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SBA 459: BAS Operational Structures · The Smart Buildings Academy Podcast | Teaching You Building Automation, Systems Integration, and Information Technology

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  This is the smart buildings Academy podcast with Phil Zito
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  episode 459. Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome to episode
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  459 of the smart buildings Academy podcast. In this
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  episode, we're gonna be going over bas operational structures.
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  So we're going to be continuing our business series on building
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  automation. So for those of you who run a p&l, those of you who
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  run a business, we're gonna go through some common structures
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  for building automation teams talk through the different
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  roles, talk through the different processes answer what
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  questions you have. As always, everything can be found at
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  pockets of smart buildings academy.com forward slash 459.
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  Once again, that is podcast, smart buildings academy.com,
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  four slash 459. If you do have any questions, any thoughts as
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  we go through this, please pop them into the chat. And if you
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  find this valuable, please consider hitting the subscribe
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  button on YouTube and the notification bell selecting all
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  so you get notified. Or sharing this on Facebook or LinkedIn
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  just hit the Share and tag at smart buildings Academy all one
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  word, or leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple
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  podcasts. Alright, let's dive in to the episode. So for those of
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  you listening to this after the fact there is a video portion to
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  this, it's only three slides it's not a whole lot. So don't
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  worry, if you're kind of driving, you're not missing out
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  by not seeing the video. So the purpose of today is to describe
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  the fundamental bas team structures identify the
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  structure you need based on your current and projected growth,
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  and then identify the processes you need based on your
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  structure. So there's three structures we'll go through
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  today, there are the construction structure, there
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  are the service structure, and then the operation structure. So
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  operations is for facility operations service is for
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  servicing facilities, and construction is for building I'm
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  gonna go through at first and define these lead roles, because
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  you'll see some of them look similar. Some of them are a
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  little different than I'm going to go through the individual
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  roles, we'll talk through some of the common processes, and
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  we'll also talk through the evolution. So first off, if we
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  look at construction, we have technical leads, these folks
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  lead the technicians, technicians are typically people
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  who are doing startup, point to point upload download of
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  controllers, setting up comm buses, etc. You've got a design
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  lead. And these are folks who lead the designers these are
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  people who create your graphics, sometimes graphics and submittal
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  design will be split, sometimes it will be together. But this
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  would be people who create submittals. And people who
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  create graphics, you'll have designers and then a design lead
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  programmers obviously write the programs. And then project
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  leads, these people lead the PMs of a project admin who's
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  responsible for contracts, Billings, material order, etc.
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  And all of this reports into the operational p&l holder. Now a
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  lot of you maybe have a one three $4 million controls
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  business, you're just getting started, you're wondering how in
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  the world does any of this work? What typically we see when
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  someone is building a new controls organization.
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  Obviously, if you're part of an OEM or an established controls
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  contractor, you have established processes, you should have
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  established job descriptions, you should have established
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  roles, career progression, you should have established
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  processes, etc. But for the rest of you who are either building
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  your controls department as part of a mechanical contractor or
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  building it just from scratch as a controls, contractor,
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  typically you start off in one of two buckets, either you were
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  a really successful salesperson. And you now have paired up with
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  a technical person, and you're going about addressing the
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  market need as you solve it and you're becoming a controls
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  company, or you are a highly technical controls person who
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  had some key customers and you ventured out onto your own into
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  the world of construction or services we'll see later.
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  Because customers said, Hey, you're really good at this, you
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  should do it on your own. Traditionally, you want to build
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  your business by taking the lowest cost skills off you as
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  fast as possible. So I'm not going to tell you your
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  thresholds because I used to tell people revenue thresholds,
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  but it really depends. Because you can have 20 jobs, right that
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  are $50,000 or you can have one job that's a million dollars and
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  the way in which those jobs are structured, and the needs you'll
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  have are going to vary. But what I will say is Whenever you are
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  looking to expand your business and the building automation
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  world, what you want to first focus on is what are you doing
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  currently in the field that can be taken on by someone
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  significantly less expensive than you. So for example, if
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  you, as the business owner, are going out and doing point point
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  checks on inputs and outputs, or terminating wires, that's
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  something that if you look at the return on investment, you
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  could most likely find someone to do that for significantly
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  less. And there's a reason I ordered these in the way I did,
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  you'll notice that they progressively get more advanced
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  until you hit the project leads and PMS. And those are folks
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  that are I'll talk about them a little bit later. But what you
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  should progress from naturally is technical leads, right, so
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  you'll start, you'll first get attack. And ideally, this tech
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  would be senior enough that they could eventually progress into
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  your technical lead and have other texts under them. Once
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  you've got your texts handled, then you're going to want to
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  move to off shore or offshore, offload your design, and then
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  offload your programming. That's if you're a technical person, if
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  you're a salesperson, you're gonna probably do it the other
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  way, you most likely have some technical person right now, that
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  is partnered with you because I've not met salespeople who go
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  out and start doing all the technical stuff and running
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  their own business, they, there are a handful of them out there.
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  But they're unicorns, majority of them are, you know, they're
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  successful salesperson with relationships, and they pair it
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  up with a tech they knew and they started a business. In that
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  case, that tech usually will be the lead for all of these roles.
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  And you'll gradually fill in, you'll fill on tech designer
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  programmer. And then once you get large enough that tech lead
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  will start handing off to other leads. And I realize I could
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  actually use a pointer here, give me one second, I'm going to
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  use my laser pointer. There we go. So like I was saying, you'll
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  have this tech kind of up here. And that tech will then act as
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  the lead. And you'll once again, tech designer programmer, until
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  you build up enough to necessarily necessitate your own
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  leads. Alright, let's keep moving on. If there's any
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  questions at any time, do not hesitate to interrupt and ask,
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  you will not be interrupting. So don't worry about it. Error
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  rate, let's turn this off. And let's move to the next slide.
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  And let's turn the pointer back on. And we're going to move to
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  service. Traditionally, service is structured in two primary
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  buckets, you have technical service, which is going to be
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  your planned preventative maintenance and your unplanned
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  reactive maintenance. So service calls and plan service
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  agreements, that's going to be typically executed by your
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  service techs, which then will have a service lead, then you've
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  got your retrofit leads, and your retrofit tax. So your
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  retrofit techs are going to execute any retrofit work. So
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  this is going to be work that you go to an existing site, it
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  has somebody else's system or legacy system and you upgrade
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  it, eventually you'll build up enough book of business in this
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  to need a lead, who will lead this. And those leads are going
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  to be a blend of project management and technical
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  experience. And then your service admin exists to do
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  dispatch to go and make sure your trucks are stocked to
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  handle any service escalation and to make sure that people are
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  sent to the right. pm projects that they need to do
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  preventative maintenance plan service group projects. All
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  right, let's keep moving along. Let's turn this off and turn it
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  back on. And let's talk through operations. So operations, this
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  is facility operations. And what this typically will look like is
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  and I'm actually just going to verify real quick that
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  everything's streaming properly. I normally do this, but I had a
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  long weekend. Alright, good. We're looking good. So like I
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  said, with owner operations, you're
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  typically going to have a director of facilities and then
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  under that director of facilities or facility manager,
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  you are going to have operators and engineers. This is going to
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  be on the operational side. So these folks are going to operate
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  the facility The operators, they typically exist to go and change
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  points. Go and monitor systems monitor graphics, they operate
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  the system. Depending on your vertical market, as well as the
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  complexity of your buildings, you may or may not have
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  engineered now engineers does not mean licensed engineers
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  unless you're in Canada, or other countries. In the US, it
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  can simply mean someone who goes and does more complex work,
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  whereas an operator will operate the building, an engineer will
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  be able to go into the building systems, modify graphics,
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  understand programs, potentially even rewrite programs I've met
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  building owner operators that have actually created their own
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  building automation system, and deployed that these are more
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  usually University customers things like that. So these two
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  roles in and of itself, you'll typically start with operators
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  and you'll outsource the engineering until you have a
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  large enough set of facilities, or something that is critical
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  enough to deem having engineering in house, then we've
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  got this construction lead. This role exists for new
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  construction, it is they are your representative on the
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  construction team on the new build team. So establishing
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  Building Standards facility standards, ensuring that those
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  standards get communicated to the engineer of record and
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  enforced throughout the contracts. That is the purpose
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  of the construction leads. So they sit with the construction
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  team typically part of the natural separate p&l, so it
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  wouldn't be the operational p&l, it would be the capital projects
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  team typically. And then facility admins, these are folks
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  who are meant to collect trouble calls dispatch them to the
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  appropriate roles. They are also meant to coordinate any
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  interaction with the contractors that come and work on the sites.
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  Let's go back and get rid of the projector. So those are the
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  fundamental team structures. Now let's talk about identifying the
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  structure you need to have based on your current and projected
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  growth. So if you're currently a smaller controls business,
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  you're like I mentioned going to typically just add a tech to
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  augment you if you're a technical person. If you have a
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  partner who's technical and you're more on the sales side,
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  you still can add techs, but you're going to be able to delay
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  the lead roles a little bit. It's only when you get to a
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  certain amount of projects. And I'm not going to tell you what
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  that is because it's really dependent on each business that
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  you'll want to start adding project managers and then you're
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  going to add a project leader to be over these project managers
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  but getting an admin to assist in Billings system material
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  orders. That's pretty low hanging fruit. As soon as you
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  start to get any significant amount of work and you have a
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  handful of tax, getting that project admin on board so they
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  can manage billing payroll, material orders, etc. That is
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  going to be a critical role. So that would be my progression
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  would be add techs at the project admin, then add the
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  designer and the programmer, then add your leads, and then
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  start to look at adding a pm Kind of the same time you add
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  the leads, you add the PM. And then as you build up, you'll
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  actually could do one of two things you can have a pool of
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  talent, and the pool of tacks pool of designers pool of
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  programmers can be dispatched to the PMs based on their leads
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  their leads will work scheduling, or you can have kind
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  of a horizontal team where each pm has a dedicated amount of
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  programmers, designers and techs. I prefer the pool method.
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  I think it provides greater flexibility. Some folks prefer
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  the horizontal method, because doing that creates a team
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  atmosphere with that pm and some people believe that may or may
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  not increase retention rates. We look at service building this
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  out. It's pretty straightforward. Usually, when
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  you're building out a service team, initially it's done as an
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  attach. So you look at your attach rate. So you either are
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  attaching to your construction controls or your mechanical
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  construction projects. So you'll have a service tech, you'll
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  attach them to that job typically as part of a plan
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  service agreement initially, and then you will leverage those
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  service agreements to create service leads. And you'll start
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  responding to those. So as soon as you have one to two tasks,
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  you'll want to get a service admin who can manage dispatch
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  and then once you have that your tech should be finding pull
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  through you should be incentivizing them to find pull
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  through, at which point you'll need retrofit Tech's to execute
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  that pull through work if it becomes complex enough, and
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  eventually you'll need retrofit leads. Then right here, I kind
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  of already talked through this earlier, but you start with
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  operators. Depending on the complexity of the building, you
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  may add some engineers, you can initially have a single lead
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  over both roles. But if you get enough people and it gets
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  complex enough, you may want an operator lead in an engineering
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  lead. But as soon as you start to add operators, you should add
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  a facility admin admins are a great low cost role, that can
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  really make things a lot easier for you and the hourly rate,
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  you're paid as an operational p&l holder is going to be
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  substantially higher than an admin. So having them do the
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  kind of lower value tasks at a lower wage rate is really a
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  smart idea. Go back, identify the processes. So I kind of went
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  through all of that I went through the processes, I already
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  knew this was going to be slightly shorter than our normal
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  podcasts. But to sum it all up, at the end of the day,
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  understand your market, understand your capabilities and
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  your business partner if you have ones capabilities, and then
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  build your team to take over those capabilities that are that
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  have the least ROI. So if you're out there having to do install
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  and start up should probably replace that first. If you're
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  only having to do programming, you could probably bear that a
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  little bit longer. But that's the basics of operational
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  structures. We'll get into processes. In a future episode,
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  we'll talk through common processes. We'll look at the
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  project development lifecycle. So we'll talk about from release
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  to operations to your initial submittal design takeoffs. We'll
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  talk about point to point we'll talk about the entire project
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  lifecycle from start to finish. That being said, I'll see if
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  anyone has any questions before we call the day.
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  At cough there for a second. I hope everyone had a good Easter.
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  It's good to be back. It felt like this weekend was a lot
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  longer than a normal weekend. I don't know why it just felt that
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  way. For those of you who don't know, we are also doing a
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  technical session on Wednesday. And this week's technical
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  session is going to be on inputs and outputs. So we're gradually
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  going to be building out that technical roadmap of podcasts
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  for new technical talent that want to kind of get up to speed.
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  So like I said, everything will be available at podcasts at
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  smart buildings academy.com Ford slash 459. I appreciate everyone
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  hanging out here. I hope you all found this valuable. If you do
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  have any questions after the fact hit us up on LinkedIn or on
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  YouTube is great to see you all and I hope you have an awesome
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  week. Take care