“Good, better, best: Which would you rather be?” It’s a question we asked back in our August 2006 issue, when we devoted several pages to establishing a method for defining, keeping track of, and relaying your department’s best practices. (Revisit that article if you missed it the first time.) No matter how efficient you think your department’s processes are, there’s always room for progress. And, who better to learn from than your peers?
The whole idea behind a best practice is that there’s one method, process, or activity that’s most effective at delivering desired results than any other method, process, or activity out there. Through reviewing your current business practices, and studying the business practices of others, you can streamline and restructure the way you and your team work.
As part of this issue’s cover story, we scoured the United States to find county facilities management departments that have learned how to do things well … and they’re sharing that information with you. Once you’re done reading, you’ll discover the unique ways in which these five departments have improved on their customer relationship management skills, their ability to reduce carbon footprints, their work-order management processes, their strategic facilities master planning, and their employee accountability and recognition programs.
Whether you take some of these ideas and use them verbatim, or whether these ideas spark other inspiration for ways that you and your department can improve, we’re confident that this story will help you – in a cost-efficient way – do the best you possibly can.
And, if you have best practices that you’ve established (and that you’re proud of, and willing to share), please let us know. Send me an e-mail at [email protected]. We’d love to hear how teams like yours are succeeding – despite the unavoidable challenges the industry is currently facing.
