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The Key to Public Service Real Estate: Communication, Communication, Communication Recorded at 2014 Public Sector for the Future Summit

Carole CornelisonCommissioner, Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM)

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

IFM has already begun to generate many measurable cost savings through increased efficiencies. As of December 2013, we had saved – with a document savings of about $2.4 million in just three of our facilities and we did that through in-sourcing. We did it through contract renegotiation, preventive maintenance, primarily, we were able to leverage that kind of savings and we know that we’re going to get more.

In addition, combining contracts across regions gives us better value and lowers cost through economies of scale. The universal facility maintenance standards mentioned earlier are depicted on this next slide. This represents the first time, again, that those universal across the Commonwealth standards have ever been in existence in the Executive Branch. And they apply to facilities whether they are run by DCAMM or not. So whether they’re under the IFM model specifically or not, everyone has to adhere to these standards.

As I said, IFM obviously is a statewide initiative. We’ve carved out five regions across the state, each has a regional director who we like to say is the CEO of their region. Our staff is deployed to a region, not simply to a building and we use what we call centers of excellence to support each of those regions and those centers of excellence are engineering, security, energy, leasing, space planning, all those services are provided to each of the regions.

Earlier I mentioned in-sourcing as a savings lever and it’s true that by terminating some of the management agreements that were with private vendors at one time, we can assume the facility employees and care for the property at a lower cost to our customers. The regional directors work as a team and they help each other out. And so this slide you see now, shows the regions and the agencies that we serve in those regions.

Collaborative government is a foundation for the work that we’re doing with our customer. It helps us gain trust and cooperation. We adhere to the principle of transparency and customer involvement in decision-making. That generates buy-in and advocacy. So very often, if some of our customers disagree with the direction that we’ve mapped out, even though they’ve got the data, they are convinced by their non-DCAMM peers of the wisdom of a particular policy. It’s more effective than dictating compliance with rules and regulations.

In real estate, everyone always says location, location, location, that’s what’s important. In IFM, we say communication, communication and more communication. We have this design, as the slide depicts, for each level from staff to the Governor’s office, but I point out the red, that you can see, is what we’ve done consistently so far. We’re still attempting to standardize and become better communicators. It’s critical to provide clear and consistent messages at the right time, with the right audience. This helps reduce the unforced errors that happen when the rumor mill heats up and one item I’d like to point out is that we have engaged organized labor from the very beginning. We started out with a body that we pulled together and asked various agencies, federal government and even the private sector, to send us your facilities experts, generally director and higher level. And so those founding partners formed something called the Commonwealth Facilities Advisory Council and they’re the ones that from the very beginning, before we even fully launched the initiative, helped to guide and inform the agency about how we should shape the initiative.

DCAMM and its agency partners planned and designed a conference to exchange experiences in using the shared service model. I just want to point this out. This happened just this past January and so within state government, we’re really setting up our own community of practice, so that we can continue to talk and share ideas and learn best practices from each other.

In fact, when we met in January, we met in this exact same space. An important aspect of that conference was to demonstrate that this direction of reform using shared services is a best practice.

It’s not just a flavor of the day. It’s not a fad. And now we’ve embedded that into the fabric of program administration in the commonwealth. Certainly, that’s the case with IFM. Our continuous improvement, customer centric, cultural shift, is what supports our success and that we believe is here to stay.

I’ll make a few just brief comments on lessons learned and where are those comments? So here they are and just talk about maybe the first three or four. Leaders who hold themselves and their teams accountable have experienced the greatest success. Stakeholder engagement is fundamental in gaining support and success in this initiative. That’s where the buy-in is. Customer service has been said throughout this conference so far is a critical component to facility integration success. And key policy decisions that involve multiple secretariats need to be made in a structured and collaborative governance process.

About Delivering Public Service for the FutureWhat does it take to deliver public service for the future? Public service leaders must embrace four structural shifts – advancing toward personalized services, insight-driven operations, a public entrepreneurship mindset and a cross-agency commitment to mission productivity. By making these shifts, leaders can support flourishing societies, safe, secure nations and economic vitality for citizens in a digital world – delivering public service for the future.

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