City of Miami Beach – Property Management Department

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Background
Encompassing 7.1 square miles of land and 10 miles of shoreline, The City of Miami Beach has the second highest housing density in the US (following New York City) and the third-highest population density during the winter months when the majority of vacant second homes and condos are occupied. 

Quick Facts: Second highest housing density in US Third highest population density in US during winter months Uses Datastream 7i to facilitate work orders for 240 buildings, parks and playgrounds and manage service contracts with 200 external vendors Won 10 “TOBY” Awards from the Building Owners and Manager’s Association for excellence in office building management.

The city’s department of property management controls the maintenance, construction and repairs of 240 municipal buildings, as well as dozens of parks, playgrounds, bridges, oceanfront boardwalks and bus benches.  The Property Management Department also manages service contracts with more than 200 external vendors used annually to support the city’s needs.  For example, service contracts include janitorial services, chilled water systems, energy management, elevator services, fire alarm systems and halon, a fire extinguishing agent.

Additionally, the Department functions as its own state certified and licensed design and construction company.  It determines the needs of capital renewal and replacement projects, develops in-house construction documents, obtains all required building permits, and manages construction projects from start to finish.  With 70 full-time employees, the Department has its hands full, particularly in the spring and summer months when hurricane season begins.  

Goal
The Property Management Department sought to improve efficiencies in the way that it processed the tremendous volume of work orders and work requests coming through the office each day.  Historically, officials relied on paper-based methods to track and manage work orders, keeping records in file folders and index cards.  They even tried a Q&A database, but none of these methods helped improve work flow or the work-order process.  

In 1996, the Department set forth to enhance its work order system with an asset management application that could consolidate all of its operations under a single application.  The goal was to provide a centralized, easy-to-access application for the department and its contractors to automate property inspection, repair and maintenance processes, and to facilitate the management of thousands of work orders generated annually.

The Bottom Line: The Department needed to replace its paper-based and manual processes with a centralized, automated system. This would help facilitate work orders and improve property and service management.

Challenges
Although the City of Miami Beach’s Property Management Department had experimented with technology to simplify workflow and met with some success, officials recognized the need for a system that would also provide the required reports to ensure that services performed were billed back to the appropriate departments. 

The Bottom Line:  The Property Management Department needed an automated work order solution with reporting functionality to ensure accurate billing.

Solutions
After much discussion, the Department issued an RFP for an asset management system and received a number of responses.  After a thorough evaluation, the Department narrowed its options to two vendors: Datastream and MRO Software.  In the end, the Department decided on Datastream’s solution for its ease of use and its seamless integration with Business Objects’ Crystal Decisions.  This combination provided the project and maintenance tracking needed to meet day-to-day operational needs and also provided the report generation necessary to provide for accurate cost analysis and charge-backs.  It also served as a historic database to track maintenance costs of equipment and facilities over time to provide valuable information on planning budgetary needs. 

The Bottom Line: Datastream software provides user-friendly project and maintenance tracking and report generation functionality.  This combination allows the City to efficiently process work orders while maintaining a database to track maintenance costs over time.

Results
Employees of the Property Management Department perform 20,000 data entries into the Datastream system each year.  According to Brad A. Judd, Director of Property Management, City of Miami Beach, “With Datastream’s user-friendly automated system, our employees have access to everything they need right at their fingertips to immediately process work orders.”

In addition, Datastream allows the Department to track activity and run reports on the fly for other City Departments, which is critical to ensure balanced budgets and to show that requests are being properly addressed.  “As an internal service provider, any services we perform must be charged back to all other Departments in the City.  If we work for 30 minutes for a Department, 30 minutes must be charged back to that specific Department,” said Judd.  “Even for common area maintenance charges, Datastream software allows us to break down the costs to equally define each specific Department’s share of costs based on the square feet of space they individually occupy in a multi-tenant building.  We would be blind without having the Datastream solution in place.”

The Department is in the process of migrating to Datastream’s Web-architected asset performance management solution.  With the Department’s growth and increasing reliance on in-house and outside contracting to manage building and construction projects, there was an increased demand for a system that could be easily accessed remotely by all involved parties.   

The new deployment will integrate with VFA’s Capital Planning Management Solution software for lifecycle costing and business assessment to provide accurate facility cost indexing for long term planning and detailed budget cost analysis for all of the City of Miami Beach properties.

Since deploying Datastream software, the City of Miami Beach Property Management Department has won the “Energy Project of the Year” award from the Association of Energy Engineers, the Historic Preservation “Hall of Fame” award from Miami-Dade Heritage Trust, and an incredible ten “TOBY” Awards from the Building Owners and Manager’s Association, which is the highest award given in the commercial real estate industry honoring excellence in office building management. 

The Bottom Line: Datastream solutions have enabled the City’s Property Management Department to improve work order processes and ensure accurate reporting.  The results include improved efficiencies in property and service management and national recognition for excellence in office building management.