Facilities As Assets - Effective Building Maintenance: Protection of Capital Assets - page 12

formance and, most importantly, his or her improvement resulting
from a training program.
Training costs money. There is the cost of the training itself, but there
is a much greater cost associated with the “downtime” expended during
training sessions. This will cost will, inevitably, attract the attention of
management who will ask the following questions:
1. How much will the training cost?
2. How much money will be saved by implementing the training pro-
gram?
The answer to the first question will depend on the results of the
needs identified by the skills assessments. But, the answer to the second
question can be found in the study funded by the U.S. Department of
Education and the U.S. Census Bureau to determine how training impacts
productivity:
1. Increasing an individual's educational level by 10% increases that
individual's productivity by 8.6%.
2. Increasing an individual's work hours by 10% increases that indi-
vidual's productivity by 6.0%.
3. Increasing capital investment by 10% increases productivity by
3.2%.
Thus,trainingisthemostcosteffectivemethodofimprovingproductivity
withanyemployee!
OUTSOURCING: CONTRACT MAINTENANCE
The use of outsourcing or contract maintenance is fairly common
in industrial plants, primarily due to the emphasis on production equip-
ment reliability and the need to minimize production downtime. Like-
wise, contract maintenance is used to a fairly significant extent in com-
mercial facilities. A survey by FMLink , an online facilities publication, in