Tricks Of The Trade: FM Manual

By James C. Elledge, IFMA Fellow, CFM, FMA, RPA, RIAQM
Published in the February 2007 issue of Today’s Facility Manager

Q What resources are there for the creation of a facilities maintenance manual, including consultants who can do this for us?

Marcus Rowsell
CEO
Pacific Palisades, CA

A The facility you have will make a difference in the type and detaillevel of a maintenance manual. Generally, an HVAC or EMP engineeringfirm can help with this task.

If you opt to undertake this project on your own, makesure you check with the manufacturers of the equipment you have in yourfacility. Each piece of equipment will have recommended maintenance andservice requirements. These requirements should help you create abaseline of the minimum maintenance schedule recommended for each majorcomponent.

Additional resources include:

  • Fifteen O&M Best Practices (pdf)
  • Guidelines for Obtaining Best Practice Contracts for Commercial Buildings Operation and Maintenance Service Contracts(pdf)
  • Operations & Maintenance Best Practices Guide

These tools should provide assistance in the creation, organization, and relevant material required for your manual.

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.