Community & Facility Manager

As a Community/Facility Manager one of your many important responsibilities is maintaining your properties in a manner consistent with the property owner’s financial goals.

You may have multiple facilities of different ages, construction types, sizes and complexities. You may or may not have existing drawings and documentation for the building. Each individual property has its’ own unique problems that occur as a result of the normal aging process.

In order to deal with these problems, you will often need to retain various professional consultants. G&M offers a complete range of professional design and engineering services for various types of facilities.

Free Resources

If you are considering a commercial, industrial or residential development project, you will want to visit G&M’s Resource Center for FREE information about problems, pitfalls and, more importantly, SOLUTIONS to common development problems! This information is “must have” for Community/Facility Managers.

	Join Our Mailing List

The following are just a few ways G&M’s experience and unique services can save Community/Facility Managers TIME and MONEY. 

1.  Extensive Technical Knowledge and Experience

2.  Understanding the Approval Process

3.  Combined Services = Effectiveness

4.  Budgets or "How Much is This Going to Cost?"

5.  Site Accessibility Design

6.  Document Archiving System

7.  Pavement Repair Program

Learn More…

1. Extensive Technical Knowledge and Experience

First and foremost, G&M has extensive technical knowledge and experience in resolving design and engineering related issues associated with commercial, industrial, and residential facilities. G&M’s expertise and capabilities include projects of various age, construction type, location, and complexity. G&M offers a complete range of professional design services that can assist the Community/Facility Manager.

2. Understanding the Approval Process

Many Community/Facility Managers may be unfamiliar with new the building codes and the permit approval process. The permit approval process can be complicated even for simple projects due to local jurisdictional requirements. Large construction projects can be VERY complicated!

Navigating through this complex process is an important part of G&M’s services. By providing effective research, design and engineering services, G&M eliminates much of the cost, risk and frustration associated with the approval process.

Because of the complexity of the design and permitting process, G&M has created separate documents to assist our Clients in understanding how it works.

Follow the Residential Design and Development Process link for additional information.

Follow the Commercial Design and Development Process link for additional information.

3. Combined Services = Cost Effectiveness

Most projects require a combination of design and engineering services such as Civil Engineering, Land Surveying, Structural Design and Land Use Planning. Each of these can have a significant impact on the project. Failure to account for one or more of these services can result in wasted time and unnecessary re-design fees.

One of the greatest values that G&M provides to Community/Facility Managers is our expertise in a large range of professional services. Our ability to provide combined services is both convenient and cost effective. G&M also increases design speed and efficiency by providing a “cross trained” staff, which allows our employees to combine Civil Engineering, Land Surveying, Structural and Land Use issues in one meeting. The Community/Facility Manager does not need to pay for multiple consultants! This greatly reduces the overall design costs.

4. Budgets or “How Much is This Going to Cost?”

When considering a tenant improvement project, one of the most important pieces of information needed by a Community/Facility Manager is the anticipated cost. Our 20+ years of experience has shown us that the development of an accurate construction budget is absolutely crucial in securing funding for a project!

G&M understands that the budget needs to be prepared in a format, and within a time frame, that matches the Community/Facility Manager’s needs. G&M can easily accommodate your unique requirements.

G&M is also able to use our special knowledge to prepare preliminary budgets with minimal design documentation. It is not necessary for G&M to prepare elaborate and expensive drawings just to prepare a budget! Because G&M is able to provide multiple design services, we incorporate all types of remodeling work (interior, exterior, structural, land surveying, civil engineering, etc.) into our budgets. The benefit to the Community/Facility Manager is that our budgets are much more accurate from the very beginning! This greatly reduces the risk of having acquire additional funding at a later date!

Accuracy, speed and minimal costs are the foundations upon which or budgeting system operates.

Follow the Budget Reports link for additional information.

5. Site Accessibility Design

Site Accessibility issues are necessary, but complicated! If there is one item that seems to cause more confusion, frustration and unnecessary expense to a Community/Facility Manager, it is that of Site Accessibility. There are two common causes of confusion and frustration:

When am I done?:

A common frustration that an owner or Community/Facility Manager often faces is the inability to categorically know when their facility is fully compliant with all accessibility codes and regulations. With very limited exceptions, the simple answer is “you can’t”!

You can never be assured that your facility is “fully compliant” because of the fluidity of the State and Federal laws. Community/Facility Managers are often forced to reconstruct items thought to be compliant due to either changes in the laws/codes, or different interpretations of the same laws/codes by different governing individuals.

Lack of Drawings:

In the area of accessibility, lack of proper documentation is a major cause of project delays and unnecessary expenses. G&M has developed an extensive system for design and documentation of accessibility issues to help minimize the risk of “non-compliance”, reduce confusion, frustration and eliminate unnecessary design fees.

There are many other causes of frustration to Community/Facility Managers regarding accessibility issues. Because of the complexity of this subject, G&M has created a separate Site Accessibility document that more fully addresses this topic.

6. Document Archiving System

As a design professional, G&M has had the opportunity to work on numerous types of existing facilities. We have observed that the majority of existing properties have little or no facility documentation readily available for review. If documentation is available, it is almost always located in “boxes of drawings” and not in any type of electronic format (PDF, CAD, etc.). The design and engineering communities now produce drawings almost exclusively in an electronic format.

The lack of readily accessible documentation creates unnecessary design expenses for even simple remodeling projects. This is because of how the Building Permit process works.

G&M has developed a simple program to archive existing documents. This program allows easy access to electronically-formatted documents which greatly simplifies future remodeling and facility management efforts. It also makes it much easier and faster to find and share critical facility information with staff, maintenance personnel, consultants and tenants.

Easy access to drawings is a great way to save time and money in all sorts of ways. Remodeling efficiency is just one of these ways. Ongoing maintenance, lease negotiations and other common activities can all benefit from an effective document storage program.

Easy document access = Cost Savings!

Follow on the Document Control link for additional information.

7. Pavement Repair Program

One of the most common types of recurring expense that occurs in almost all facilities is parking lot pavement repairs. By themselves, there is no real “secret” about budgeting for and maintaining parking lots. However, there are two special items that can create significant headaches and additional costs if a Community/Facility Manager is unaware of them!

Disabled Accessibility:

Parking lots contain many critical site accessibility features such as parking spaces, signage, ramps, etc. Depending upon the extent of the pavement repairs, many municipalities may require site accessibility upgrades to be included in the scope of work! This can cause significant delays and expenses to a project if this fact comes as a surprise.

Storm Water Treatment and Controls:

These requirements are fairly new to Community/Facility Managers. They deal with the need to treat (clean) and meter (control) the quality and flow of water off of a site. Pavement repairs in excess of 5,000 square feet could trigger the need to install treatment and flow metering devices as part of the pavement repair plan. The costs and delays associated with this item can be very high!

G&M has developed a Pavement Repair program especially for Community/Facility Managers. The program includes providing research needed to determine if the accessibility or storm water treatment are required. If so, our Civil Engineering team is able to develop preliminary solution(s) and incorporate them directly into the Pavement Repair estimate. We also use our Budget Reports program to provide preliminary estimates of cost for the work.

G&M’s strategy and focus is to eliminate unpleasant surprises and provide multiple Pavement Repair options for Community/Facility Managers.

Follow the Pavement Repair link for additional information.

Funding Opportunities - Budget Reports - Site Accessibility Programs - Document Control Systems - Pavement Repair Program - Design-Build