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Each year, Roy Jorgensen Associates, Inc. accepts applications for a $15,000 scholarship award for qualifying civil engineering college seniors or graduate students.  Roy E. Jorgensen was a degreed civil engineer graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and a licensed professional engineer. In 1961 he founded Roy Jorgensen Associates, a specialized infrastructure and facilities management and consulting firm.

With Roy Jorgensen’s passing in 2004, the Board of Directors established the memorial scholarship foundation to honor his outstanding career and to continue his commitment to supporting the academic goals of young men and women in the engineering field. The scholarship award, made each year in August, is based upon an evaluation of the qualifying applications submitted.

The 2020 annual Roy E. Jorgensen Memorial Scholarship Award for civil engineering was awarded in August of 2020 to two excellent candidates: Cameron Taylor, who is pursuing an BS degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Maryland, and Amy Wyman, who is completing a doctoral degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Oregon. Interested students may request scholarship award criteria and an application by e-mail addressed to: info@jorgensenfm.com

There are times in our careers when we have an opportunity to be part of a picture that is bigger than we might have imagined, or where we can make a positive difference in someone’s life without knowing its impact. Some years ago, I had the privilege of meeting a co-worker at a company function, and my reaction was that she was unique and that she would make a difference in her field. 

While her role in our firm did not allow me daily interactions, I did make it a point to keep in touch and offer her insights into her career development, not to mention chats over coffee when I would visit our headquarters (pictured above). Her name is Lorie Kessler and she, not unlike those before her, triumphs in her career pursuits. 

In 2019 Lori was honored to be included in a book publication of America’s Leading Ladies Who Positively Impact Our World. It is a book of courage, challenge, and triumph. Lori has earned a seat with the likes of Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Marie Flore Lindo-Latortue, to name a few. I am proud to know that I had a small part in helping Lori rise above the norm and never stop believing in herself and her abilities. Thank you, Lori, for being honest to yourself and your convictions. 

Performance Innovation was conceived by JorgensenFM, a facilities management and consulting division of Roy Jorgensen Associates, Inc., to improve Facility Management processes. Performance Innovation is the practical application of critical thinking enriched with elements of kaizen. The benefits of applying practical innovation to our daily work activities provide a better foundation for the organization by reducing the opportunities for error and overlooked opportunities for improvement. It keeps you on the leading edge of the curve, rather than playing catch-up or having to triage a situation. It is not an end-all; it is just another tool bringing value to your team, company, or customer.

In simplest of terms, it is a proactive approach to anticipating a problem or situation before it happens. It can also be used to address existing problems. The more it is used, the more it can prevent problems from arising. It is looking beyond the obvious of what at times is staring us in the face. Remember the adage: “seeing the forest through the trees?” As a tool, Performance Innovation prompts us to challenge the status quo. It requires that we ask questions and then look beyond the response. Facility managers, corporate real estate professionals, and operations staff can benefit by embracing this simple methodology.

Case Study – A world leading internet company experienced a weekend flood caused by a broken water line.  The flood resulted in a business interruption. Unfortunately, the facility was not equipped with a water notifier system tied into an alarm, and, unfortunately, the assigned patrol staff failed to make their scheduled rounds as required in the occupier lease. Response, triage, repair, and restoration totaled over $100,000 in hard costs, and millions of additional dollars in lost revenue resulting from the business interruption.

While most raised floor system are equipped with under floor detection devises that send an alarm to a central monitoring location, in this case the floor was a non-raised system similar to those found in office break rooms. As our team worked to remediate the damage, the client asked whether we had the ability to install a water detection system throughout their building where water is used for breakroom commodities.

As budgets continue to be trimmed during difficult Pandemic times, your facility operating budget is often the targeted focus of multiple cost-cutting initiatives. Service levels associated with human capital and equipment maintenance are often modified downward, reducing frequency of service to achieve these cost reductions.

Capital and expense project funding is also historically cut back, often delaying significant repairs or replacement of aged and under-performing assets. These and similar reductions have an impact on your normal operating plan, which is meant to protect the company assets, ensuring that they reach or exceed their useful life expectancy. These cuts will also impact daily operations by reducing the dependability of critical assets.

Not only does funding a reasonable maintenance budget become even more difficult, it becomes even harder to protect. Many executives turn to maintenance expense when economic times become difficult, because managers haven’t had the solid information and numbers to support their budget requests, making it an easy target. This gap of quantifiable information has been a genuine roadblock to protecting maintenance programs and budgets

The question becomes, can you provide the right reporting to make informed business decisions about where to make service level adjustments and operating plan reductions? Will these cuts have short- and long-term impacts on the company’s financial performance due to unplanned premature failures and/or impacts to productivity? Tracking the Backlog of Maintenance and Repair (BMAR) history becomes a critical reporting requirement. A formal Work Program and Budget^TM (WP&B) along with a prescribed asset management

program can be the toolset to provide this level of reporting. However, a best-in-class application will utilize a fully Intergraded Maintenance Management System (IMMS) that combines and leverages the WP&B, facility condition assessments, and a planned asset management program. Do not confuse the IMMS with the CMMS one is a tool and the other a methodology.

When unplanned failures occur and/or economic times return to pre-covid conditions, this same reporting can be critical in helping to reinstate an appropriate operating budget. Additionally, this also allows you to know where to focus on rebuilding the short- and long-term capital/expense plan.

The reporting starts with a WP&B. This can be a simple spreadsheet or, better yet, tied to a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). The intent is to document each physical piece of equipment associated with the facility, recording manufacturer information and age of the asset.

Next, we must identify the man-hours required to maintain the asset according to a specified service level. Finally, we calculate the annual materials, licensing, and component replacement costs required to keep each asset maintained at the identified service level. This interactive buildup of inventory, activities, man-hours, and budgets allows us to immediately see impacts of budget cuts on service levels.

A facility condition assessment (FCA) performed a minimum of every three years provides an asset performance benchmark. The facility condition assessment is a key component of the Integrated Maintenance Management System

(IMMS). The FCA will identify BMAR, provide a current evaluation of an asset’s current condition, and measure its performance against industry standards to determine the assets remaining useful life. This data then provides a detailed project list and planned operating expense plan looking out as far as five to ten years.

Utilizing the continuous feedback from the day-to-day execution of the workload, BMAR history, current service levels, aging, and even possible failure history, the IMMS must be updated frequently throughout the year to accurately reflect current conditions and needs. It is also a practical tool to track historical replacement and is crucial for reporting and rebuilding the capital plan.

The IMMS will provide the hard numbers executives need. It will demonstrate the dangers of deferred maintenance, and it will support the manager’s basic budget and the portfolio’s overall performance. So when cost reductions still have to be made, IMMS, WP&B, and the asset management program will provide the big picture information the manager needs to make well-informed, knowledgeable – rather than arbitrary – adjustments.

Your management reporting hierarchy then needs financial data presented in C-Suite terms to make sound decisions on where and what to eliminate. Preventive and predictive maintenance can often times actually reduce operating expenses when compared to a run-to-fail program. Therefore, we use the IMMS history and reporting to support financial justifications such as internal rate of return (IRR), return on investment (ROI), and cost of equipment failure to support your true budget needs and to make informed business decisions about specifically where to take cost reductions and what to defer for how long while limiting your risk of unplanned failures.