In welcoming a new, coordinated management system to Cornell's Ithaca campus, Jim Kazda, facilities services senior director for Cornell's contract colleges, tells a story about how, in the past, Cornell's academic mission was affected by a lack of coordination between central and college facilities staffs.

Not long ago, a new science professor needed an analytical instrument called a mass spectrometer. However, her lab's mechanical systems weren't designed to deal with the instrument's heat output, so the temperature in the lab constantly fluctuated outside the equipment's operating range.

In the past, the Division of Facilities Services would have asked the college to propose a solution, Kazda said. No longer. The new zone management system will help prevent misunderstandings by creating stronger partnerships between the facilities division and colleges, improving service and reducing costs through efficiencies. The system will eventually comprise four zones, each consisting of one area of campus.

On March 31, the division launched Zone 1, which covers the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), Human Ecology, and Veterinary Medicine, and the ILR School. As Zone 1's campus manager, Kazda is coordinating all facilities planning and work in the zone. "Now a college's construction projects and grant applications are integrated into a single project, and they get accomplished seamlessly," he said.

The zone system has been 18 months in the making as part of the university's Administrative Streamlining Program, added Vice President for Facilities Services Kyu-Jung Whang. "This is a huge moment for us."

The new system has many benefits, said campus facilities managers. Staff will find it easier to request electrical, plumbing or other trade-shop service. Each zone will have its own integrated trades crew, and staff will be able to call the zone's trade crew superintendent, who will be accountable for the zone's trade-shop work, said John Kiefer, director of facilities management who will be Zone 4's campus manager.

The system will also better coordinate trade work, saving time and money, said Kristie Mahoney, the College of Human Ecology's facilities director who is the initiative's project manager. Much of the time dedicated to trade work is spent getting to and from each campus building. "If you can leverage an hour of mobilization and demobilization across three [service requests] that are together only an hour's worth of tool time, and multiply that by the thousands of such opportunities that exist each year, that results in significant savings," Mahoney said.

Perhaps most importantly, the system will allow facilities staff to make more strategic decisions, because the campus manager will be able to coordinate a building's short-term service requests and long-term renovations and construction. "We may choose to patch something if we know we're scheduled to do a major renovation in a facility in a year," Kazda said. And the system provides a structure to meet both academic needs and facilities needs at the same time, said Dann Braid, Zone 1's facilities manager. As a first step he and his colleagues, in collaboration with college facilities staff, have compiled and prioritized a list of each building's deficiencies.

Upgrades to the campus asset-management software, Maximo, mean that unit and division staff can track the progress of a service request, from creation to completion, said Ezra Delaney, the CALS assistant dean for capital projects and facilities services.

The Facilities Services Zone Leadership Council, with representation from all the zones, has begun to meet monthly to oversee the new management system. "Hopefully we can create intrazone partnerships, so that one zone can learn from another," Whang said. "We're trying to break down silos. That is the goal."