Facility management teams are often expected to solve problems they didn't create while operating with limited influence over key decisions. In this episode, Wayne Whitzell sits down with consultant and FM Consultants Council President Grant Sommerfeld to discuss why FM leaders must move beyond reactive operations, use data more effectively and communicate differently with executive leadership.
Host Wayne Whitzell, Senior VP Strategic Accounts, SOLID Surface Care and First Vice Chair on IFMA's Global Executive Board welcomes Grant Sommerfeld, president of IFMA's FM Consultants Council and founder of Executive FM, for a conversation about the challenges facing facility managers today. Drawing on his experience leading FM transformations across healthcare, municipal government and higher education, Grant shares why many organizations remain trapped in reactive operating models and what leaders can do to break the cycle.
The discussion explores the importance of data driven decision making, the communication gap between FM teams and executive leadership, and why facility managers need a stronger voice before major organizational decisions are made. Grant also explains how consultants can help organizations build internal capabilities, improve stakeholder communication and create more sustainable operating models that don't rely on individual heroics to succeed.
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Grant Sommerfeld: [00:00:00] If somebody makes a decision, let's say, you know, cut your housekeeping budget, and now you're getting complaints from occupants that, you know, the place is dirty or dirtier than it used to be. Well, FM didn't create that problem. FM was handed that problem when it was made somewhere else. FM needs to have the voice. It needs to be discussing things before the decision is made. They need to be part of the decision. They won't get what they want all the time, and that's, you know, that's to be expected.
But they should have a voice in the discussion
Host: Welcome to ConnectedFM, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by IFMA, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to ifma.org to get [00:01:00] started.
Facility management teams are often expected to solve problems they didn't create while operating with limited influence over key decisions. In this episode, host Wayne Whitzell, the senior VP of strategic accounts at Solid Surface Care and the first vice chair on IFMA's Global Board of Directors, sits down with the president of IFMA's FM Consultants Council and founder of Executive FM, Grant Sommerfeld, to discuss why FM leaders must move beyond reactive operations, the importance of data-driven decision making, the communication gap between FM teams and executive leadership, and much more.
Now, let's get into it
Wayne Whitzell: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Connected FM podcast. I am excited today to introduce you all to my guest, Grant Sommerfeld, who is not only a very storied and talented FM and FM consultant, but also the [00:02:00] president of IFMA's FM Consultants Council. And, uh, Grant, uh, I am very excited to talk to you today. Uh, say hello to the folks.
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, hello, everyone. And Wayne, I'm glad to be here.
Wayne Whitzell: So I'm gonna be completely open and tell you the, the, the reason I'm so excited to have you on the podcast is because I follow you on LinkedIn, and I have grown to look forward to the posts that you put on LinkedIn because they are so succinctly apt for the challenges that the FM profession faces.
And you, you, you don't write it in a complain-y way, you don't write it in a way that doesn't provide a, a solution, uh, but you're nailing the problem right at its epicenter. And when I see somebody or hear somebody do that, it, it, it tells me they have a lived experience. They're not talking from theory.
They're not talking from the lab. And so I went a little further, Grant, and I looked to see that you have served your FM time not only in the university system, public [00:03:00] system, health, uh, organization for, for Canada. So that kind of answered some questions for me because I think a lot of us in FM know that those are some very challenging places to operate in and, uh, to, to, to ask for OpEx money, uh, to do things.
So I, I think the, the pieces fit there a little bit. But te- tell us a little bit about, about your history and, and, and, uh, in the FM profession.
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, sure. So I got into FM after a career in finance. Or not a career, but I started my career in finance, and it moved into operations and then consulting, and my, my last consulting project was in FM in healthcare.
And I fell in love with it, with FM. That was 2005, and I've never left. I took over a health region in Canada that had three acute care hospitals, one of which was an inner-city hospital, and some long-term care homes and some regional facilities, uh, seniors care and, and so on. And the system was run [00:04:00] with every hospital being independent.
They had, each one had their own FM department, and it just wasn't effective. And what I was brought in to do was knit them into a single organization, and that kind of blended my consulting and operations background. But now I was focusing it strictly on FM, and I spent, you know, the next, you know, six-odd years with that, with that organization, the Saskatoon Health Region, doing exactly that.
And, you know, I got a bit of a reputation for, you know, for doing the transformational sort of projects, and I was brought to the city of Calgary, where I did the same with them. Although that job was a little bit hijacked. We had a massive flood in 2013 that devastated... It was the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history, and it devastated downtown Calgary.
So I spent more than a year leading the recovery of Calgary City Hall Complex, which [00:05:00] was damaged to the tune of about $33 million. It was bad. And so I got a good taste of, uh, crisis management and, and, and so on. And then from there I went to Mount Royal University, post-secondary, and again, it was the same thing.
It had a department that really needed to be modernized, and, uh, it... and that's what I did. So I left Mount Royal at the end of 2022 and thought, "Okay, I'm gonna go back to my roots," which is now, which is consulting with a finance spin to it, and I'm gonna focus, you know, primarily on post-secondaries about how do you bring them into the modern age.
And there are def- as you said, there are definite challenges right now, and they're not insurmountable but, you know, they need to be acknowledged and out loud and, and tackled
Wayne Whitzell: I, n- you just put another piece in the puzzle for me with your finance background. 'Cause oftentimes you find FMs who fall into the career.[00:06:00]
They don't come with a financial background, and they have to learn what internal rate of return is, all of the mathematics that go behind di- different types of budgeting, zero-based, et cetera. And you're coming to the game with that, so I, I think that's an important piece to maybe why you are suited to make the case, as we say, for FM in the organization because I, that financial piece is oftentimes what you're wedging in with, um, to the C-suite.
And unless you can formulate those in an organized, understandable way for, for those folks. But, uh, I wanna read a quote from you. I, I, I have a few here that, uh, just to give the folks an idea of why you should follow Mr. Sommerfeld on, on LinkedIn. But, uh, "Operational stability built on human compensation is fragile by definition.
The objective is not finding better heroes. It is building an operating model that no longer depends on heroics to remain stable." I love that. I love that.
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, you know, it's so true. I mean, you find in every FM department the h- the person that [00:07:00] shows up when, when they're, they're needed the most. They put in extra effort.
They know where everything is. They, they've been around. They, they've got that skill set. And if you start depending on them, you're in big trouble when they retire or go on vacation if you need them. And it's also unfair to ask somebody to always have to step up and be this kinda hero, uh, en- engaging in, you know, drastic action to make things happen.
One of the things I always look for when I, when I was leading FM departments was when they started telling war stories. "Well, I stayed up all night, and I, and I fixed this." Well, you know, it's good that you did that, but we should never have come to that point, and we shouldn't rely on the fact that, you know, certain people will just do what it takes to get things happening.
Wayne Whitzell: That's, it y- it's so timely that we're talking about this because really just before this I was interacting with someone online who I think has the catchphrase is that, "Go ask Tom." The phrase [00:08:00] is if, uh, you need to figure out how to fix the boiler, go ask Tom. But Tom's getting older, and Tom's not gonna be here much longer, so what do we do?
Are we just going to repeat the same cycle of problem again, or are we going to utilize tools and data and systems to capture those things? I have one of my buddies, um- Mentioned, he said, "Listen, we should just strap a video camera on this person's head for, you know, for the next five weeks and have them walk around, just record everything and scrape it into a, you know, a large language model."
And, and, uh, but I mean, obviously we have a problem. We call it the silver tsunami, right? We, we know that a lot of these folks are going to be leaving the workforce. But, uh, you touched on something here that I, I think really we need to talk about more because we, we have a culture of, of nose to the grindstone, working hard in a cold sweat, getting things done and say, "Hey, we did it.
We got it done." But what you just said, we shouldn't have to get to that point. But my question, Grant, is so many of the FMs I interact with are in a cold sweat every day, completely in a tactical day-to-day [00:09:00] exercise. You know, you can identify the problem. Yes, it shouldn't have come to this, but this is what I've got.
How do you map a p- a, a pathway from that to a place where the FM department can be more predictive in their response?
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, you know what? That's kind of what I built my consulting practice around. I experienced that, you know, my... in, in the 17 years I led FM departments, I experienced that all the time.
All these urgent things or all these time-delaying needed things have to happen, and they crowd out the time that you need. You know, the, the urgent crowds out the important, and the important is the planning. It's, it's the examination of, okay, in a very clear-headed and an objective way, where are we? And, you know, what do we need to change?
And, you know, and, and so many departments in FM are just caught up in that. And sometimes, you know, there's different strategies to cargo time to work on it, whether you, you know, you force yourself to take [00:10:00] it, you know, a certain r- you know, a day a week or something, or you bring in somebody like me to, to help you, or you assign somebody on your team to do it.
But getting caught up in the day-to-day stuff is gonna get in the way, and that is an epidemic. That's, that's part of the what being in FM is all about, and that's gotta change.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah.
Grant Sommerfeld: FM is getting more complex. The pressures on it are continually increasing, whether they're budgetary or operational expectations.
The technology's changing. There's tons more opportunities, and the expectations are just growing exponentially. You can't keep managing it the way you did.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. It's, it's, uh, it's almost as if we, the, the, the name facility manager needs to migrate to facility leader. And, and this is r- really another of your quotes I wanted to, to read here to the, to the audience.
Uh, "Most facilities departments are measured on responsiveness while denied [00:11:00] authority over the conditions that create demand. They are expected to absorb poor planning, shifting priorities, deferred decisions, and institutional fragmentation without meaningful upstream influence. That is not accountability.
It is managed exposure disguised as operational leadership." And, and that to me, that, that upstream influence of being able to get up there into an organ- organization and talk about those things is in itself a, a unique skill set. And I, I... What are your thoughts on that? I've been thinking about this.
Could, could it be that the very things that make someone a good, an excellent facility manager may be the very things that prohibit them from being good at making the case to the C-suite or for their own upstream influence?
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, I, I- I'm afraid the answer to that is, is probably yes. You get into facility management and you're, you've got your kinda head down into the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts of operating your [00:12:00] facilities And now you've got...
Every so often, you've got an opportunity to speak upwards to your, to your boss. And, you know, typically, in most organizations, there's not a vice president of FM. Typically, they report to a vice president. And in my experience, it's often a VP of finance or sometimes a chief operating officer. You need a different language to talk to those folks.
They don't care about, you know, the, the statistics that are so day-to-day work order close rates and, and, and so forth. It doesn't really mean a lot to them. They tend to think in terms of dollars and cents. Are you on budget? How do we compare to other insti- similar institutions? And probably most importantly, you know, the people FM reports to just don't wanna be embarrassed or have problems dropped on their lap because of FM.
They [00:13:00] just assume or want FM to function in the background quietly and on budget without being seen or heard. And that's fine and, well, all fine, but then if somebody makes a decision that I- to arbitrarily, let's say, you know, cut your housekeeping budget, your cleaning budget, and now you're getting complaint from, from occupants that, you know, the place is dirty or dirtier than it used to be.
Well, FM didn't create that problem. FM was handed that problem when it was made somewhere else. And now, you know, if the question was budget, you know, FM's got a valid argument to be part of that decision that, you know, "Hey, you need, you know, a million dollar savings." Well, don't tell me at housekeeping.
Ask me how I can save you a million dollars, and that's what you need to do. And increasingly now, savings, I think, are coming or can come through a [00:14:00] better understanding of data. What are the metrics that, that define your operation? And FM is drowning in them. We have tons of measures, but if you don't have anybody with time to analyze them, you're just gonna default to, you know, tired solutions.
Well, that's, like, 5% across the board or, you know, what have you. FM needs it to have the voice. It needs to be discussing things before the decision is made. They need to be part of the decision. They won't get what they, what they want all the time, and that's, you know, that's to be expected. But they should have a voice in the discussion.
Yeah.
Wayne Whitzell: Da- data is, is definitely something I wanted to touch on with you. Let's, let's, let's push that back a second and, and get back to the C-suite for a moment. I, I have a term that I like to use 'cause I've, I've either worked on executive boards or directly under them for most of my career, and I come up with a phrase to try to explain to people how to communicate to, to the C-suite in a very simple way.
They [00:15:00] operate with sledgehammer, we operate with scalpel. They're, they're, they're not, they're not interested in nuance, and you, you... I think the confusion- Yeah ... you'll see a CEO on the news or, or on some kind of a, you know, a, a TED Talk or whatever, and they seem to be talking about very nuanced things.
Their decision-making is just, is more of a they will use a bulldozer before they're gonna pick up a scalpel. And, and they're... So it's big, big things that they need to be sp-spoken to, spoken in, and the things that communicate in their language, like you're saying. And as a consultant, I think there's an advantage, as I've sort of talked to many FMs who They tried to make the case, and, and quite honestly, they, they put the proper case together, but they were not believed.
And they bring in an outside consultant, and all of a sudden there's this gravitas that's associated with what they said, and the, uh, initiative gets passed. And I see you smirking there and smiling because you've, you've experienced that. So to me, that-
Grant Sommerfeld: Fine ...
Wayne Whitzell: right. Fine, let's get it done. But, but what do you, I mean, what do you think about that?
So, so I think it, there, there's a... [00:16:00] When you interact with people, when you are working with them and helping, what is the posture you take with them? Are you, are you kind of the lead- the tip of the spear of that thing, or are you teaching them how to throw that spear?
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Grant Sommerfeld: I do both. Sometimes there's some really uncomfortable things that, you know, just need to be said professionally and [00:17:00] constructively and all that.
But, you know, sometimes, you know, the FM folks are just reluctant for fear of retaliation or, you know, just damaging a relationship to really say very clearly what has to be said. So I can say things that, you know, they might not want to. And but, you know, I'm not gonna be there forever. I tend to come in, do my thing, and, and, and then move on.
And I'm brought back in, you know, for follow-ups and advisory things and so forth. But fundamentally, it's gotta be a skills transfer. The, the FM people that are in that organization need some templates and tools in terms of how to communicate, and it's not an 80-page report full of charts and graphs that a, a busy executive simply won't read.
And it's gotta be distilled into terms that they understand, which is like FM exists to support an institution. It's kind of the intersection where, you know, the [00:18:00] people, the assets, and the clients, the reason the business or organization exists, come together. And FM's really managing the people at that intersection.
And, you know, what I always stress is that when you communicate upward, you don't, you don't need to say, "We need a new boiler." They don't really care. They just see the dollar value in that. What you need is to maintain, you know, this, you know, business con- for business continuity reasons or for reputational reasons or what have you.
You need to tie it back why you're doing things in FM and how does it affect the institution, not just the department. If you talk too much about yourself, people tune out
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah, you're, that's so true. I- you just made me remember of a time where I, I worked for a company a long time ago, and every time the executives would come to town they wanted to visit clients, and I would take them out.
Beautifully, I think a lot of people who have been on the consultant or associate side understand the dynamic. [00:19:00] But at this particular company a long time ago, the executives would just talk about themselves the entire time. "Our company's been here for X number of decades, started this..." Client's glazing over, saying, "Well, you're missing the point here.
You need to find out about, about me." And, uh, I think studying those different stakeholders in the organization and, and how they, they speak and, and, and how to frame things to them is important. And some of that needs to be communicated. I know the, our former chair, Lori Gilmer, she teaches a great class, her and Maureen Wiskoski, on framing and how you frame things to these people, and sometimes it is a photo of the, the, uh, city sewer line, uh, of your neighbor exposed in, in, in the driveway of your facility and saying, "This was built in the same period that was.
That's why we need this money." But I, I see, what I see is a lot of externalized costs. I see a lot of externalized costs, especially on human, human capital in our, in our organizations. I, I see that, uh, the cold sweat that people are in or like you're saying, the heroics, uh, is, is an externalized cost. I also see it [00:20:00] too just structurally in, in the system is that we're, whether for fault of the FM not making the case or, or just simply, you know, the, them deciding to invest that $2 million in marketing as opposed to the facilities department, because of IRR, um, they might be doing that.
I, I just see that we're all kind of kicking the cans down the road in some degree or another. Yeah. And, and it's, it's es- but the human part of it, to me, is, is particularly troublesome because anybody that has spoken to anybody in a senior IFM, outsourced IFM role knows those people are in a crucible every day.
Grant Sommerfeld: Yeah.
Wayne Whitzell: And, and so much is being externalized on them in a, in a physical and personal way to keep things going. It really is a, a rough, a rough place to be. And it, it's, it's, it sounds to me like, you know, if somebody is beating your head against the brick wall again, is, is not the way it goes. How can you interrupt that process, maybe put a new piece on the chessboard?
Which, to me, has always been a consultant. Uh, that, [00:21:00] that's my new piece on the board. Now maybe I can do something different or have an advantage. And, uh, and that's kind of what you're, you're, you're echoing. It's, it's, I envision you as almost like a counsel at, at the defendant's table, you know? Yeah.
Sitting with them and putting your hand over the mic and, "Here's what we should say." That's really how I, I, I'm kind of envisioning, uh, what, what it is that you do there.
Grant Sommerfeld: Yeah, I mean, that's really true. I, I mean, you raised it earlier. Sometimes you just, you know, you can, you can talk till you're blue in the face about, you know, this, that or the other thing.
But when they hire somebody to tell them what you've just told them, they, they listen differently. And sometimes you just need to, like you said, get that new piece on the, on the board. And there's a variety of different ways to do that. Sometimes it's a new hire, sometimes it's a consultant, sometimes it's a, just a different communication approach.
But so much of, I think, what challenges FM is kinda communication based. I mean, FM is not really well [00:22:00] understood. You think it's simple, and you have so many people that say, "Well, look, I run my own house. I change the furnace filter, I clean it, I do the, I cut the grass. I mean, all you're doing is that on a bigger scale."
Well, that's not at all true. But how you communicate to the, to these folks, that is what is so important. That you have to change the dynamic. That you need to, you need to look at things differently yourself within FM, but you need to communicate it so other people look at FM differently.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. I see a person who are being built by your instruction and by osmosis when you work with them.
I mean, let's say you did a facility assessment of their campus. You're gonna be spending a lot of time with
these people. You're gonna be going deep and they're, they're gonna develop a, a relationship, but you're gonna be imparting wisdom to them and training them along the way. And it's almost like a good parallel to that is, you know, I used t- I used to be a, a competitive powerlifter for a brief period, and one of the heroes in, in that world of mine is Dave Tate.
And, uh, he's a [00:23:00] coach, and his concept is he turned everyone into coaches. You don't just... You, you, everybody you interact with, you need to make them a coach of their own so that they're not dependent on you and that they can, can move forward with those things. And, um, it sounds to me like that's, that's the angle that you take and, and really a lot of people in your, in your consulting field.
You know, just one thing to say, "You need to retain me for the rest of your life so that you can do it." Uh, I think that's, that's a red flag when it comes to consulting somebody that- 100%. Yeah.
Grant Sommerfeld: You need to know when to get out.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah.
Grant Sommerfeld: And I, but, and I think there's a, like you learn... I've learned more consulting because I've been trying to teach other people and trying to find ways to articulate things better that, uh, you know, that becomes really critical.
That's one thing I, you know, in terms of, that I've really noticed is that trying to find ways to simplify concepts and present them really clearly has really kinda helped me grow as a, [00:24:00] you know, as a person, as a pro- as an FM professional and as a consultant. And it's rewarding. But, you know, you don't want to, you know, you don't wanna be...
You don't want anybody being dependent on you. That's exactly the opposite of what a consultant should do.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. You know, I, I, I wanna shift to k- the, the, the content here a little bit to data, but I, I wanna read a quote here first before I make this transition, and I think it's a good one of yours. "Good people working in a broken operating model will eventually appear inconsistent.
The system always expresses itself through performance. When priorities conflict, workflows become unclear, and accountability is fragmented, even experienced leaders begin making reactive decisions. Organizations often blame individuals for behaviors that the structure itself is producing. Sustainable performance begins when the operating model stops forcing reactive behavior to be the default."
And boy, you know, we talk about data demonstrating and measuring performance of what that is. I mean, [00:25:00] some people, uh, people have heard me talk about this before in other podcasts, and I won't belabor it, but part of the reasons why the outsourced IFM orders are successful is they speak KPI, SLA, and performance metrics.
And sometimes for organizations, that's the first time they're hearing this stuff at the C-suite level because their own internal FM team has never bothered to set up SLAs with their own internal departments.
Grant Sommerfeld: Exactly.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah.
Grant Sommerfeld: Exactly. I mean, one of the things I always do... You know, first of all, one of the things I've observed is that, you know, every FM department has some form of work order management system.
Uh, your classic, you know, CMMS But very few of them are actually using it and mining the data in it. So they really don't know. They know how many work orders th- that were raised and how many were closed. That's kind of what most pe- where most people stop. I start every engagement with every client with a series of interviews, and I talk to s- [00:26:00] I talk to the FM leaders, I talk to the FM staff, I talk to their, the, the customers and clients, stakeholders of FM, the senior leadership group.
And I'll conduct anywhere from, like, 18 to 60 hours of interviews, depending on the situation, to understand that very point. Like, what are they experiencing? What are they expecting? What are they... You know, and what, what's your opinion of, of the FM operation? And you can learn a lot. I find also you can learn a lot when you talk to those folks about what are the little minor irritants.
"Ah, it's not worth complaining about," or, "I've given up talking about this," things like that. You can learn so much from that process that then guides all the subsequent steps, and you, it, it helps you understand where to invest your time, where to, you know, where to start, you know, the overall project. Sort of what to look at.
Where, where [00:27:00] are the issues? You know, there are so many, you can't do them all. And, you know, there's a point where y- you do, you do too much when you start adding more complexity, and it actually has got a, like, a diminishing marginal utility. You're, you're, you're adding li- you're adding more complexity in a, it, it, to, with less and less value added.
At some point, you cross that line where now the complexity making things worse.
Wayne Whitzell: Right. Oh, that's ano- we could explore that topic for sure.
Grant Sommerfeld: That's my
Wayne Whitzell: favorite right there. That's, uh, I mean, boy, that's, that's a big one. We might have to have you back on that one. I, I think that's where data can help, and I think part of the thing that we're doing at FM International with Dr.
Matt Tucker, uh, Drew DePriest, and some other folks, I think, uh, Tim Burge, I think some other, uh, people like Alessandro Agnello. So we, we've got people that are, are talking about that, developing content around this, this concept of collecting useful data that m- maybe can establish where that tipping point [00:28:00] is and what that, uh, that, that bell curve looks like those things.
But you have to have the data. You have to collect the data. And so much of what I've been talking to you about, um, and, and what I read about you and, and what I've seen is I, I don't know if you're familiar with Alfred Deming
Grant Sommerfeld: Yes.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. So I see a smile, so a fellow fan. So I was turned on to Alfred Deming when my wife was in college, uh, when we were y- young newlyweds, and, uh, she had a class where she had to do this, and boy, I loved that class, 'cause I would read the stuff that she was reading too for whatever class she was in just 'cause it was...
I'm, I'm that way. Uh, and I fell in love with Deming's 14 points and his seven deadly sins, and as I reread that now, like many things you read once when you're young, a kid, and then you read it in adulthood, it's on a whole new meaning, right? Uh, the same thing is true of this book is now having been in these trenches, the- lo these 35 years, I, I, I see a, a lot of parallels to what Deming did in terms of collecting data and utilizing that data to set tolerance limits, [00:29:00] and it's really what, the way we c-
You, we can do it with pumps, right? But, but now how are we doing that with other things where we're, we're collecting the right data, using that data to the point where it's not over complex and collecting it for no reason, and setting that up. So in, in kind of like our final time here, t- talk to me a little bit about where you see data right now, the collection of it, and, and, and how truly important do you think data is to the, this next phase, uh, this next evolution of the FM professional?
Grant Sommerfeld: You know what? I think data is the game changer. It has to be properly collected in mind I mean, so much of what FM does is done on schedule. You clean the bathroom four times a day. You do this that many times a day. Whereas you really need to do it by need, not by schedule. And if you start doing it by need, rather than cleaning 100 bathrooms four times a day, maybe you're cleaning 20 of [00:30:00] them six times a day, and the other ones that get, you know, once a day treatment.
You can save big money on that from an operational standpoint. You can start seeing trends and patterns, so you get out ahead of it so that before you've got a problem, if you're seeing all kinds of hot/cold complaint in a certain building or a certain wing, well, you probably know you've got an issue with mixing boxes or thermostats or something, or the building automation system.
Data can tell you all of that. But I think the other thing that data can do is tell you when you've got an anomaly that you shouldn't react to. One thing I see all the time, and I've experienced it too as a, the, as a chief facilities officer, if something goes wrong and people kind of freak out, and now you've got a process in place to attack and make sure that never happens again.
Maybe it only happened once, you know, the, the president's office didn't get cleaned. But now you've got a whole [00:31:00] process for that, and you start adding more and more fixes for one-off problems that data can tell you that, "No, this isn't normal. This d- this happened, yes, but it's not something we need to react to."
Instead, you, without the data, you just keep adding complexity, and complexity adds cost, and eventually somebody's gonna come along and, and, and cut your budget because your costs keep going up, and you're gonna have more service problems. So you're gonna have more one-off fixes, and you get into this terribly vicious cycle, I call it, where you keep fixing one-off problems that, you know, you probably should be able to prove are one-off problems And you keep adding complexity and creating more problems.
It's a very vicious cycle.
Wayne Whitzell: That is so true. And I mean, I mean, even my own industry that I'm in, I, I... My company and then what I've been doing, we get called in when there's problems way [00:32:00] downstream, where, where it's been compounded over multiple. So we get handed some of the most challenging things because things weren't taken care of upstream, or they tried overly complex solutions and it made the situation worse and so forth.
And, and then if you say, "Well, if only w- you know, we could've been back there five, 10 years ago, now this wouldn't be an issue, and you would have an extended life cycle of another, you know, 10 years on this asset," or whatever that is. And so, uh, eh, at some point you have to drive the stake in the dirt, right?
You have to say, "Here's where we are. Here's we're gonna measure starting from, from right here, latitude and longitude, and then whatever we do now, we can at least measure something." Because that's where I see people get, get stuck at oftentimes is they want things to be arranged perfectly before they start measuring, or they want to have everything, as opposed to just saying, "Just start getting some data in, into the system, and, and at, at the most basic irreducible complexity that you have now, and, and, and start from there."
Grant Sommerfeld: You know, and the old 80/20 rule applies. You, you know, you don't need 100% of the data. [00:33:00] You know, once you start, there's gonna be a, a subset that's gonna get you most of the value by, by using it. Like a classic case too is, for example, I call it value engineering, but in a capital project, they want all this, all these things, and they realize they're over budget.
And then what do they do? Well, now I will put a cheaper floor in and save some money. Not cheaper, right? You're gonna have a problem for the next-
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah ...
Grant Sommerfeld: decades. Right. It's not like at the old poured terrazzo floors that are there for, you know, 100 years. You keep... And this is another case of FM not being there upstream.
Somebody decides, "Well, we're just gonna cheapen the fixtures to save money so we can have more-" Or, you know, what more whatever, better, better something, and it just adds to the cost
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. Well that's... I think that might be a great place for us to pause it because what you identified is really that other big, uh, chasm and gulf.
We have one between us and the [00:34:00] C-suite, and the other is between operations and maintenance and design, A&D, architecture and design, right? So yeah, sometimes it's not putting in the cheapest thing, uh, to save money. Sometimes it's putting in something that's made with babies tears and gold that, uh, uh, they want to look perfect for the next 25 years, but they built something that requires an ridiculous amount of OPEX to maintain.
Yeah.
Grant Sommerfeld: Yeah. I've had a build- I've got a building where there was no way to change the light. There's a gigantic soaring atrium with lights on the top. There was no way to get up there.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. Let's, uh... You know what? I think that's gonna be our next podcast, uh, combo here, Grant. I, I... And, and I, I mean, I'm, for some reason I want to refer to you as the professor because I think you, you really, I, I, I just want to emphasize, I really enjoy reading your posts beg...
and I, I just encourage everybody else to follow you and, and, uh, and h- so in, in our closing moments, how can everybody get ahold of you if they have any questions or, or want, want to follow up with you?
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, you know what? You can always get ahold of me through my website, uh, executivefm.ca. [00:35:00] Uh, I'm, I'm everywhere on LinkedIn, so you can, you can reach me that way.
Reach me through the IFMA FM Consultants' Council. And I've got a book coming out in, in, in, yeah, in, uh, it should be out in August, I think, and there should be some, you know, some approaches there that'll kind of publicize that.
Wayne Whitzell: All right. Well, I tell you what, give me a little bit of time to read that in the fall here, and then- Yeah
we'll have you back on the podcast and talk about the, the book.
Grant Sommerfeld: Yeah. Well, I really, it, it was born out of me having a lot of things that I've wanted to say over the last 17 years, and okay, I'm saying it now.
Wayne Whitzell: All right. Well, I look forward to that. So-
Grant Sommerfeld: Good cathartic release
Wayne Whitzell: Well, Grant, thank you so much for your time today and, and, and, uh, being with us on the podcast.
Uh, I really enjoyed this conversation and, and, and getting into, uh, your mind, even if it was only just a little bit here, but, uh, but thank you and on behalf of all of us at Connected FM.
Grant Sommerfeld: Well, thank you very much. I enjoy talking here with you, Wayne, and I could talk about [00:36:00] FM all day long, so it was a win-win.
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