1.0 Leadership

• Organization charts will be published on the OFS web site and departmental web pages will be created.
• An effective methodology for content management is the next goal.
• The web pages have been transitioned to WordPress and content editors are identified.
• A process is being developed to keep org charts up‐to‐date at all levels by using the “import” feature in Visio.

New Mexico State University (NMSU) Facilities and Services (FS) consists of the Project Development and Engineering group that manages both capital construction and small remodel projects for the NMSU System; Facilities Operations, which is responsible for the physical operation and maintenance of the main campus; and Environmental Health and Safety, a unit that is responsible for environmental compliance and safety across the NMSU System, which includes twelve Agricultural Science Centers and four Community Colleges.

Facilities Business Administration provides oversight of the financial and business operations, the Sustainability Manager makes sure that sustainable practices are incorporated into all of our activities, and the University Architect and Campus Planning office oversees the NMSU Master Plan* and space management initiatives ¹. The Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency response, and the Fire Chief serves as the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) for our Las Cruces campus facilities.

NMSU Facilities and Services places a premium on “roles and responsibilities,” as we believe that a large organization must have the discipline to work together as a unified team and to hold one another accountable in order to be successful. Over the past seven years, Facilities and Services has had the opportunity to merge the Office of Planning and Construction and the Office of Facilities and Services for efficiency, and subsequent reorganizations added Environmental Health and Safety as well as the Fire Department in order to develop synergies. Organization charts, responsibilities, and departmental functions are posted on the websites as is information about the services that each unit provides ². All position descriptions are posted on the NMSU website ³. Facilities and Services is funded to provide most routine maintenance services for educational facilities and charges for non‐maintenance improvements and services upon request as well as for all services provided to research units, auxiliaries, and athletics. A list of billable and non‐billable services is provided on the Facilities and Services website ⁴.

We practice the independent segregation of duties in accordance with standard controls; this allows for Environmental Health and Safety to maintain oversight of safety and environmental compliance for all of our units, for the Fire Department AHJ to oversee code compliance for construction and for the trades, and for the Business Administration staff to hold everyone accountable with proper but not suppressive controls.

*Notes: words in bold font indicate that supporting documentation will be provided.

Back to Top

• In addition to frequent group and departmental meetings, a formal employee satisfaction survey will be taken
  and employee feedback will be used to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses.
• An employee satisfaction survey remains as a goal for FY 2012; annual employee meetings have been instituted,
  as have regular visits to the shop meetings by management personnel.
• An employee satisfaction survey was conducted in 2013, will be conducted again in 2014, and will be redone biannually to track progress.
• FS has continually addressed the issues in the employee engagement surveys as well items brought forward by
  numerous external consultants and reviewers.

NMSU Facilities and Services employs numerous strategies to set organizational direction and tone. We constantly seek feedback from employees, from external customers, and from faculty, students, and staff, as well as from the research, academic, and administrative unit leadership. As leaders, we stress continuous improvement, accepting constructive criticism, and adapting to our ever‐changing environment. Our managers and directors attend shop meetings, hold departmental meetings, and each one meets regularly with their direct reports ⁵. We encourage very unit in Facilities and Services to have some form of an introductory new employee orientation and most do; over this past year, we started a process where every new employee meets with Associate Vice President for a short talk about four important things to remember: safety, professional development, integrity, and the importance of having fun.

In 2010, Facilities and Services employed James Cole of CommTech Transformations to assist with our strategic plan. Mr. Cole was referred by APPA and assisted RMAPPA with their strategic plan, so he was a logical choice for us. When others on campus saw the results of his work, he was tapped to do an Environmental Scan for the various units in Administration and Finance in preparation for the division strategic plan. ⁶ Every unit then completed an in‐depth Environmental Scan where Mr. Cole’s team met with our customers, employees, and peers. These results, while somewhat painful to hear in many cases, led to constructive feedback that was used to help create a unit‐wide culture of self‐examination that continues today.

Facilities and Services conducts a system‐wide, customer service satisfaction survey annually, and we employed a professionally administered Employee Engagement Survey in 2013. The entire Administrative and Finance Division followed suit with another Employee Engagement Survey in 2014 , and the NMSU System also conducted an Employee Satisfaction Survey ⁷. We use the results of these surveys for organizational improvement. We revised our license reimbursement procedure, increased the footwear allowance, made improvements to accelerate the project service times by changing and streamlining the delivery model, and consolidated two shops to clearly define roles and responsibilities.

Back to Top

• Mission and value development of a departmental strategic plan is a goal for the 2012‐13 timeframe.
• Facilities worked actively with Administration and Finance to complete the division plan, and finalized the framework for the unit plan. Each Facilities unit has been tasked in 2014 with developing their mission statement, goals, and measures in support of these plans.
• FS communicates regularly to staff and stakeholders through a number of methods.

NMSU Facilities and Services established goals using the APPA Award for Excellence criteria as our OUTLINE FOR EXCELLENCE in 2008⁸. In 2010, we formed an Internal Advisory Committee and charged them with their initial task: to review our organizational name, our mission, our goals, and our values⁹. We changed our name from the Office of Facilities and Services to Facilities and Services, and we employed James Cole of CommTech Transformations to help us refine our Strategic Plan. We decided that the OUTLINE FOR EXCELLENCE made for an excellent plan, and we adopted specific strategies and objectives¹⁰. Facilities and Services was an active participant in the development of the Administration and Finance Strategic Plan¹¹.

We are known for our communications on campus; we issue regular newsletters and share them with the campus¹². We hold annual meetings with our building monitors, and email outage notices when our work impacts users¹³. All units and shops meet regularly as a group and individually¹⁴.

Back to Top

• Regular meetings with the building monitors will be scheduled and an annual orientation will be held. In addition, regular emails sharing OFS news will be distributed and the publication of an electronic newsletter will be investigated.
• Senior management will conduct regular meetings with key administrators to ensure that OFS is meeting the needs of the NMSU campus.
• Regular meetings with the building monitors are being held and a newsletter is being published.
• Facilities and Services management briefs the Academic Dean’s Council and the University Research Council when possible.
• Facilities conducted a campus Town Hall in 2013¹⁵.
• The leadership team meets regularly with all employees, attending shop and departmental meetings.

The Facilities and Services leadership team communicates our vision, values, and expectations in multiple ways. Each sub‐unit has regular meetings, and we bridge the communications line with a mix of directors attending shop and departmental meetings. The Associate Vice President for Facilities and Services drops in on these meetings as time permits. We hold some form of annual meeting around the holiday season, either with individual departments or as an “all hands” Facilities and Services meeting. In 2014, our annual meeting was held with all employees and Chancellor Carruthers was in attendance ¹⁶.

Facilities and Services conducts regular meetings with building monitors and with Deans; meets monthly as a representative to the University Administrative Council; and has presented at CADRE, the Council for Assistant Deans for Research ¹⁷. Facilities and Services is well represented on numerous committees across the university as well as with the city of Las Cruces¹⁸.

Back to Top

• Budgets will be created with departmental input and accountability established. In addition, management reports will be developed and distributed regularly. These reports will include such items as work order backlog and work order cycle time.
• Performance and benchmarking data for all departments will be developed for comparison with peer institutions. Measures such as custodial FTE per square foot and grounds FTE per acre will be used to identify appropriate staffing levels. Energy efficiency at the central plant will be measured and a baseline established.
• In addition to participating in the APPA FPI, Facilities and Services has engaged Sightlines to provide annual and impartial 3rd party benchmarking.
• A system of management reports is being created.
• Benchmarks and KPIs that align with the Administration and Finance Strategic Plan have been incorporated into the evaluation of every Executive Director as well as those of their direct reports.

NMSU Facilities and Services has developed benchmarks and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at every level, taking pride in the fact that we were one of a handful of units on campus that actually measured performance ¹⁹. Our Chancellor is metric‐oriented and Vision 2020, the system strategic plan, established a complete set of KPIs²⁰. When the Administration and Finance Strategic Plan was developed, we revisited all of our KPIs to ensure alignment. Each unit has their own set of performance measures that are rolled all the way down to the operational level, and all directors and managers have these written into their performance evaluations for clear expectations and performance measurement. These are listed in Section 4.2.

Back to Top

• Regular meetings were held that cross multiple levels of supervision in order to reinforce the concept of shared values.
• A major component of the Administration and Finance Strategic Plan was the empowerment of employees and decentralized decision‐making.

Empowerment was a major theme of the Administration and Finance Strategic Plan²¹. Although we were already encouraging decision‐making at the lowest possible level in Facilities and Services, we seized this opportunity to re‐emphasize our commitment to empowering our employees and fostering self‐direction. It is particularly challenging to emphasize empowerment while simultaneously focusing on continuous improvement, because supporting empowerment requires a commitment to allowing people to make decisions, and that only becomes possible in an environment where learning from mistakes is encouraged. In many instances, the higher‐level organizational processes that guide our personnel could be more conducive to self‐direction, innovation, and decentralized decision‐making.

We believe that the best way to develop empowerment is through effective delegation that establishes boundaries, procedures and processes that are minimal while providing a framework for effective self-direction, and an environment that allows people to learn from the consequences of their decisions. Where possible, we develop our processes around this approach. Occasionally, one of our custodians will have the inevitable mishap and break an item in an office; we are particularly proud when we hear that they replaced it and submitted a receipt for reimbursement without having to ask.

Back to Top

• OFS will remain involved with APPA, RMAPPA, ISSA, and other professional organizations and will take advantage of continuing education and networking opportunities.
• NMSU hosted the APPA Supervisor’s Toolkit in 2011 and 2012 and has been engaged in the formation of Desert APPA with UTEP and EPECC. The Executive Director of Operations joined the RMA Membership Committee and two executive directors are attending the APPA Facilities Management Institute. Senior staff has been attending the Leadership Academy.
• NMSU will host CAPPA 2014 in partnership with UTEP.
• The 2014 CAPPA Conference was a success, and FS continues to encourage all employees to work on Professional Development.

Despite university mandated budget reductions in 2010 and in 2015, Facilities and Services has been able to increase the level of professional development and professional association engagement because we believe that it is vital to the organization. Facilities and Services encourages all employees to make a self-improvement plan and discuss it with their supervisor ²².

Facilities and Services hosted the CAPPA 2014 Annual Conference with the University of Texas at El Paso; the Associate Vice President is the current CAPPA Past President, a former Pacesetter Award winner, and an APPA 2015 President’s Award winner for efforts with the Mexico initiative ²³. Facilities and Services employees include two that hold the Educational Facilities Professional(EFP) designation and the Co‐Chair of the CAPPA Professional Development Committee ²⁴. We have numerous folks enrolled in various phases at the Leadership Institute and at the APPA Institute of Facilities Management²⁵. NMSU has hosted the Supervisor’s Toolkit on campus three times and we have numerous graduates on staff²⁶.

Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) is active in CSHEMA, the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association; the American Society of Safety Engineers; and the College and University Hazardous Waste conference. The Executive Director serves on the invitation‐only EHS Director’s Roundtable²⁷. The Fire Department staff attends numerous seminars to keep up with “best practices” in their field²⁸.

Back to Top

• Personnel will be developed through cross‐functional training, the sharing of information, and continuing education.</spa
• Units are being reorganized to facilitate a natural progression of personnel, and a procedure is in place where management backups obtain experience by filling in when regular absences occur.</spa
• FS specifically encourages high potential employees to work on professional development, and we track in‐house promotions as a performance measure.

Supervisors at each level send an email of delegation when they are away, directing the recipient to a designated backup who can respond to questions and who has the resources available and authority to act ²⁹. This process encourages all levels of supervision to keep a designated and informed management backup in place. While this is a hallmark of customer service, it also means that we are continually training to be “two‐deep.” Through the normal course of events, we recently had to address the loss of the Senior Administrative Assistant, the University Architect, the Space Manager, and the Senior Assistant Director of Project Development and Engineering. We had people ready to step in as interims almost immediately.

In addition, Facilities and Services encourages high potential employees to become engaged with numerous activities that help ensure continuity; two members of Facilities and Services are enrolled in the Aggie Leadership Training Academy, ALTA; one is from Environmental Health and Safety and one is from the utility group at the Central Plant. This program was started at NMSU this past year for the sole purpose of grooming our campus leaders. The Associate Vice President of Facilities and Services served on the program development committee ³⁰.

Back to Top