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By AZ Advisory Team, October 14, 2009 8:00 pm

Basic Issues in Documentation Design

The term documentation is usually used in the context of automation: for example, a data file in a spreadsheet program, a database program, a collection of word processor text files, or the CAD drawings in a CAFM system. However, hard-copy drawings, photographs, and paper files are just as much data as are magnetic codes electronically imprinted on computer disks or tape. Therefore, it is critical to consider hard-copy data sources as viable components of facility documentation.

Despite the massive movement toward automation and electronic data, hard copy is still the baseline or reference point. (In fact, most software programs emulate hard-copy formats that have been in use for many years.) Very few people would instinctively consider automation their first source for all the forms of information they access. Automation is still a secondary source of many types of information, especially such large documents as textbooks and sets of oversize drawings. The smaller the document, however, the more likely it is to be automated, because software can handle such documents easily.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. Communication via E-mail, for instance, can originate only on computers, thus making them the primary source. Reports based on analyzing and sorting masses of information, such as spreadsheets and large databases, are now almost exclusively computer based.

Most property, facility and operations managers find themselves in a multiple-media environment: that is, having multiple ways to store and retrieve data and to communicate. Messages can be sent by phone, voice mail, E-mail, fax, and pager, as well as during actual face-to-face meetings. Text can be stored in hard copy, on disk, or on microfiche. The point is that facility managers should make conscious choices about how facility data are stored, transmitted, and retrieved. This means there will always be a mix of media and that facility managers must maintain the best balance, acknowledging existing work patterns and investments made in equipment.

A documents utility depends on how easy it is to find data, information, knowledge and instructions and retrieve them quickly. As the size of a database and manual increases, so do the problems of organizing the database and manual and keeping it simple to use. To function effectively and properly, a property, facility and operations database and manual must be designed carefully. Here are some typical symptoms of faulty design:

• Much of what is stored is unnecessary junk.
• What is important is not adequately protected.
• Specific responsibility for updating records is not clearly defined.
• Rights of access to records are not clearly spelled out.

Understanding these symptoms is key to setting up a documentation that works for your facilities. There are specific issues to be considered if these problems are to be avoided.

Alex Zylberglait provides commercial real estate investment advisory as well as research, estate planning, asset allocation, valuation, financing, special assets services, transaction advisory and commercial property acquisition and disposition services.

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By AZ Advisory Team, October 12, 2009 7:00 am

With data given meaning and turned into information and information turned into knowledge by reference to other experience, action is possible. Without knowledge, it would be almost impossible to gauge whether a given course of action is prudent or to predict what its consequences might be.  This is where the building operations manual comes in — where the guide or systematic instructions for action should be documented to ensure smooth, consistent and standardized operations of a building as it is handled by numerous managers, engineers, and staff.

A database and operations manual serves as the institutional memory pool for a business. It is the place where a new employee can go for data, information, knowledge and systematic instructions about the business and its people, operations, history, performance, assets, and resources when other people and their memories are not available. This situation occurs when long-term employees retire, project managers go on vacation, obscure facts must be rediscovered, or, as is usually the case, there is simply too much detail for the human mind to track systematically. Businesses use a database and manuals to record whatever human minds cannot reliably and consistently retain on their own.

Alex Zylberglait provides commercial real estate investment advisory as well as research, estate planning, asset allocation, valuation, financing, special assets services, transaction advisory and commercial property acquisition and disposition services.

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By Alex Zylberglait, October 9, 2009 4:17 am

Data, Information, Knowledge and Action

Databases form the necessary foundation for managing current projects and programs and for projecting future costs and property facility management department activities. Data by itself, however, is fairly useless. A skilled analyst can take raw data and manipulate it to extract patterns, trends, and inferences—information—that explain relationships between the events that constitute the data. Therefore, energy consumption figures, for example  that reveal an office using 3000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 1997 and 6000 in 2001 are data; the observation that consumption increased between 1997 and 2001 is information.

Knowledge takes information one step further by putting it in the context of experience.  For example, the increased in power consumption makes sense because occupancy in the building increased.  But since 1997, there were no energy saving measures in place such as motion-sensing automatic light switches and an efficient air conditioning. If energy-saving measures are implemented, they would expect some reduction on energy consumption.  Knowledge, therefore, is information used to explain something and even project future values.

Alex Zylberglait provides commercial real estate investment advisory as well as research, estate planning, asset allocation, valuation, financing, special assets services, transaction advisory and commercial property acquisition and disposition services.

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By Alex Zylberglait, October 8, 2009 8:00 am

Most building facility and operations departments have a wealth of information but inadequate means to organize it. To manage the wide spectrum of operations and facility information properly, managers must understand the term database and building an operations manual in its most basic sense.

Great care must be exercised in designing and selecting management tools that enable managers to find what they are looking for—even when they are rushed, cannot remember where the information is, do not remember its name, and do not know how it works. The management tool for these tasks is a simple database to provide access to needed information and a manual, either in electronic or physical form, to provide information on how to use each element and how the entire facility works. Before you design a database and a manual, however, it is important to understand the relationship between information and data.

Alex Zylberglait provides commercial real estate investment advisory as well as research, estate planning, asset allocation, valuation, financing, special assets services, transaction advisory and commercial property acquisition and disposition services.