#2 – Coworking Operations With Bruce Teeter

2-coworking-operations-with-bruce-teeter

Intro:

Welcome to another episode of the Modern Facilities Management Podcast brought to you by Stratum. I'm your host, Griffin Hamilton. This is the show where I interview industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights into modern day facilities management. From hospitality to commercial real estate and everything in between, we'll learn what it really takes to succeed as a facilities manager.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

This morning, I've got Bruce. Tell us a little bit more about yourself both personally, professionally and how you got into facilities management?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Yeah, that's a good question and again, thanks for having me. So, my last position was operations and facilities manager at a nonprofit themed co working space in downtown DC. And so basically, a quick intro to that is I think most people know what a co working space is by now. If you don't, it's just a place where a bunch of organizations come together and have shared office space. This one in particular was a completely open office space and so obviously, that brings challenges with sound and sound masking and trying to implement some solutions there with some meeting rooms and call rooms throughout the space. So when you have 50 different organizations, you have unique challenges with that. I guess started there a couple of years ago and it was really interesting. I was pretty much kind of starting my career as an operation manager, had been in general management and office management. But I really wanted to buckle down on like the technical side of things. And so yeah, the hub gave me a chance and it went really well and I've actually just recently started to do some kind of freelance consulting for nonprofits in particular because they have very limited resources in operations whether they're at a co working space or they have their own space and they need help with the operations of the facilities. So yeah, that's where I'm at right now. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Very cool and with your experience in the nonprofit realm, give me some context there. How does it differ in your mind from the private sector?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

I mean the main thing is there's never enough money. And so when someone says hey, we have a problem, we need a solution. And they say alright, we have in the private sector, you might say okay, we have $50,000 allocated towards this nonprofit sector. They might be like well, we have $5,000, that we might be able to squeeze out of the board for this. So, you have to get really creative with what you're doing and one example was sound masking, sound proofing. Again, I mentioned the open space and when you have 160 desks in this 15,000 square foot space, you have to play with, you have to understand how the sound moves around the space. And so, I put in auto mute soundproofing panels like halfway through the space so that it would block a lot of the glass. And then put in Sonos speakers that played a waterfall on loop so that it would just create an ambient level of noise. So instead of trying to, like mute the noise or like ask people to do this or that, it will just raise the ambient level so that you don't notice those spikes. So yeah, you have to get really creative in the nonprofit sector.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

You didn't want to play part time librarian and tell everyone to be quiet.

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

You know, I would have enjoyed that. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

So, with you looking into the different technologies there and like to your point, having to get creative with the sound as an example, how else were you using technology in your day to day role?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Yeah, like I mentioned we had several call rooms and meeting rooms. And so, from the very beginning, when they built the space in 2015, they knew that video conferencing was going to be integral to what they were doing. So thankfully, they had flat screens and Logitech cameras in every room. And so, part of the challenge was making sure those technologies were up to date and working properly. A lot of days, you would come in and a camera would be disconnected or someone would bring in their own equipment and try to hook that up. But the other challenge was that every organization had their own platform. Some were using Zoom, Blue Jeans, WebEx, Teams and this is before it became the norm to be on video conferencing. So yeah, every day was just a challenge of getting people to figure out how that worked and so you just have to be knowledgeable in all those different platforms and things like that. And so, you have to learn how it all works, how it all ties together, how you can troubleshoot quickly and get people up and running especially in the environment when someone has a one-hour call, it goes five minutes over, someone else's call is starting late and they have to get in there and do their thing really quickly. So, you just have to be on your toes a lot. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, and with regards to the facilities, did you guys have anything that you'd help automate the operations around the facilities? 

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Yeah, good question. I wanted to implement that more as I came in. There were a lot of projects that needed to be done and unfortunately, that one kind of got pushed back a little bit. But what we get to do is automate room bookings. So, I kind of mentioned this a little bit how you go into a platform, you book a room for an hour. If someone else walks by the room and sees that it's not in use when it was booked, what they could do, we figured out that you can use the little Amazon IoT (Internet of Things) buttons and press the button, it will send an alert to the person who booked the room and let them know to cancel it so that someone else could book it. And so, obviously, there's other ways that you can use those buttons. It's simply just you press A and it's programmed to do whatever you tell it. And so, I did want to do that more as willing on whether it was pressing a button for help request. If you press a button, it would say hey, I'm in this X room and I need help now. If you press a button in another space, it would say this thing is out or it's not working, please come fix so that type of thing. 

So, using buttons and automations to just really enable the people there to get the help that they needed without having to go through a long form or go through a process that was cumbersome to them. So, yeah, that was definitely something that I wanted to do a little bit more of and we started to implement it a little bit. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I think with it being a co working space, that's quite unique where you've got to be on top of it with you mentioned 50 different organizations, they are all sharing that one facility and it's you're going to be constantly dragged into 100 different directions with what's going on and what needs to be resolved. So being able to automate that certainly is a huge point for you and also for your end customer. And looking at it five years out from now, how do you think automation is going to change facilities management, just the industry in general?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

That's another good question. I think over the past nine months now, I did a lot of research into COVID, and how that's going to impact a workspace going forward. And so, one thing that I do see is that co working spaces are going to become more of a thing as people are more hybrid there. They can work from home, they've got their office set up and so they want to come in. So, whether it's building some kind of automation that lets people know they're working from home certain days or building. I don't know if you use IFTTT and Zapier and things like that, that enable people to do simple automations but I just think it's going to be more of in the picture going forward just being able to quickly and easily let people know what is happening without a ton of behind-the-scenes work. You do all the work in advance and you're able to just change status and it changes everything for the organization. So, I think it's definitely something that people should be aware of those automations are going to make your work a lot easier.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, it's working smarter not harder. And specifically, in that type of environment, it's just the communication, right? It's automated that communication, letting everyone know what's going on around the facility, what time frame, how it's being done, so on and so forth.

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Automate text messages every morning that say this area is off limits this morning due to whatever instead of emails that get skipped over or someone doesn't read them in time or whatever. Automating like you said messaging or alerts. If you build an app that pops up and you get an alert says hey, this is the situation today then it'll just make everybody's lives a little bit easier.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah. And taking a step back again, highlighting that your experience has really been in the nonprofit space and that's the direction that you're going with the consulting piece. You alluded to budgeting and that being a big component of that industry. Give me some more context there. What are you doing to make the most out of the limited resources that they typically have in nonprofit?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean that's a daily challenge and understanding where we're at with the current budget. And so, what I essentially tried to do was just have real time updates. So, like I use Smartsheet a lot. Some people like air table. Smartsheet, I think is a little more business than air table. Air table is more of a database. Obviously, it's relational database or Smartsheet is Excel combined with like some ability to link things up. But I really liked Smartsheet for its dashboards and linking spreadsheets and being able to say okay, I’m putting this month's totals. Here's where we're at. I have X amount of dollars in our operational budget that I can put towards sound masking or we need to replace the video conferencing in X conference room or we're starting to have a problem with I'm sure you're aware of a particle board MS, MS. B where when it gets wet, it swells. So right behind the sink, we had a bunch of this board that was starting to swell up and like all the paint was cracking and the glue was coming off. And it's like alright, we don't have obviously the budget for someone to come in and do this, how can we implement some small changes here and there? And so being able to understand the budget in real time is really helpful. 

And so, like I said I just would go in, put those totals in, have a dashboard that says you're under by X amount this month, you're over by X amount this month, here's where you're at, you need to be able to make some changes and so it's just yeah being really on top of that. In the nonprofit world, it’s really important in the for-profit sector, you kind of understand that you're making a profit constantly as long as you're hitting your goals. So, you can understand that you have a little bit more to play with or you have an accounting team who's doing this for you. So, they say yes, approved, go ahead and spend $50,000 on sound masking. 

So it's definitely a little bit different but the basic principle is the same, understanding where you're at and being able to make quick decisions.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Being detail oriented, you got to be in the weeds. And when it comes to larger purchases or having to use outside vendors, I'm sure you had to get creative there and with that organization being smaller, how did you kind of work through that?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

I guess one thing is that our parent organization was I guess an organization called Global Integrity. And so, the theme of this co working space was transparency. And really, in any nonprofit, any business, it's good practice obviously to get at least three quotes right from any vendor, review those. But they really made it a point that we wanted not only to get those quotes but to have a transparent process that said, here's the qualifications that we reviewed everything on. Here's why we made this decision. And so, one thing that I found in for profit was it was just you get three quotes, [inaudible 15:48] which one is the lowest and you might take the middle one and say hey, can you match this and go with that versus nonprofit, I would have to have an interview with each one of them and say, here's what we're looking at. Can you match? Can you do the same things or is there anything else you can you throw in? What is your overall process? Is there anything we need to understand about your business that would throw our stakeholders and make them question why? 

So, there were a lot of things that went into that. But like I said, in any business, it's always good practice to understand why you made a decision to go with a certain vendor. You don't want to go with someone who just is your friend and you like them and you can't really do that. So, you need to just make sure that you document that whole process. And yeah, just understanding what money you have to work with. 

So, the other thing that's different is in nonprofit, you have to go, I would do all this research, do the interviews, make my decision then I would send it to the management team and say, here's my recommendation. Management would say okay, here's Bruce's recommendation, we'll send it to the board, board approves, comes back or the board might have questions and say oh well, I know this company works with X. We can't work with them. So then it comes back down and we have to so it's a lot longer process and so expediency in nonprofit is not a thing.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And take a look at just your career in general, I like to ask this question everyone, what or who has made the biggest impact on you both getting into facilities management and then your career as facilities manager?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

That's a good question. So, my dad was a mechanic. I have tinkered with cars from the day I was born basically. I used to have a 69 Camaro that we were raised around. So, I was always doing something with that. So definitely, there's something to be said there that I was always that person that was tinkering. And so, as I came out of college, I was a mechanical design major and that was 2008 when there were no jobs available. So, my path just kind of took me in a weird way and I went through general management. And as I kind of weave my way through I was like what I really like to do is create a space that people want to come to that they are comfortable in that we have great team camaraderie and things run really smoothly. So, it just kind of brought me to that operations/facilities management part, being the person that makes things go in the background.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, that's awesome and what would be a piece of advice or a big takeaway for someone that's interested in the industry and looking to get involved in facilities management or operations?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Let's see. Piece of advice, I would say preparation. One of the things that I learned especially during COVID was that you can do all of the planning that you want but there's just some things that are going to be outside of that, right. But the more scenario planning you can do, the more emergency preparation that you do, the better off you're going to be when the time comes. So just be prepared to do the little things that no one else wants to do because they're going to happen at some time and somebody is going to be looking to you and say what do we do? And so, the more prepared you can be, if you have go over a scenario plan alright, if this then that, if this than that then you just go down your little logic tree.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Now, did you have a plan for a global pandemic?

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

I didn't actually. I don’t know how I missed that one.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Oh, once in 100 years type of pandemic, you didn't plan for it.

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

Bill Gates talking very recently about that.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That's funny. Well, Bruce, certainly appreciate the time here this morning and insight to what you've been doing and your thoughts on where this industry is going. So great stuff. Certainly, appreciate it. You have a great rest of your week and into the year.

Speaker: Bruce Teeter  

And you Thank you. 

Outro:

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