Operational strategy

Most operating costs are decided before construction even starts – and the ability to influence them drops with every further design stage. When nobody represents operations during building design, the project decides for them.

We set up the operational strategy in time: how the building will be used, who will manage it (in-house, outsourcing) and what building management and efficient operation and maintenance will require. This produces requirements for the project brief that can actually be enforced.

When to address this

• You are preparing a new building or a major refurbishment and the project deals with how it will be built – not how it will be operated for the next twenty years.
• The decisions with the biggest impact on operating costs are made at design stages where nobody from operations sits at the table.
• You don’t know whether you will operate with your own people or through a contractor, and the contract with the facility manager risks being addressed only after final building approval.
• Or you manage a portfolio where every building is operated individually, with no standardisation.

Deliverables

• Operational concept for a building or portfolio
  • Modes of use, scope of services and how they are provided: own team, outsourcing or a combination – with the consequences for costs and responsibilities
  • What the concept implies for the building design
• Operational requirements as an annex to the project brief and contracts – trouble-free maintenance, access to equipment, service spaces and routes, consumption metering
• Requirements for operational tools and technologies – fault reporting and helpdesk, maintenance planning, measurement and control, access and security systems; they are created together with the information strategy so that the software vendor doesn’t end up defining them
• Operating model from handover onwards
  • Team roles, responsibilities and competences
  • The brief for selecting a facility manager or FM service providers – early enough for operations to start on handover day
• Catalogue of operational situations and purposes of use – an input for the organisation’s information strategy

Scope can be narrowed

It doesn’t have to be the whole strategy. A common entry point is a review of the design from the operations perspective at a single documentation stage, or the operational concept alone before deciding whether to operate in-house.

Connects to

• Organisation’s information strategy
• Construction coordination