FM Engine - by Decisive Leap

In today’s episode we’re honored to have Dean Stanberry joining us, who is the Chairman - Global Board of Directors of IFMA, international facility management association. Dean has had two careers, with the first being 22 years in IT before taking a right turn into real estate and facilities management. He considers himself an operations guy, but has experience in design & construction as well as working in corporate facilities and in outsourced facilities services. 

In this episode Dean provides advice and concrete examples on how FM leaders can alleviate challenges within the following operational areas: Growth, Hiring, Technology, Compliance, and Sustainability.

On today’s episode I’m excited to welcome David Trask. David is the National Director of Facilities and Emergency Solutions at ARC Facilities, which provides facilities management software for teams to access crucial information within their buildings through a mobile-first platform. 

David is also on the Education Program Committee at IFMA, the International Facility Management Association and runs his own podcast called Facility Voices, which you should all check out as well. 

In this episode we discuss the challenges and opportunities around the skilled labor shortage and what successful companies are doing to identify, attract, train and retain great talent. 

Mary Gloven is joining us on today’s episode — Mary is the Facility Manager at The Alliance Center, which is a co-working space in Denver Colorado supporting more than 160 organizations, ranging from local to national groups all working to advance social and environmental solutions.

Mary talks about what stood out from Alliance’s recruiting process, and what other organizations can do to attract, retain and foster great talent within the industry. We also discuss some of the initiatives she’s leading at the building, and what contractors can do to differentiate themselves when they’re providing services to Facility Operators like herself.

In today’s show I’d like to welcome John Powers to the show — John is the CEO and Founder of Elexity, a commercial building control system that is a complement to solar installations. John’s company turns commercial buildings into flexible distributed energy resources with a one-day installation process. By controlling flexible building loads, Elexity mimics a battery at an equivalent cost of $50/kWh of capacity – a 10X improvement in storage economics. John discusses the trends in electrification, how are they affecting commercial buildings and facilities, what the biggest ROI opportunities are, and what building managers can do right now with a) the least amount of effort and b) see an ROI in the shortest amount of time

In today’s episode we have Dr. Louis Fletcher on the show, the Executive Director of Facilities and Operations for El Paso County Colorado School District 49, leading facility maintenance, transportation, nutrition services, security deployment, strategic planning, and capital construction serving over 28,000 PK-12 Students. In this episode Louis discusses two main topics: 1) public-private partnership opportunities between Facility Services vendors and Public Schools to unlock government funding for facility maintenance and retrofit projects, and 2) opportunities to work with vendors to manage energy more efficiently and a) save on costs, and b) sell it back to the grid for income which can be reinvested into deferred facility maintenance.

In today’s episode I’d like to welcome Scott Wharton to the show. Scott is the CEO of Tandem PV, a company which is driving the transition to a net zero economy by developing perovskite-based solar panels. Scott discusses what Perovskite-based solar cells are, why they’re the future, and how they produce 25% higher energy density at fraction of the cost.