In a building with thousands of doors, it is useful to keep track. For the managers of this building, there was a question of how many doors required a maintenance contract. The maintenance database gave one answer. The contract manager's spreadsheet gave another. The security team gave a third answer. And local lore gave yet a fourth. Consensus was that only 5% of the doors needed specialized maintenance. But 5% of 30,000 is a much different number than 5% of 8,000.
As our facilitation proceeded, a curious debate emerged: what is a door? Is it the panel, or "leaf", that swings, slides or rises? Is it the assembly of leaf, frame and trim? What of "doors" with two leaves? Or doors in series, such as those found in vestibules? Perhaps it's true that 30,000 individual leaves are present. But as part of assemblies, they create only 8,000 "doors". Or should that be "doorways"? Welcome to facilities facilitation.
Clarity arrived in the form of unique identification labels. When a door needs maintenance, a well placed identification label helps crews verify they have the right door. When tabulating quantities in spreadsheets and databases, unique, descriptive labels are essential for checking accuracy. We built this graphic to confirm the label numbering. Adapted from the existing equipment numbering scheme, we were soon able to resume the matter of counting.
We leave the puzzler to you. Clue: the most reliable, authoritative source was not listed above. We used that source to get the answers they needed.
Information Design Notes We needed to define the segments of an identification number. This form borrows from our architectural practice of calling out elements of an assembly. For added testing and clarity, we also demonstrated their use on a sample floor plan.
Managers, this is a fine illustration of the value of good information systems and the challenges to implementation. Not having this information available complicates the maintenance problem. Budget uncertainty, fuzzy contract scopes and coordination troubles are features highlighted in this example. By investing in good implementations managing these types of actions become routine. You can meet staff changes, peer initiatives and IT upgrades without interruptions in service. Then you can focus on more complex issues.
Information Systems Developers may note this exercise again validated the numbering scheme. What blocked system success in this case was implementation details. The initial implementation was not modeled for preventative maintenance. So data in the system was neither structured, nor quality assured for this purpose. Accomodating preventative maintenance now will require working carefully with staff to rebuild the data, data structures, forms and reports.
In a building with thousands of doors, it is useful to keep track. For the managers of this building, there was a question of how many doors required a maintenance contract. The maintenance database gave one answer. The contract manager's spreadsheet gave another. The security team gave a third answer. And local lore gave yet a fourth. Consensus was that only 5% of the doors needed specialized maintenance. But 5% of 30,000 is a much different number than 5% of 8,000.
As our facilitation proceeded, a curious debate emerged: what is a door? Is it the panel, or "leaf", that swings, slides or rises? Is it the assembly of leaf, frame and trim? What of "doors" with two leaves? Or doors in series, such as those found in vestibules? Perhaps it's true that 30,000 individual leaves are present. But as part of assemblies, they create only 8,000 "doors". Or should that be "doorways"? Welcome to facilities facilitation.
Clarity arrived in the form of unique identification labels. When a door needs maintenance, a well placed identification label helps crews verify they have the right door. When tabulating quantities in spreadsheets and databases, unique, descriptive labels are essential for checking accuracy. We built this graphic to confirm the label numbering. Adapted from the existing equipment numbering scheme, we were soon able to resume the matter of counting.
We leave the puzzler to you. Clue: the most reliable, authoritative source was not listed above. We used that source to get the answers they needed.
Information Design Notes We needed to define the segments of an identification number. This form borrows from our architectural practice of calling out elements of an assembly. For added testing and clarity, we also demonstrated their use on a sample floor plan.
Managers, this is a fine illustration of the value of good information systems and the challenges to implementation. Not having this information available complicates the maintenance problem. Budget uncertainty, fuzzy contract scopes and coordination troubles are features highlighted in this example. By investing in good implementations managing these types of actions become routine. You can meet staff changes, peer initiatives and IT upgrades without interruptions in service. Then you can focus on more complex issues.
Information Systems Developers may note this exercise again validated the numbering scheme. What blocked system success in this case was implementation details. The initial implementation was not modeled for preventative maintenance. So data in the system was neither structured, nor quality assured for this purpose. Accomodating preventative maintenance now will require working carefully with staff to rebuild the data, data structures, forms and reports.