About RAL Location Strategies
We are a niche, consulting company that helps organizations better align their property/facilities with their organizational objectives. Alignment of the facilities strategies with the business goals is the best way to leverage these assets and provide value to the organization. By applying methodical approaches to the physical work place, you can project the organization’s image inside and out, provide attractive and productive environments for workers and customers, and even drive or reinforce changes in the organization.
We offer flexible facilities expertise in three primary areas:
- Assembly and analysis of property/facility related data,
- Planning and assessing your overall set of properties/facilities, and
- Support of technology/data systems that enhance facility related business processes.
For Facility Benchmarking, visit Facility Issues.
“Fuzzy” Services
We help organizations rationalize their property portfolio, and review their facilities-related work processes to improve both effectiveness and efficiency. Our senior facilities generalist works as an extension of your staff, to identify and define opportunities, even if you are not sure what opportunities exist.
You may have to plan changes to your properties because of re-organization, a merger, re-engineering, or changes in the industry. Or maybe you are just looking for process improvements in your facilities operations. We understand the fluid nature of facilities management as a support function. Sometimes you just need an extra set of eyes on your problem, from someone who has seen similar problems.
Whether your opportunity is a tangible property improvement or process efficiency, we will help you define the potential value (financial, risk reduction, or a competitive advantage) so you can decide if it is worthwhile to pursue. Then we can help draft a strategy to capture the value of the opportunity, and implement the action within your normal operations.
Rather do it yourself? Use the information and tools provided here on the Strategic Facility Guide site.
The focus of our work is around the intersection of “Location” and “Strategies:”
Location is all about place. On this site, “Location Strategies” in particular is about the business place (vs. living and leisure places). We spend a great deal of our waking hours at work of some type, and while the form and nature of the traditional work place is certainly changing, having a place to work is not. Even in this increasing digital world, the physical place still plays an important role
Location is also about the space-time continuum. Very little happens at a single place anymore, so location is also about the relationship between places, even the integration of physical and virtual locations. Work flow is just that – a sequence of activities that create something of value to someone else, somewhere else. Whether the work entails making a widget, creating digital information, delivering a physical good, or providing a service doesn’t really matter. All these efforts require not just a place to do it, but connections between the place(s) the work is done, the source of the work inputs (materials, information, skills, energy) and the destination of the work output (customer in the broadest sense).
Your organization’s work locations (facilities, buildings & grounds, properties, field work…) are a major expense item, probably second only to your people so they deserve some strategy. In addition to the direct financial impact, the physical work environment provided by your locations either helps provides your organization with a competitive advantage, or gets in the way.
Strategy is about clearly understanding your goal and taking proactive steps to get there. The most common objectives for most businesses have to do with the quality of their product or service, their ability to satisfy their stakeholders, their profitability (efficiency, longevity), and their social/environmental impact (community benefits, environmental sustainability). Sometimes the goal is to optimize one of these objectives, but most often it is a “balanced scorecard” that has to consider multiple, competing requirements.
Operational strategies also include the tactics used to execute the larger strategy. These tactics will reflect the constraints of the day: How good is your information? What resources are available? Who will take action? When does it need to be done? What are the consequences? What else has to be done at the same time with the same resources?
Your organization’s location strategy will reflect both the larger organizational goal and strategies, and the implications associated with the locations themselves (facilities, buildings & grounds, properties…). The strategies around facilities are typically related to asset management and operational excellence.
Bob Lambe, the President of RAL Location Strategies, has 30 years of experience on facilities projects, facility data systems, and long-term facility portfolio planning. Contact us if you would like assistance with your agile/strategic facility plan or facility metrics.
The Strategic Facility Guide draws on a network of facilities managers, engineers, architects, realtors, programmers/analysts, and other professionals to develop the content we offer. Contact us if you would like to be a contributor.
