Tricks Of The Trade: Hospital Expansion Staffing Requirements

By James C. Elledge, IFMA Fellow, CFM, FMA, RPA, RIAQM
Published in the January 2009 issue of Today’s Facility Manager

Q Can you recommend a good resource that would help me assist a client in planning for additional facilities maintenance staffing? The current facility, a hospital, is 80,000 square feet; soon (in approximately three years) it will grow to 290,000 square feet.

Mark Tanzyus
Commissioning Agent
Heery International, Inc.
Denver, CO

A Here are some resources I found which should help you and your client address future staffing requirements:

“Estimating the Size and Composition of the Hospital Maintenance Staff” by Whitestone Research Corporation provides guidance and recommendations based on data collected from multiple sources. Formulas are provided that can assist you with actual staffing levels.

I also suggest you review the article on Charles Ayoub, TFM’s 2004 Facility Executive Of the Year. As director of facilities and engineering with St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, TX, Ayoub has a story that provides the details of his facilities and staffing, which may be comparable to the expansion you have mentioned.

The County of San Mateo in California has an interesting budget report on its facility operations group for fiscal year 2006-2007. The report includes very good metrics on performance and staffing.

Finally, there is a very specific free report with detailed costs and budgets available from the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. It is entitled, “A Benchmarking Case Study at Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH: Its History, Its Current Use, and Its Comparison to Industry Data.”

Elledge,facility/office services manager for Dallas, TX-based Summit AllianceCompanies, is the recipient of the Distinguished Author Award from theInternational Facility Management Association (IFMA), is an IFMA Fellow, and isa member of TFM’sEditorial Advisory Board. All questions have been submitted via the “Ask TheExpert” portion of the magazine’s Web site. To pose a question, visit this link.