By Bill Law, Facilities Manager
By Bill Law, Facilities ManagerTravel to any one of our 23 branches, located throughout seven states, and you will always find Ruppert image uniformity. You see it in our vehicles and equipment, the attention to detail that we put into our maintenance and construction projects, in our people and culture, and in our facilities and grounds. It is our standards that help us present a united front.
We have recently set out to establish a long-term plan for maintaining our facilities to keep up with the Ruppert standards. Continued growth is on our horizon, and so is the need for adding facilities and enhancing those already in our portfolio. In 2017, we made two meaningful moves to keep pace with the challenges that growth brings. The first was to develop a Facility Binder, a resource that contains detailed information and standards that list everything from how to design a new facility to what color our facility walls should be. The second was to form a Facilities Committee that is represented at each branch by an individual who is knowledgeable in and committed to maintaining the facility and grounds. The committee’s mission is lengthy, yet reflects the priority we place on Ruppert being a great place to work and grow: “To maintain and enhance our facilities to a uniform standard so that we may provide a safe, comfortable, productive, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing environment that continues to attract and retain great talent.”
This year, we made another significant development in creating our Facility Assessment Format. This document is designed to assess the condition of each branch facility and grounds, and allows us to determine where the branch is succeeding and what areas require attention. It also provides an opportunity to identify planned projects, needed repairs, and improvements for long-term growth and planning. Finally, the assessment is a tool to measure over time how successful we are at keeping up and maintaining our facilities to the highest Ruppert standard.
In October and November, I toured each of our branch facilities along with our Branch Managers, Facility Committee Representatives and Regional Managers. At each, we invested a half-day touring, making new friends, providing advice and guidance, building expectations and providing a road map to success. We also received feedback that will prove helpful in supporting the needs of the branch and helping to guide what we can do as a department and company to support them.
We all know that we place tremendous value on our team members here at Ruppert, and that we are an organization that’s loaded with talent and experience. I encourage you to take an active role in helping us create and maintain a work environment that will make each of us proud and motivated to come to work each day. If you have any thoughts, suggestions or are willing to lend a hand, please reach out to your Facility Committee Representative or Branch Manager to see how you can make a difference.