Sarel Lavy

Healthcare facilities management: state of the art review

Following increases in national demands on healthcare facilities and services, healthcare facilities management (FM) has gradually matured to become an established research and development topic. This paper reviews the state of the art in the main domains related to healthcare FM and defines the central themes in the development of a healthcare FM model. FM, maintenance management and performance management are reviewed in a wider context, and the main domains of healthcare FM are discussed. The five salient topics included in healthcare FM are maintenance management, performance management, risk management, supply services management, and development. These five core domains are interrelated, and can be integrated using information and communications technology, which provides the desired environment required for the challenging decision making and development prevalent in healthcare FM.

Establishment of KPIs for facility performance measurement: review of literature

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) and categorize them based on specific aspects of facility performance measurement in order to facilitate a holistic performance assessment.Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative approach, based on the literature, is adopted. This approach relies on an extensive literature search of extant research papers, assessment reports, surveys and presentations to identify KPIs. The KPIs are arranged in appropriate categories based on their purpose and content.Findings – The paper identifies indicators for performance measurement and classifies them into four major categories: financial, physical, functional, and survey‐based. Indicators are arranged from general to the most specific indicators. The list presents indicators with their description, units of measurement, and literature sources.Research limitations/implications – Future research could focus on further analysis of the list of KPIs in order to generate a more concis...

Development of an integrated healthcare facilities management model

The increasing competitiveness in the business sector forces facilities managers in reducing expenditure on “non‐core” activities. Consequently, the integration of different domains related to facilities management (FM) motivates the development of a quantitative model, which may contribute both to the planning of FM activities and to the improved effectiveness of FM units. Three methodologies were used in the research presented in this paper: a structured FM survey conducted among acute care facilities in Israel; a statistical analysis of the data; and the conceptual development of an FM model. The proposed model is divided into three main phases that deal with the following five main FM domains. The outcomes of the model produce a set of variables, which can be analysed according to a given facility. In addition, the model provides guidelines for the methodological design and management of healthcare facilities from a life‐cycle perspective.

Facility management practices in higher education buildings

Purpose – Facility management (FM) is important to the business success of companies and organizations. Nowadays, teaching FM is often spread over several disciplines, including architecture, management, business, and construction. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study completed by a team of three graduate students in the course “Introduction to Facility Management,” offered by a large southern university in the USA in the spring 2007 semester.Design/methodology/approach – The students studied several aspects of FM, such as strategic and tactical planning, space allocation, maintenance and repair, operations and energy management, benchmarking and condition assessment, and life cycle costs, in buildings on the universitys campus. Assisted by the Office of the Vice President for Facilities and using software contributed by an external commercial engineering and construction company, the students collected the data and conducted the analyses shown in this paper as part of their tasks for the...

Integrated healthcare facilities maintenance management model: case studies

Purpose – Increasing demand for healthcare services world‐wide creates continuous requirements to reduce expenditures on “non‐core” activities, such as maintenance and operations. At the same time, owners, users, and clients of healthcare expect a high level of built‐facilities performance and minimized risks. The objective of this research is to develop an integrated facilities management (FM) model for healthcare facilities.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a case study analysis of an Israeli acute care hospital, in which the integrated healthcare facilities management model (IHFMM) was implemented, and the findings were examined and evaluated three years later. The case studies investigated the effectiveness of the developed model in terms of maintenance and performance management. The robustness of the model was also examined by applying sensitivity analyses to its parameters.Findings – Both of the case studies show significant results in predicting FM‐related aspects, such as the level...

On the effect of service life conditions on the maintenance costs of healthcare facilities

Global competitiveness and increasing performance requirements have placed facilities management (FM) under constraints of limited resources, particularly in non‐core aspects of facilities, such as maintenance and operations. The hypothesis applied in this research is that the actual service life of buildings, their occupancy and their ambient environmental conditions affect the required maintenance resources of these facilities. The objective was to develop a facility coefficient aiming to adjust the allocation of maintenance resources to prevailing service conditions in healthcare facilities. The research uses deterioration patterns and predicted service lives of building components and systems under moderate, standard and intensive occupancy and under two categories of environment: marine and inland. In total, five configurations combining occupancy and environmental conditions were investigated through simulations and compared to a reference configuration defined as standard occupancy and inland environment along with a building designed service life of 75 years. The findings of the simulations show that maintenance resources in healthcare facilities vary between −9% and +18% of the standard configuration. The simulation results can be used for reliable allocation of resources for maintenance of healthcare facilities. Findings can be adapted for residential, office, public and educational facilities.

Integrated maintenance management of hospital buildings: a case study

Over the course of the past three decades, facilities management has become the subject of an increasing number of research and development efforts. The main objective of the present research was to examine the efficiency of maintenance under alternative maintenance policies and different sources of human resources. The research focused on the maintenance of public hospital buildings in Israel, with the objective of providing a model for multi‐system facilities operating in a dynamic environment. This paper describes the last three stages of the research: the establishment of key performance indicators, the implementation of these indicators in a case study in order to appraise them, and the validation of the indicators. Four key performance indicators were developed, as follows: the Building Performance Indicator (BPI), the Manpower Sources Diagram (MSD), the Maintenance Efficiency Indicator (MEI) and the Managerial Span of Control (MSC). This paper illustrates a case study in which the four developed indicators were implemented in practice. Characteristics of the case study hospital are presented and analysed. Finally, the conclusions and recommendations drawn from the analysis of the hospital case study are discussed, validated and deliberated upon. The approach presented in this paper integrates performance, financial, human resources and organizational aspects to facilitate an improved evaluation method of the parameters affecting the execution of maintenance activities.

Survey of Motivations, Benefits, and Implementation Challenges of Last Planner System Users

The number of construction project managers initializing the use of the Last Planner System of Production Control (LPS), an operating system for project management designed to optimize work flow and promote rapid learning, is rapidly increasing, motivated by industry trends and testimonials of its perceived benefits. This study, limited to the building sector, is a systematic literature and testimonial search of the perceived motivations and benefits or challenges for choosing LPS. It substantiates the claims of those perceptions through a structured survey of senior and mid-level managers. Quantitative statistical tools infer that practitioners who use LPS experience more reliable planning, better supply chain integration, and less work flow time. However, managers who directly implement LPS are faced with external resistance from clients and subcontractors, and feel that their organization does not offer the necessary incentives for adopting LPS, indicating a possible clash of paradigms. The case studies and testimonials were available in the literature referenced in the paper, but the survey and the method for analysis are new and have not been published elsewhere, either wholly or in part. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000606.

A strategic integrated healthcare facility management model

The requirement to reduce expenditure on “non‐core” activities, along with buildings owners’ expectations for improved performance, are the main dilemmas with which a facility manager deals on a regular basis. The primary objective of this research was to identify the effect of defined parameters, such as the actual age of a building and its level of occupancy, on the performance of facilities and their systems. This study contributed to the development of a model capable of integrating these parameters into a Facility Management (FM) tactical and strategic decision‐making process, referred to as the Integrated Healthcare Facility Management Model (IHFMM). The models guidelines may be outlined for the methodological design and operation of facilities from a life cycle perspective. The paper presents the architecture of the developed model, and four of the 15 procedures that comprise the heart of this model.

Key performance indicators for facility performance assessment: simulation of core indicators

Assessing a facility’s performance is important for measuring its contribution towards organizational goals. Among many approaches to performance assessment is the holistic key performance indicator (KPI) approach. However, there are numerous KPIs available, and the chosen KPI needs to be relevant to facility goals and must be calculated, analysed and evaluated to allow for the future state of the facility to be acceptable at the lowest cost. The value of several key descriptive analytics in facility performance assessment may be enhanced through the use of simulation. Simulation transforms the descriptive analytics into predictive and prescriptive analytics by allowing for the robust assessment of plans and future outcomes through the creation of multiple scenarios, in this case, for an education facility. The simulation approach quantifies the interrelationship and interdependence of KPIs, and is potentially effective in analysing how maintenance expenditures can be optimized to maintain a desired level of Condition Index as demonstrated by several simulation scenarios.