Facility planning forum charts corporate America's course.

"If you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the pavement," said lay Feiertag, Asset Manager - Corporate properties with Fleet Bank.

"There is just one constant in Corporate America: Change," said Brian Ostrowe, CFM, Administrator of General Support Services with the American Red Cross of Greater New York.

"To stay in place, you have to run," said Carol Farren, CFM, president of Facility management at World Wide Ltd.

These assessments of the effect of mergers, acquisitions and downsizing on corporate culture were offered at "Facility Planning: 2001," a breakfast seminar recently presented by Professional Women in Construction (PWC) at the Yale Club in New York City. The second PWC discussion on the topic, the forum showed, according to PWC President Lenore Janis, "why business in flux translates into more work for the construction industry."

The third symposium on facility management will be presented on April 8th.

The speakers, introduced as "innovative thinkers and creative problem solvers," by Carol Farren, the moderator, were Feiertag and Ostrowe, Elizabeth Hamilton, Manager of Operations, Facilities Management, Con Edison Company of New York; and James F. Doran, MCR, Director of Commercial Building Management with the Parish of Trinity Church. All, including Farren, are members of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA).

Hamilton led off the program by explaining that the deregulation of Con Edison will force the company to be competitive in selling electricity and gas. The company will sell 50 percent of its power plants. Subsidiaries will not be allowed to occupy existing Con Edison facilities. Geographical lines of management will be changed to functional lines of operation, i.e. Brooklyn and Queens will be combined, as will Westchester, The Bronx and Manhattan, while Human Resources will be centralized out of Irving Place in New York City.

Hamilton said the facility management department is taking a proactive role in reducing costs by adopting such measures as leasing retail and office space to offset facility costs; charging out costs to operate buildings, and charging for services that were previously free. The company is reviewing various options for its present three million square feet of office space and 1,000 acres of property. "Restacking is essential," she said.

Prior to the current reorganization, Con Ed had reduced staff overall by 4 percent through attrition, yet customer satisfaction improved. Customer satisfaction will remain key to the company's efforts, Hamilton said.

"Con Edison will be a completely different company by 2001," she said. "We are looking forward to the challenge."

Fleet Bank has also undergone various changes in organization. It merged with NatWest, making it the sixth largest commercial lender in the nation, and joined with Columbia Management and Advanta, according to Feiertag, who also noted that 30 branches on Long Island were closed, which required redeployment of personnel and equipment.

"Banks are more apt to own space," he said, adding that the current direction is to more branches and ATMs in smaller locations. Increasing flexibility in design and utilizing the latest technology are vital, Feiertag said. For example, improved technology has enabled bank managers, who could once only identify the bank's top 25 depositors, to know the top 200.

One of the first banks to use ATMs in the 1970's, Fleet chooses its ATM locations to maximize convenience. It will create more sites in half the amount of space. An ATM at Yankee Stadium has a framework in pinstripes; and a new one is being planned in Penn Station. "The focus is on customer service," he said.

In contrast to Con Edison's trend towards in-sourcing, Fleet is doing more outsourcing. As Farren said, "Everyone does it differently. "

"Re-engineering succeeds when a stronger, leaner and meaner" company emerges, said Feiertag. It fails when it produces a "skeleton" of its former self. It is therefore ronment.

Doran explained Trinity's historic role as a landlord dating back 300 years, when the Queen of England donated 250 acres to the parish in the vicinity of what is now Houston Street. Though the land was given away, it was returned to Trinity during the Depression. The parish is now the landlord of 27 buildings, ranging in age from 75 to 150 years.

"As a landlord, we know that serving people is the key ingredient for success," said Doran. Effective property management must then have a plan for organization, utilize the latest technology, offer service, have a stable infrastructure and define a budget, he said.

At Trinity, the trend is for various aspects of facility management, including construction, engineering and design, to be directed by in-house managers. Much of the work is then outsourced.

Trinity's facilities are currently 50 percent commercial, and 50 percent light industrial. In the coming century, this will shift dramatically to 80 percent commercial and 20 percent industrial, Doran said. In the next five years, Trinity will use $250 million to upgrade and reclassify buildings from Class B to Class A, and Class C to Class B. "There is much more pressure on landlords to upgrade commercial than industrial properties," noted Doran. And, since it is less expensive to keep existing tenants than to attract new ones, Trinity has created a tenant relations department.

In addition, by the year 2005, Trinity's three million square feet of development rights will be built, signalling a boon to the construction industry.

Ostrowe of the American Red Cross said that the constant structural changes in corporations and major non-profit organizations is bad news for middle management, but good news for construction.

"To get ahead, the facility manager needs to be part of the organization's strategic plan," he said. In fact, the facility manager is gaining access to upper management as it becomes clear that facility managers increase the company's profitability by reducing costs.

Ostrowe noted that facility managers are better educated, multi-skilled and increasing in number. Only recently have colleges offered specific training in the field. Nineteen colleges now offer Facility Management degrees, and two have graduate programs, including Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

The trend is for facility managers to act as overseers with smaller in-house staffs directing the work of outside vendors. "The Facility Manager is the service provider who does it all," Ostrowe said.

In the Q & A session following the forum, Lina Gottesman, president of Altus Metal and Marble Maintenance, asked if the companies represented by the panel are committed to hiring women and minorities for projects.

Ostrowe said that the American Red Cross has a program to set internal goals and to use WBEs (Women Business Enterprises) and MBEs (Minority Business Enterprises) for a percentage of all projects. Hamilton discussed Con Edison's Minority Vending Program and noted that the program's director, Pat Mulqueen, is a PWC member. Fleet is committed to hiring WBEs and MBEs, as well as CBEs (Community Business Enterprises). Trinity, which has a predominantly minority parish, has minority purchasing important to establish performance benchmarks to determine such criteria as the level of service, or the quality of the office envigoals.

Block of Manhattan sponsor (units sold

Mark Zborovsky & Co., Inc. has closed a bulk sale of 23 rent stabilized and free market sponsor units in two co-op buildings in Manhattan, reports Mark Zborovsky, president of the firm, which specializes in analysis, appraisals and sales of large blocks of sponsor units in New York.

Both properties (on East 28th Street and West 54th Street) are pre-War buildings with large size units and are in excellent physical condition.

The buildings were converted into a co-op ownership in the early 1980's by the same sponsor. Due to the very low ($14,000 per unit) underlying loans in both co-ops, even the rent stabilized units in the block have a positive cash-flow (rent versus maintenance charges).

According to Zborovsky the vacant market value of the Units is under $3 million.

Mark Zborovsky & Co. represented both the seller and the buyer in this transaction.