A Cautionary Tale

Earlier in my career (before founding Roth IAMS), we were hired by the Finance team within a large university (that will remain unnamed) to provide Facility Condition Assessments (FCAs) through a public RFP.  When we kicked the project off, we were basically told that Finance hired us so that we could prove that their Facilities team didn’t know what they were doing. 

We were not allowed to collaborate in any way with the Facilities teams.  No background information would be shared.  No interviews with staff would be allowed, and no previous reports or data of any kind would be available to our team.  I originally pushed back, trying to demonstrate the drawback of essentially “going in blind”.   

Unfortunately, I was not successful in convincing them of the folly in this approach.  When we delivered our draft reports for the first 20% of the portfolio, the client was not happy with the first data set provided (they also didn’t pay very close attention to our original small batch of pilot reports, which they rubber-stamped without actually reviewing – There’s a post for that, too!).  Although I did not say I told you so, I did indicate that if we had been able to collaborate as we normally would, the issues they had would likely be addressed.  I asked if we could now collaborate with the facilities team.  Once again, I was told no. 

The result was months of wasted effort: reports Finance didn’t trust, Facilities didn’t recognize, and the institution couldn’t use. The wasted time and money were staggering — all because collaboration wasn’t allowed. 

The Finance team decided that they wanted to bring in a cost consultant to validate all of our costs.  There are several posts and presentations out there on why I don’t think cost consultants provide any value to an FCA, but we did as the client asked.  Once again, they were not happy with the results.   

Finally, after doing our pilot twice, we were allowed to engage with the facilities team (we also got rid of the cost consultant) and were able to get a collaborative dataset that everyone within the organization was happy with, even the Finance person who wanted us to tell him that his Facilities team was terrible. 

I was concerned about how the Facilities team was going to deal with us, since they knew the Finance department’s original intent.  I was so pleased that we were welcomed with open arms.  Instead of holding a grudge, they were just happy to be brought into the project, as we both knew they should have been from the start.

Over the course of the next few years, we completed the collaborative FCA project and were able to actually see the increased trust and collaboration between the Facilities and the Finance teams.  The lesson was clear: you can’t buy credibility by sidelining Facilities, and you can’t buy accuracy with a cost consultant. The only path to usable results is collaboration. 

The good news is that this took place many years ago, and was the most contentious situation that I ever found myself in, being pitted between Facilities and Finance.   

Now that we’ve seen the real cost of going it alone, the question becomes: how do Facilities and Finance actually start working together? In our next post, we’ll explore how translation — in language and in timelines — is the first step to building a true partnership.