Highlights 2001:

One of the key roles of management is to develop direction and to perform planning for the organization. As such we have developed a comprehensive strategic plan. All of our stakeholders were invited to input. With your assistance we conducted focus groups, surveys, working teams, group and individual meetings with campus clients. All these mechanisms were used to get opinions and views and later feed back on our efforts. We are now poised to roll out the plan to the organization and will further request your assistance in making it happen.

Each department within Plant Ops has taken the overarching Plant Operations plan and translated it into finite and reachable goals and tasks to accomplish over the next three to five years. We will be asking many of our Plant Ops members and some of our community clients to participate on teams to make our goals a reality. So stay tuned for more infor-mation as we begin the roll out process.

The Facilities Maintenance Department is now comprised of six work groups, HVAC and Mechanical, Zone Maintenance, Hospital Maintenance, Sheetmetal/Elevators/Repair, Electrical, Building Automation, and Training & Development. Although accomplishments were many, a few more notable ones include:

Completed the first term of our hospital maintenance contract. The response from the hospital to our efforts was to expand the contract to include the new NCAC building on North Campus; new facilities at Brighton and Canton; the Eisenhower Parkway and the Briarwood medical facilities. In addition, we have
Renegotiated the Skilled Trades labor contract for all of Plant
Conducted a comprehensive Sanitary/Storm Sewer Cross Connection Survey
Implemented a new ongoing pre-ventive maintenance work program

We have also assumed duties for the maintenance of some of the residential real estate properties that are managed through F&O lease management, and for building control systems in the Athletic Department's buildings.

Construction Services, also a new department created under the Plant Operations reorganization, has had a banner construction year with the com-pletion of over $19 million in renovation and maintenance work, approximately a 4.8% increase over FY 2000 Contracting and Architectural Trades numbers. More noteworthy accomplishments for Construction Services include:

Workload for the University Health System increased from $2.4 million to nearly $6.4 million in FY 2001
New Machining Center for the cabinet shop. The Machining Center allows us to produce product more quickly than in the past and for a lower cost of production.
A presentation on "Customer Service Marketing" was awarded the best in show honor at the Fall 2000 MAPPA conference and was also presented at the 2001 APPA annual meeting.

Building Services has continued its commitment to empowerment as embodied by the creation of self-directed work teams. The number of teams has expanded from 22 to 37 in the past year. Other highlights include:

Acquisition of the North Campus Administrative Center [NCAC] as a new work area from the Hospital.
Significant increase in the duct cleaning crew activities on campus and in the hospital.
Implementation of customer issues problem solving teams on all shifts.
Trained fourteen staff members to become facilitators for 7-Habits, and have held many 7-Habits classes for rank and file.

Grounds & Waste Management- The University's Recycling Program received the National Recycling Coalition's coveted first place award for the Outstanding School Program. We have relocated the entire Grounds operation to North Campus after 100+ years on Central Campus. Other accomplishments include:

Horticultural Zone Work Plans have been implemented.
We continued to expand the use of "non-salt" deicers in snow removal and successfully recovered $100,000+ from FEMA for the December 2000 snow emergency operations.
Waste Management has expanded football and special events recycling programs (including corrugated, containers, and paper). They have implemented a Construction & Demolition Waste Recycling Program and expanded our Pilot Food Waste Composting Program with University Housing and the City of Ann Arbor Solid Waste Department.

Work Management has worked diligently on refining the operation of the Facility Management System (FMS). Some improvements to this computer informa-tion system have included updating work code structure, and increased use of the Plant Ops web page for community interface.

Plant Order Services (POS) has triaged a total of 34,157 one-time work requests (35,401 in FY2000). A total of 77,328 work requests were generated for Plant Ops work on the Ann Arbor Campus (Note: this total includes PM).

The PM Planning group is entirely revamping the PM program, including a new equipment inventory to purge the system of obsolete data. We have generated 40,044 PM work requests in FY2001. (61,087 in FY2000). Although the ticket counts have decreased, the amount of time spent on PM has more than doubled. We are beginning to see a decrease in one-time maintenance calls as a result (see above). This effort has saved 42 reams of paper annually, not to mention endless confusion in the field and an improvement in our maintenance performance!

The Key Office completed a reloc-ation of its operations to the Church Street Parking Structure. After some initial bumps, or should I say hot spots, the new space is now working quite well.

The new MKeys database created for the Key Office was implemented and is working well.

The Estimating Group implemented a program to track all estimates and insure quicker turnaround. Performance has increased dramatically with most estimates returned to customers within two weeks.

Utilities and Plant Engineering is organized into six work groups: Central Power Plant, Outlying Boilers, Operations & Maintenance Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Energy Management, Utilities Electric Shops, and Utility Billing Systems. Although accomplishments were many, a few more notable ones include:

Hosted the 26th Annual Big 10 & Friends Mechanical and the 11th Annual Big 10 & Friends Utility Conferences.
With the completion of the Facilities Condition Effort, we developed a five-year model showing the dollar needs versus the available funding for deferred maintenance. The model with recommendations to address the projected shortage in funds over the next five-years has been submitted to upper management.
Purchase of electricity on the open market as part of the Experimental Retail Access program. Central Campus saved approximately $1.2 million and the Hospital $350,000 from last year.
The Energy Star program on campus continues to reduce our energy consumption as of the end of FY 01 with savings of 9.4% for electricity and 11.9% for thermal. The savings totaled 403 billion BTU's of fuel and electricity, and represents $4,166,000 in annual savings for the program.
CPP hit a new peak on July 23, 2001. The steam load was 490,000 PPH and we generated 32.5 MW of electricity.

Safety and Wellness is another area of significant accomplishment. Working collaboratively with OSEH, Work Con-nections, MFit, F&O Human Resources, Skilled Trades, AFSCME, IUOE and all the departments of Plant Operations, we have created a new Safety Organization. The new effort includes education, inspec-tion, investigation, design improvements, analysis of data, and training: all geared to making our workplace the safest it can be and to make our workers the most safety conscious that they can be.

Personnel and Training- Working with F&O Human Resources we continue to put great emphasis on the training and development of our management work force through the supervisory leadership program of Plant Academy. Over 120 managers and supervisors are involved in this program. Since 1999 the program boasts some 60 graduates.

There's an old adage that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Well, I can state with certainty that there is no moss on anyone in Plant Operations. This is one "Turning and Burning Operation". I, for one, am proud to be a part of it and I thank all of you for your individual contributions to our progress and success.

I'll close on a more somber note and ask that you remember those who have perished or have been injured in the attacks of September 11, 2001 in both your prayers and your acts of charity. Remember, we are a great nation, and although we are now in pain, we will surely rebound from this despicable act to a higher level of greatness. God Bless America!

Rich Robben

[Photo]

Rich Robben, Director
Photo by Yongkyu Lee