Since seed production is such a seasonal business, Pioneer's facilities are located in very geographically disbursed, sometimes remote, locations in order to be near customers and growers and to minimize climatic risk. The seasonality of the business also drastically affects the company's workforce. Pioneer has a regular staff of approximately 5,500, but the total number of employees can climb to as high as 70,000 during peak growing seasons.

Organized by Process

Pioneer's Corporate Services department is charged with handling facility management at Pioneer's diverse locations. Pioneer's facilities, which total approximately 11 million sf, range from research stations, production plants, and administrative offices.

The Corporate Services department is organized according to processes and responsibilities, including aviation and transportation logistics, economic development, facility design, facility operations, project management, purchasing, real estate transactions, security, and safety.

"We are extremely focused on encouraging personal responsibility or 'ownership' of each specific process," says Merle Hall, facilities information manager for Pioneer. "By clearly defining each person's responsibility, that person thoroughly knows the process he is responsible for and ultimately provides better service to our internal and external customers."

For example, overall facility management functions are separated into two distinct groups, operations versus development, both reporting back to the director of Corporate Services. Facility Operations is responsible for processes such as security, business services including mail, the call center, reception services, office supplies and equipment, janitorial services, building and site maintenance, travel and meeting services, cafeteria, vending, and fleet management.

In contrast, the Facility Development group focuses on processes related to initial development and design, including economic development, real estate brokerage, facility systems design, project management, and interior design/ergonomics.

Web-based Tracking

Corporate Services implemented a Web-based tracking system in 1995 using software from FM:Systems. The system tracks all facilities worldwide using maps and graphs that are updated nightly based on data from project managers and facility information system managers. Everyone within Corporate Services and selected internal customers who require the information can access the Web-based system.

Hall explains that while some data is updated manually within the system, most is revised automatically on an as-needed basis. One example is project managers who regularly update AutoCAD drawings. The system automatically checks newly updated drawings against timestamps of those drawings on the Web site, and republishes revisions when necessary.

"The system is designed to reflect everything within our facilities information database and to accurately track all Pioneer facilities worldwide," says Hall who also cautions against putting too much of an emphasis on tracking.

"Although we feel that tracking is important, ultimately we want our people to focus primarily on getting their jobs done, not on being bogged down with the tracking process itself," says Hall. "Unless you organize around processes and each person knows where he fits and exactly what he is responsible for, a Web-based or electronic system will only make basic business problems happen faster."

Start with Facilities

Hall also adds that technology tools should be viewed as enhancements to the facilities themselves.

"Aside from offering employees tools such as our Web-based system, we are primarily concerned with making sure that our facilities meet high standards so we can promise our staff a world-class working environment," says Hall.

One way Pioneer does this is by establishing generous space standards across the corporation, whether it is a research station or an office setting. In Des Moines that equates to an average of 300 sf per person in both administrative and research lab offices.

Pioneer encourages its worldwide locations to follow similar standards. For open settings, the recommendation is a minimum of 80 sf for staff offices and 120 sf for manager offices. When hard wall configurations are used, Pioneer encourages all facilities to allocate at least 180 sf to directors and 240 sf to vice presidents.

Add Good Communication

"Once you have the facilities basics covered, the next most important thing is to make sure your internal customers can communicate easily and effectively with facility services," says Hall.

Since Pioneer's Web-based system is primarily for staff within Corporate Services, the department also maintains a homepage on Pioneer's intranet. Known as MyPioneer, the intranet includes company news and detailed human resources information such as benefits, compensation, and career development opportunities. While the intranet does offer users some specific functions such as hourly employee timecard entry, Pioneer also uses Outlook for time-sensitive activities such as conference room scheduling and scheduling company fleet vehicles.

"We try to make the Corporate Services intranet homepage a one-stop location for all of the services we offer our internal customers," says Hall. "We also focus on making the selections easy to understand by using customer-friendly language, not Corporate Services buzzwords. For example, one of the listings might be 'leasing a vehicle' instead of 'fleet management.'"

Corporate Services also operates a call center, known throughout Pioneer as the Resource Connection. The staff members who service this centralized call center are charged with providing answers—or directions on how to find the answers—to all facility questions, no matter what the question is.

In addition to the call center, every Pioneer site or building has an occupant contact or a receptionist who addresses facilities issues. These contacts help facilitate calls to the Pioneer service technician or administrative business service employee who is assigned to that building.

Corporate Services produces several key written communication tools including a quarterly newsletter written by employees and a monthly communication plan that identifies key issues, messages, the target audience, and how the message will be communicated.

The department also produces an Annual Facility Report, which lists all Pioneer locations and provides details of facility operating expenses as well as data from Pioneer's human resources and financial departments.  The annual report, compiled at the end of each fiscal year, is made available on Pioneer's Web-based system to all corporate users.

The annual report includes overview maps of all Pioneer locations worldwide. Users can drill down from the world map, to the country map, to the state/region, and even to individual sites where they will find floor plans and photos for that particular site. In the Des Moines/Johnston metro area, all of the floor plans are linked to the database, which goes to a more detailed level of the space type and area of individual rooms, as well as who might be assigned to that room. In all cases, the navigation is the same and there are building floor plans for most, but not all, sites.

Know Your Numbers

"Within Corporate Services, we use activity-based costing so that we can accurately track all of our expenses," says Hall. "This method has been a very powerful tool since numbers don't lie when they are broken down by specific activities. The goal is to spend the most time on value-added activities, not administrative activities, for our internal customers."

While some activities many have only one department cost allocation, others may be allocated across several departments. For example, each year Hall spends several days updating evacuation maps that are posted in facilities throughout the Des Moines campus. Since it is a safety-related cost, this activity is allocated to the Safety department.

"We use activity-based costing purely for our own benefit," says Hall. "It is not a required audit procedure, rather we believe it is the best way to get information that helps us grow as a business and improve our effectiveness."

To do this, Corporate Services tracks expenses by 69 specific activities within 17 allocated departments. This method shows exactly what activities are performed, the cost of each activity, and how much that activity costs per sf.

Additionally, each department prepares performance measures that it can tailor to track categories it finds most important or activities it wants to benchmark from year to year. These activities can vary from department to department, but are summarized into four main areas: activity time and cost, customers served, value-added services/savings, and benchmarking.

Once a year, Corporate Services issues a 17-page Performance Measures document. Each department has a page in the document summarizing its activities and related costs, customers served, and any unique industry trends that may have affected the department's annual performance. When the Performance Measures document is issued, departments present their individual page to the entire group, which is encouraged to ask questions and critique what is presented.

Effectiveness is also the reason behind Corporate Services' decision to not issue monthly chargebacks within the Des Moines headquarters. Instead, an annual chargeback for facility expenses is done at the division level rather than at a detailed departmental level.

Hall explains that Corporate Services only charges its internal customers for direct facility expenses, which are based on a single measurement once a year on July 1 for the next fiscal year. He adds that this practice is a good way to distribute manager, director, and administrative costs on a simple basis.

"If a department or division uses only 33 percent of the building, they will only be charged 33 percent of the costs," says Hall. "We calculate what the total facility costs are and each department is charged accordingly."

Corporate Services calculates this chargeback rate once a year based on an annual measurement of square footage. Costs are then distributed among the departments and charged back to the departments on a monthly basis. This allows Corporate Services to do just one analysis each year and calculate a single recurring monthly chargeback rate, rather than issuing a new billing amount every month to its customers.

"Activity-based costing, Performance Measures, and our simple system of annual chargebacks are in sync with our overall goal of helping our staff to focus on their jobs, rather than the paperwork to document their jobs," says Hall. "We don't want tracking or reporting to be an unnecessary burden."

In summary, Hall identifies the following best practices that Pioneer attempts to integrate into all of its facility management decisions:

By Amy Cammell