A facilities streamlining team is narrowing in on its goal of saving $16 million annually by June 2014. Its primary strategies: ramp up energy conservation and focus the trades shops' work on maintenance, rather than construction.

"My goal is to save the university as much money as I can possibly save and still provide the level of service that is expected of us," Vice President for Facilities Services Kyu-Jung Whang said Nov. 4 in Bradfield Hall at an open forum. About 100 people attended.

The facilities initiative is part of the Administrative Streamlining Program (ASP), formerly known as the Initiatives Coordination Office, within the Division of Planning and Budget. The event was the second in a series of open forums on the ASP's ten initiatives.

Much of the savings -- about $6 million of the $16 million -- will eventually come from energy conservation. An outreach program will encourage staff to take such simple steps as turning off lights and computers when not in use, Whang said in an earlier interview. Other projects include insulating mechanical rooms, decreasing the air circulation in labs when unoccupied, and setting wider temperature ranges in growth chambers, Whang has said. "Even a 1-degree change can make a big difference in energy savings," he said.

Other cost savings will come from shifting the trades shops' focus to taking care of existing buildings and away from constructing new ones. The Division of Facilities Services has also achieved savings by reducing its staff by nearly 10 percent over the past two years, to 803 in September 2010 from 891 in July 2008, mostly through attrition, Whang has said.

Perhaps the most visible of the team's projects is the new campus zone structure, which aims to better meet the facilities needs of the colleges and units in each zone. The team recently launched a pilot zone that covers the College of Arts and Sciences and Office of the Vice Provost for Research, including Weill Hall and the Physical Sciences Building. By June 2011 all three zones are scheduled to be up and running.

Upcoming forum on IT streamlining

The Administrative Streamlining Program will host an open forum on its information technology initiative, 12:15-1:15 p.m., Nov. 10, in 125 Riley-Robb Hall, with Steve Schuster, interim executive director of Cornell Information Technologies. For more information, visit http://asp.dpb.cornell.edu.

The Endowed Zone includes the Colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Architecture, Art and Planning; the School of Hotel Administration; Cornell University Library; and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research. The Student and Academic Services Zone includes Campus Life, Dining, Athletics, Gannett Health Services and Cornell United Religious Work. The Contract Colleges Zone includes the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology and Veterinary Medicine, and the ILR School. The team has not yet assigned the Johnson School and the Law School to zones.

A campus manager will lead the facilities work in each area, collaborating with a zone facilities manager and with the facilities directors of the colleges and units in each zone. Specialty trades staff and grounds crews will take on jobs across zones as needed. "We're operating under the principle of central deployment of staff with local management," Whang said in an earlier interview. "This way, the team will understand the needs and priorities of that zone, the little nuances."

The zone structure is part of the division's new governance system, designed to meet each unit's needs and priorities at a reasonable cost. Whang and his staff are working with college and unit leaders to define campuswide facility standards, the base level of services the division will provide to units and appropriate staffing levels, he said.

The team's other streamlining projects include so-called "job-order contracting." That means pre-hiring the lowest bidder on a variety of construction activities, which eliminates the exhaustive process of developing the bid documents, putting the project out to bid, evaluating the bid and then contracting, Whang said.

The team is also working to consolidate project management centers and the fleet and mail-metering operations, and replace a warehouse inventory with a Web-based procurement system.

The university established the ASP in December 2009 as part of a strategy to "reimagine Cornell" as a leaner, more academically excellent university. The ASP is expected to save Cornell up to $85 million annually by fiscal year 2015.

For videos of ASP forums, visit CornellCast at http://www.cornell.edu/video/.