The future of the facility manager and facility owner is an understanding of automation and the use of performance information to reduce facility cost while simultaneously increasing quality.

This presentation presents a four-year case study where a large facility owner was motivated to identify and utilize vendor expertise to decrease the cost and simultaneously increase the quality of janitorial products.

The vendor utilized the characteristics of automation — the minimization of human cognitive processing including the gathering information, decision making, management and control and analysis of vendor performance.

The client utilized a Best Value Approach (BVA) to identify and utilize the vendor's expertise. The BVA identified a vendor who minimized the cost of the delivery of janitorial products by 25 percent and reduced the client's facility management effort by the use of performance metrics. The high-performance vendor was able to meet changing owner requirements by utilizing a hybrid automated ordering system which further cut the cost of the janitorial supplies being delivered.

The vendor's delivery system minimized the need of client's decision making and need to manage the service. The client and supplier realized the approach required the use of performance metrics, which includes cost, time and material quality.

The approach was one utilizing the simplification of the issues rather than the need of increased technical knowledge or complex owner/vendor relationships.