A Simple Method to Define and Implement Business Strategy Along with KPIs

This paper provides some key metrics for your consideration, but also discusses how the GOSPA Method – a simple process used to define and implement near- to long-term business strategy – can be leveraged for managing HVAC assets.

Since any departmental initiatives should align with other functional areas and the organization as a whole, taking the time to clearly define the direction and purpose of your strategies will ensure that KPIs reinforce the work you and others do while eliminating work at cross purposes. It will also allow you to set clear targets for meeting immediate Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Since the GOSPA Method is easy to implement, the organization and individuals can achieve measurable results in a few short weeks. This paper provides sample GOSPA and KPI data elements that might be used by facility and building managers for managing HVAC equipment.

GOSPA

GOSPA is an acronym and is defined with the following five elements:

Goal(s):

Attainment of a specific position or place in a set amount of time.

An example of one goal might be staying under a budget of $650,000 for HVAC equipment maintenance and capital in FY 2021. This Goal, in turn, may be one of the Objectives supporting a company-wide Goal of cost containment and/or reduction

Objectives:

The targets – some call them sub-goals – that have to be met in order to meet any Goal(s).

This Objective supports the Goal of meeting or coming in under budget for servicing and maintaining HVAC Equipment. One way of controlling cost might be insight into red-flag setting an average service/maintenance budget cost for each piece or logical grouping of HVAC equipment, then tracking actual expenditures. Over time, you will be able to define very accurate estimates as the system is refined, allowing you to quickly and accurately forecast your spend to the level of granularity you require.

Strategies:

How you’re going to achieve your Objectives – that is, the methods you’ll use – on the way to meeting your Goals.
Your organization may find it necessary to track every piece of HVAC equipment in order to forecast, for example, capital equipment expenditures. Another strategy is scoring service providers in meeting SLAs. The data elements required include, but are not limited to, those recommended under Activities.

Some of the information you collect may be necessary for making repair vs. replace decisions and/or evaluating trade-offs for prioritizing your spend. It will also allow you to measure and hold accountable service providers and their associated SLAs.

Priorities:

In what order do Strategies need to be accomplished?

This is entirely dependent on the needs of stakeholders within your property or facilities group as well as the organization writ large. Perhaps one initiative may be keeping capital equipment expenditures to a certain percentage of overall budget. Another could be an emphasis on reducing the backlog of deferred work orders by cost. Regardless, priorities developed should require buy-in from all stakeholders.

Activities:

The day-to-day job functions for tasks that are assigned to specific individuals.

In addition to maintenance of the data required for your organization to track work orders and service, you might consider tracking the following metrics specifically for HVAC:

Manufacturer
Model number
Serial number
Date of manufacture
Area served
Installation date
Life expectancy (10-15 years for most HVAC unitary equipment)
Depreciation schedule term
Current supplier
Planned maintenance schedules and dates
Work Orders: date and time of service or maintenance and cost
Response time and resolution date/time
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF
Deferred status

This sample is not meant to be an exhaustive list for data collection. Your organizational requirements may preclude some of the above or include others not listed here.

KPI Considerations

When your GOSPA process is complete, KPIs will be virtually complete. Each activity has already been defined, alleviating some of the pressure of ensuring KPIs align with organizational and stakeholder Goals.

Still, for KPIs to be effective, before you develop or refine them, consider the following:

What takes most of your time? Reacting to equipment failures? Managing service providers?
How much time is spent preventing or predicting failure as opposed to reacting to the service outage?
Do you track and report the ratio of Planned vs Reactive maintenance?
How often are you responding to environmental complaints vs. working toward elimination of equipment outages? Your answers may indicate that a few days spent on developing GOSPA may be more productive than refining KPIs that may not reflect or support the fundamental Goals and Objectives of your company and stakeholders.
Do you track customer/stakeholder satisfaction? A method for feedback, compilation, and scoring is crucial, especially in larger facilities where management activity is dispersed.
Do you track response time of service providers? Are issues linked back to customer satisfaction or specific equipment?
Are ancillary metrics, such as energy usage and conservation management, quantified and reported?
Do you delineate or highlight KPIs based upon the beneficiary of the process improvement?
Do you compare reactive service and deferred maintenance to overall service spend?
Do you keep KPIs current? They should be refined as needed and re-evaluated when GOSPA is revisited.

Summary

Managing facilities on a day to day basis is difficult enough. If your KPIs don’t align and support your organization’s long-term strategy, it becomes overwhelming. For a relatively minor up-front investment of time, defining your organizations strategies using the GOSPA method can yield efficiencies that enable best practices in managing the modern facility.
Once you’re comfortable with the basics of strategic planning and the measurement of performance in support of your organization’s goals and objectives, it is only a matter of time before you can apply what you’ve learned to achieve operational excellence.

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