If you have salary, recruitment, or retention problems with trades workers in your facility management organization, consider doing two things: 1) Introduce a higher, multiple-trade, pay scale to allow one worker to make more if he or she can perform more than one trade (fewer people to do tasks = do more work with limited “heads”), and 2) Assign specific buildings to specific people to raise the sense of ownership on the part of building operators and their level of hands-on knowledge of the buildings they are responsible for.

- From Tradeline’s College and University Science Buildings 2007 conference.