Tricks Of The Trade: Comprehensive Audits

By B. Kevin Folsom, CEP
Published in the July 2013 issue of Today’s Facility Manager

QI work in facility operations and have faced difficulty when attempting to draft a site survey checklist. Before bidding for any assignment, we conduct an audit of the facility. Do you know of a format that can help me cover all the aspects of hard and soft services, both of which we need to check in our initial audit of the facility?

Gunjan Jain
Facility Manager
Emcor Facilities Services
Dubai

AI would recommend a book that was quite helpful to me while developing my statistical management systems. The book is “The Facilities Audit” by Harvey H. Kaiser. I have personally worked with Dr. Kaiser to organize a discussion on this topic with numerous facility managers coming from many areas of the U.S.

This book does a good job of explaining an overall understanding of facilities, component life cycles, preparing for a facilities audit, designing the audit, collecting data, summarizing the inspection results, and presenting the findings. There are also numerous examples given and sample forms that can be used.