you follow these steps to efficiently complete the readings, and to test your understanding of the concepts:

1. Read the lesson commentary.
2. Complete the required reading assignments from the text and for any Reading Resources. Read Rondeau first, which will introduce you to to key concepts, then the articles in the Reading Resources, to solidify your understanding by discussing specific applications.
3. Be sure to complete any practice exercises contained in the online lesson—this will help you to integrate key concepts and prepare you for the lesson assignment.
4. Scan the lesson commentary for highlighted information from the textbooks: Important Points from the Text

Key Terms

Each lesson begins with a list of key terms because an introduction to facility management requires you to master a new vocabulary. These terms are intended to serve as guides to your study. Term definitions will be included in some of the required online quizzes, and you will be expected to use the terms in your written work material whenever possible.

Use a Variety of Resources to Locate Definitions. You will find many terms defined in the lesson commentary. If you encounter a term or abbreviation that is not explicitly defined in the online lesson, think about what other resources you can turn to in order to find the definition—this is the way you will need to go about problem solving as a facility manager.

Create Your Own Glossary. As you learn new terms, create your own glossary in a separate notebook. This will help reinforce your knowledge of terms and will allow you to begin putting together a resource of terms that are most relevant to you and your work.

Online Discussions

Each lesson of this course requires you to participate in several online discussions. If you are diligent about participating actively until you become familiar with the online discussion tool, you will soon find that the online environment is a powerful, flexible, and comfortable means of learning from people with whom you cannot meet regularly face-to-face.

In each lesson, you will find an Online Discussion section with a series of questions to which you must apply your developing facility management skills in the online environment. You will make at least one posting to the online discussion and respond to at least two classmates.per lesson. Other criteria for satisfactory participation in the discussion are posted in the Online Discussion sections in each lesson. The due dates for each discussion forum are posted in the Course Schedule. Your participation in the discussion forum contributes toward your participation grade in the course work.

The discussion forums enable you to share work experiences with classmates and coordinate required team interactions. The forum replaces a classroom setting's open-ended discussions and question-answer sessions.

Practice Exercises

The practice exercises in this course will help you define the facility manager's role and responsibilities, learn to relate business trends and national/world events to the way facilities are run, and develop facility manager skills. Practice exercises are for your benefit, so while you do not need to submit this work, completing these exercises will help with your graded assignments and your overall success in the course. You will find answers to Practice Exercises in Appendix B.

Online Practice Quizzes

Lesson One includes an online Pretest and Review quiz. These practice tests are not graded, but are designed to help you assess your understanding of the material

Each online lesson also includes an online practice quiz. The quizzes are designed to help you assess your understanding of the lesson material, and help me see how the class is progressing. A statistical report of the quiz answers is sent to me, but no names are attached. The lesson quizzes are not graded but are part of your participation score for the course. The participation score does impact your grade for the course.

After you submit the quiz, the answers you selected will be displayed on the screen. You may then check your answers in Appendix A.

Your Turn

Periodically throughout the course, you will find questions that ask you to apply what you've learned and consider alternative possibilities or create new solutions. Taking the time to answer these questions will enhance your learning experience and overall success in the course.

Case Study

During the course, you will refer to a case study of Harborview Medical Center (HMC) in Seattle and the issues associated with its Long-Range Capital Improvement plan (LRCIP). Through this case-study treatment of Harborview Medical Center's strategic planning process, you will learn how HMC planners have shaped that process, including making recommendations on real estate scenarios, and you will consider some of the ethical issues that have arisen as projects specified by the LRCIP have been implemented.

As part of the required online discussions for Lessons Two and Three, you will be asked to consider problems from the perspective of an HMC facility manager, based on the case-study segments. These discussions will also give you a chance to share what you may have learned about facilities on the job or as a user of facilities.

"Stealth" Team Project Check Point

In each lesson, you will find a Check Point reminder about the team project, regarding a facility problem at the fictitious "Stealth" company; the project work culminates in the third assignment. Your instructor will assign you to a team at the beginning of the course. As you proceed through the course, you should be actively engaged in a dialogue with your teammates to produce a realistic solution to this problem. Individually, you will submit a written summary of the problem and solution. You can review the requirements for this project in Assignment 3.

Your FLC Mentor

Throughout the FLC program, you will have the opportunity to apply what you are learning to the real world. You will identify and establish a relationship with a mentor, an experienced facility manager who will serve as a field guide to his or her facility. You may keep the same mentor for FLC 2 and FLC 3. For FLC1, you will post a profile of your mentor and his/her company. You should choose your mentor and post the profile by the end of week 4. Be prepared to consult your mentor throughout the course.

About the Lessons

Each online lesson provides a reading assignment, a list of objectives, a list of key terms, my commentary, an online discussion question, an online quiz, a practice exercise, and an assignment to be submitted for credit. The material included in the lessons is designed to help you use your new skills as you learn them. Examples are provided from various types of facilities and facility problems, and interactive exercises and assignments ask that you relate course concepts to a facility where you work or one that you otherwise use on a regular basis. The following lessons will help you complete your reading and writing assignments as well as help you prepare for the online discussions.

Lesson One: What is Facility Management?

This lesson defines basic facility management terminology and overviews how the profession has evolved. Part 1 acquaints you with total quality management (TQM), ethics, and the meaning of the "facility management mission." You will learn how managing a facility means coordinating people, process, place,and technology within an organization. Part 2 presents the first segment in the case study: Harborview Medical Center's Long-Range Capital Plan development.

Finally, as a bridge between facility management roles and responsibilities and strategic planning, we'll look briefly at risk management and how it can affect budgeting and scheduling. The material for this topic is presented in several supplemental readings, which we will discuss in an online forum.

Lesson Two: Strategic Planning

This lesson defines strategic planning as implemented by facility management professionals. Part 1 provides definitions and processes that enable creation of facility strategic plans and presents the second segment in the case study: Harborview Medical Center's Long-Range Capital Plan development. Part 2 explains why it is important for the facility management department to be involved in an organization's strategic planning.

Lesson Three: Real Estate

This lesson focuses on real estate issues that facility managers are confronted with on the job. Part 1 discusses applying strategic planning to the real estate planning process. Part 2 delves into communication skills.

About the Assignments

Assignment 1

Assignment 1 consists of three parts.

1. You will develop several criteria statements to justify an office move for a hypothetical business so that the move will support the core business function of the organization.
2. You will inventory your people skills and state a plan for growth in this area.
3. You will list the resources you used to complete the assignments and tasks in Lesson One.

Assignment 2-A

This assignment is based on the outline of the most recent business plan for a hypothetical mid-sized company known as Alpha Zed, Inc. You will (1) review and analyze the business plan, identifying the effects the business's facilities might have on the successful attainment of the business's goals, and (2) list a minimum of ten additional pieces of information that the facility manager will need in order to suggest facility uses that support the business plan.

Assignment 2-B

Assignment 2-B will help you prepare for the presentation you will give at the end of Lesson Three. For this assignment, you will submit a progress report on your team discussions of the "Stealth" Project.

Assignment 3

This assignment has two parts that you will complete as a team and two that you will submit individually. You should acquaint yourself with the "Stealth" Project narrative as well as with the details of Assignment 3 now, since you will be working on this material with your teammates for the duration of the course. Don’t wait until the end of the course to get started—communicating with your teammates at a distance takes time, and you need that time in order to address the issues properly.

Team: At the beginning of the course, you will be assigned to a team and introduced to a facility management problem at a hypothetical company (the "Stealth" Project). With your team, you will analyze and discuss the various elements of the "Stealth" Project across all three lessons in this course in order to arrive at a realistic solution to recommend to Stealth's management. At the end of Lesson Three, members of each team will post a project presentation of the major elements of their deliberations for review by the other teams in the class.

Individual: Taking into account the work that you and your teammates have done, you will individually write up a synopsis of the "Stealth" Project that reflects your own thinking. You will also write a three- to six-paragraph "journal entry" consisting of a detailed description of your participation in the team discussions. In your journal entry, you will describe (a) the role you played on the team throughout the discussions on the team problem; (b) how you overcame the "distance factor" in working with your teammates on the team problem; and (c) how the team discussions helped you develop your own creative thinking about a solution to the problem.

You will also describe the two most important things that you have learned as a result of the class.

For more information about working as a team on the "Stealth" Project, see the section below.

Submission Guidelines

You will turn in your course work to the Submissions dropbox at the bottom of your Course Syllabus. You will use MS Word for all but the last assignment (3-B), for which you will create a spreadsheet in MS Excel. If you need to use some other application, please notify your instructor, well before the assignment is due. See individual assignments for specific instructions.

The "Stealth" Project

Throughout the course, you will work with on a team on a project to develop a recommendation report, using the background information about the fictional organization, Stealth, Inc. In this organization, events have developed such that the CEO is faced with a decision: should the company consolidate to one location, decentralize further, or maintain or modify the status quo? Your job will be to work with your team to discuss these options, and then work individually to develop a written report of your team's recommendation.

Teamwork and the "Stealth" Project

You will be assigned to a team at the beginning of the course. Team selection will be based on various factors, some of which might include the organization/industry you work in, your job description, level of computing experience, and your geographic location. You and your teammates will work on the resolution of a hypothetical facility problem at the fictitious "Stealth" company, which will be the basis of your individual work on Assignment 3. As part of Assignment 3, you will also write a "journal entry" describing your participation in the team discussions and how the discussions helped you develop your own solution to the team problem.

Check Point: In each of the lessons, you will encounter Check Point: "Stealth" Project reminders of specific work for the team project. These prompts will help you break down the work that needs to be done and gauge your progress both individually and as part of the team. As with all online discussions, you are also expected to actively participate in the team discussions for this project.

Take advantage of the variety of communication options you have available to you, both to accommodate your personal needs and to enhance teamwork by selecting the method most suited to the work to be done (see your student handbook for tips on communicating through diverse media). This project gives you the unique opportunity of learning how to collaborate at a distance—something that is becoming much more common in today's work place.

Tips for Teamwork at a Distance

To facilitate discussions with your teammates at a distance, choose from among the following strategies:

• You will have exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses with your teammates during the online program kickoff. Use this contact information for informal communications. Be sure the list is current and all members are included.
• Identify one member of the team for coordinating team communications, or you may wish to have this task rotate among team members so that the responsibility for documentation of teamwork is shared.
• Set up an address list of your teammates in your e-mail address book. This way you can send project-related e-mail messages to all your teammates at once.
• Use the discussion forum for your team (found on the syllabus page) to post your contributions to the team assignment. This way, any team member can post an idea at any time, and other team members can respond as they have time to.
• Everyone on the team is responsible for coordinating team communications. In other words, no one should passively wait for someone else to get the discussion going!
• Find out what kinds of software your teammates have so you can send files as e-mail attachments.
• When developing visual materials for your presentation, send copies of your files as e-mail attachments to those teammates who have compatible software, and fax copies of printouts to those who don't.

Tips for Improving Active Listening Skills

• Try to stay objective; allow yourself to see things from the other person's point of view.
• Watch for nonverbal cues. Most people don't put all of their message into their words.
• Don't interrupt while the other person is speaking—you may cut off valuable information, and the other person will feel like you paid more attention to them if you don't interrupt.
• React to the content of what the person says, not to the person.
• If you feel you need to speak, ask questions since the goal is to obtain information from the other person.

You will need to consciously practice these things every day to become a truly skilled listener. My guess is that you'll appreciate the results so much that you will end up making active listening skills "second nature".

Reminders

• Be sure to keep a copy of your work, as well as e-mail messages and summaries of the telephone conversations you have with your teammates, as you will need to to submit a progress report on your team deliberation at the end of the Lesson Two (Assignment 2-B) and describe your participation in discussing the team problem in a journal entry that is due at the end of the course as part of Assignment 3.
• Don't wait for others to contact you—be proactive and get a discussion going.
• Remember that you will be graded on the team presentation both individually and as a team participant.

Completing the Course

To successfully complete this course, you must do the following:

• Complete reading assignments in the text.
• Complete reading of online lessons.
• Actively contribute to the online course discussions.
• Complete and submit all written assignments.
• Complete online quizzes.
• Participate in specified team activities.

Assessment and Grading

This course is one for which you will receive academic credit. All written assignments, required online discussion questions, the writing tutorial, and your journal entry for Assignment 2-A count towards your course grade.

Criteria for Grading

Your course grade is determined by the completeness and quality of the assignments and course participation. Specific criteria is detailed on the Assignment pages and in the Course Participation Grade section below. Be sure to address the requirements for both.

Calculating your Grade

Your overall course grade is calculated according to the following percentages:

Requirement		Percent
Assignment 1	(100 pts)	15%
Assignment 2	A (50 pts)	10%
	B (50 pts)	10%
Assignment 3	(100 pts)	40%
Course participation grade		25%
TOTAL		100%

Course Participation Grade

The following activities will count toward your course participation grade:

• responses to the required online discussion questions
• completing the required writing
• completing the journal entry that is part of Assignment 3

The course participation grade will reflect whether or not you (1) completed these activities and (2) demonstrated thoughtful application of course concepts to the activities.

Use the lessons for active learning. Part 2 of the Course Introduction provides additional information that will help you succeed in the online Facility Life Cycle Planning course.

Course Introduction: Part 2

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