Stormy Friday is the President of The Friday Group, an internationally recognized women-owned facilities management consulting firm. Stormy is also a consultant, trainer, and speaker in organization development, marketing, and customer service. She has lectured at local and international facilities management conferences in over 30 countries.
Here’s a Glimpse of what You’ll Learn:
- How Stormy Friday got started in facilities management
- The challenge of safe facilities during the COVID-19 era
- How are buildings coping without humans in them?
- The opportunities for facilities management professionals despite the pandemic
- Exciting innovations to watch for facilities in the days to come
- How Stormy’s company, The Friday Group, has been coping with the change in the facilities business environment
- How to get into facilities management and why it matters
- Stormy talks about how women can enter facilities management and thrive
In this Episode:
As most workspace facilities have been sparsely occupied since COVID-19 hit, the future seems bleak for many facilities managers. But, maybe there’s light shining through. Stormy Friday says different types of opportunities are available for facilities management professionals—if they know where to look.
Learn more about Stormy Friday, President of The Friday Group, in today’s Watching Paint Dry podcast. They discuss Stormy’s long journey in the facilities management industries, the challenges COVID-19 has presented, and the opportunities opening up for facilities management professionals despite the pandemic.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- The Friday Group
- Stormy Friday on LinkedIn
- Organization Development for Facility Managers: Tracing the DNA of FM Organizations by Stormy Friday
- Quality Facility Management: A Marketing and Customer Service Approach by Stormy Friday
- IFMA
- ProFMI
- BOMA
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens
Another morning here, this is Greg Owens, and this is the Watching Paint Dry podcast. And this is Thursday, September 17. And I’m really excited because we say I’m in the San Francisco Bay Area. And we have been just under this like, unbelievable amount of smoke and air quality was like Mumbai, or Shanghai or New Delhi or places like that for weeks, and we just couldn’t go outside. And so we’re in a quarantine and then we’re having to stay like in indoors and that is all blown away. And we just have a beautiful fresh day outside. So excited that the weekend will be clear air. This podcast is brought to you by McCarthy Painting my company. It started in 1969 by my uncle Fred McCarthy, and we paint both residential and commercial painting projects here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many of the companies we’ve worked for have been Google, Autodesk, H&M, Abercrombie, and Fitch, Spin and many, many others. If you’d like to know more about our services, go to McCarthyPainting.com or info@McCarthypainting.com we’re continuing our series of talking to facilities managers and building owners, and the people that support them. And I’m really excited to have on our podcast because this is a little bit of a celebrity person in a way in the facilities management industry. Because we had a few people that have mentioned our guests, Stormy Friday, and I’m really excited to have Stormy on our podcast today. She is the president of The Friday Group, which is an internationally recognized women owned facilities management consulting firm. And Ms. Friday is a speaker, consultant, a trainer and it’s traveled extensively speaking about facilities and facilities management. Welcome on our podcast.
Stormy Friday
Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Greg Owens
Yeah, this is it’s great. Um, so tell us how, like a little bit about yourself and how you got into facilities management.
Stormy Friday
How many days and weeks do you have? It’s a long story, I’ll try to give you the abbreviated version started, what seems like 100 years ago, some days but I had been a management consultant for a very long time. I was a political appointee in the Reagan administration. And I was asked to take over an organization called facilities and real estate by the woman who was running EPA who told me that it was an organization and you’ll appreciate this, that did a little dusting and a little painting. And as it turned out, we had 8 million square feet of real estate. We had 25 regional offices, we had 2000 contractors, it was a little bit more than just painting and general housekeeping. Long story short is that’s how I got my start in facilities. I knew nothing about it. I just knew it was an organization and need to be turned around. And we did. And probably one of the most frustrating and most fun things I’ve ever done in my life. After that, I was interested I was asked to leave EPA because I was doing too good a job. And that’s an actual quote. So I left went to work for a design build firm, and was doing some work for a client who said, you know, if you had a facilities management consulting firm, I’d hire you and I said give me 48 hours and I had a consulting firm and that was 32 years ago. Wow.
Greg Owens
Wow, that’s great. You so you jumped right in with both feet and started your own company coming out of really just work you are working for the US government then as in facilities. Uh,
Stormy Friday
yes. I think that’s probably the best way to describe it. It was an experience. And I have stories that people said to me if I didn’t want to work in Washington DC ever again, I should write a book. But a lot of those people are long gone. And so I probably could get away with a book at this point.
Greg Owens
Right, right. I bet Yeah. Cuz you know, Washington DC is another one. That’s a whole different universe than the rest of the rest of the country in a lot of ways. The way things work there.
Stormy Friday
Most definitely.
Greg Owens
Yeah, I forgot to mention too. We we have Katrina Hayes, who’s also on the podcast with with us. And sometimes Katrina chimes in, she’s learning the industry and asks questions, too. So if you hear voice in the background,
Katrina Hayes
grateful to be here, as well.
Greg Owens
And now, what I know that your company is, you know, there’s, there’s, we’ve actually interviewed quite a few women in the facilities management industry, and it’s so great. But when you got started, what was that, like?
Stormy Friday
It was being the only woman in a room of 25 to 250 men, it was clearly a male dominated profession industry, if you will, back then, which had positives and negatives. Obviously, it’s changed dramatically in the 30 plus years that I’ve been involved with it. And fortunately, I think there are a lot of women in FM now and a lot of bright, talented women who have done a lot for the profession and a lot for their companies, their industries, their colleges and universities, their medical world. And so it’s it’s been a wonderful journey, I think, if you will, to see what women have accomplished in the field.
Greg Owens
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s impressive, too. I can only imagine, and especially during sort of the Reagan era there, because I’m trying to put myself back into those those days. And, you know, that’s like the like, right at the heart of the Cold War and things along those lines, we had different concerns back then.
Stormy Friday
Very different concerns and facilities management was not on people’s radar. It was a hard sell. It still is occasionally but not anything like it was back then people didn’t understand what it was way, way back then they used to call the mops cop shop. Because that’s what people understood. You did the janitorial work, and you usually had the security detail, and you did painting. And so that’s pretty much what people thought about it. It wasn’t strategic. And we’ve worked really hard to make it strategic. It wasn’t to allow to be part of the C suite. facility organizations really weren’t involved in critical decisions regarding real estate or long term planning, Capital Planning. So it’s come a long way.
Greg Owens
Yeah, and I see the buildings came a long way to it. And in the USA, like There seems to be a period of time, like in the in the sort of 70s and 80s. There were they, they they weren’t really putting a big emphasis on building design and function and that kind of stuff. It was like just build a square box in some ways. And especially the US government, like you know, there’s so many different buildings where they’re not very interesting to look at at all. And but that’s seemingly changing a lot as they’ve learned how important it is to for our environments, and how we can be more productive and work in a in a facility that feels good.
Stormy Friday
And you’re absolutely right. And I think one of the big challenges going forward will be the impact of COVID. On on real estate and on buildings and what will happen because quite clearly the trend now is to downsize. And companies and companies in your area companies everywhere that had large campus facilities are leaving those campus facilities or deciding to downsize I don’t think the giant Sears towers will be built in the future and we will have large headquarters facilities. So I think the entire profession is at a crossroads now and it remains to be seen what happens in the future.
Greg Owens
Yeah, no, that’s that’s for sure. We’re seeing so much change and so and on the unbelievably unprecedented speeds, what your your company as a consulting company, and you’re probably like in it in a lot of ways of having To figure out like, what is the strategy? And each company is different in so many ways and how they’ll approach that strategy? as what have you seen? And what are some of the challenges that you’ve come across at this point?
Stormy Friday
I think probably the biggest challenge, and everyone talks about it, and it seems to be the universal challenge is, how do you live in a, in a virtual world men, most of your customer base is commuting from home, and not commuting to a hard facility anymore. And I think there are organization and cultural issues associated with that not only for the parent companies for the corporate entities and all the other institutions, but also for the facility organization that is struggling a little bit with how do you maintain a team? How do you lead an organization virtually? How do you accomplish the same things? And then how do you ensure that your customer base that mix of people who are requiring technology from home, and then those who do come into an office are safe and functioning at full capacity?
Greg Owens
Yeah, and I’m even reading some companies like in New York City, a few of them have been more gung ho and coming back to work and bringing people back into their offices and they’ve had, it’s, it’s interesting to see, because that would be sort of false starts in a lot of ways. Like, they come back in, they come back in with a higher percentage of people coming back into the buildings, and then they have a COVID problem and then had to retract, right? Have you seen that amongst the buildings that you’re consulting of where some are maybe a little more aggressive, and some are a lot more, just like, wait and see, like, I know that Facebook and Google, they’ve just they said like, not until next year, we don’t need anybody to come back in.
Stormy Friday
I think it’s different depending upon the geography and the environment, and the politics. Not to get into that, but it but it, it plays into this. And so all of the states have different regulations. A lot of it deals with where the company is headquartered, and what those policies are in that headquarters environment. I know the statistics are pretty much leaning towards a workforce that is virtually based in the future, a high percentage of that. And so I think some companies, I think more companies are cautious than anything else, maybe to a greater extent than they need to be. But I think they’re erring on the side of caution for the most part. And, and and corporate offices, kind of like this virtual environment, because it’s not as costly. When you don’t have people coming into an office every day. You don’t need as many amenities. You don’t need all of the things that the facilities folks typically provide.
Greg Owens
Yeah. And what I mean, I’m you seem like, like, I know that some buildings, and we were doing we were talking to Stan, last week, he mentioned it to some of these buildings are having challenges right now. Because there’s no people in the building, and new things are coming up and new new problems and new things that they have to sort of like look at the key because like a building like is a part of the ecosystem in it. It’s sort of almost needs humans in it to keep it functioning correctly. Have you seen any of that kind of thing happening amongst the buildings you’re involved with?
Stormy Friday
Well, and I think Stan is absolutely right, you still have to maintain your asset, you still have to protect your infrastructure. And if you don’t exercise a generator, if you don’t do maintenance on your HVAC system, if you don’t take care of the things that you normally would buildings, decay, and atrophy. And so constantly keeping the airflow and the air pure in an environment where there aren’t people in whole sections of buildings is a challenge. I mean, balancing an H vac system in a large complex is difficult enough as it is. But then when you’re dealing with different flows of people and limited numbers of people, it really causes new problems. And the question is, you still have to do your routine maintenance, you have to do preventive maintenance. You have to do all those things. And it’s tough sometimes for corporate executives to realize that still has to be done even though there aren’t people in the buildings.
Greg Owens
Yeah, yeah. So that’s another sort of another uphill battle there in some ways. of convincing them that, hey, you still have to even know that we don’t have people coming in there still needs to be budget money allocated. In this regard. I know for us as a company, we’re primarily a painting company, but I do have my general contractor’s license. And we’ve been asked to do, like, you mentioned generator, like we, we did a whole generator, like repainting of it, but also making sure it’s functioning and working well, and, and the walls surrounding it are working well and functioning. So it’s interesting to see like, the different projects also, what is the other one? Oh, Bevy machines, they took out all the vending machines, and they’re installing, you know, a machine to get filtered water, but you bring your own cup kind of thing, right? You don’t you don’t you don’t get to use the kitchen cups anymore. kind of stuff.
Stormy Friday
It’s a wonderful opportunity for inventors, I think, because there are so many things that will change the, and the dynamics of that whole environment are shifting all the time. And I think that inventors would have a field day coming up with things that may help the workforce and and help the equipment and save money and save things like that. But it’s it’s just a tough environment right now. It’s a very tough environment. There’s an opportunity, though, for facility professionals, and that is they can offer suggestions to senior executives, I think it’s an opportunity for them to kind of shine and rise above, simply because there’s no game plan. We can open a playbook and say, Oh, you go to page 52. And this is what you do next. So if you can offer up suggestions, I think that really is a positive thing for the Facilities Management profession right now.
Greg Owens
Yeah, no, I can see that. I think you’re right, the opportunities for people to come in with new sort of inventions and new ideas. It’s unprecedented times and that way have I know I’ve seen like Whole Foods has Katrina, you’ll like this because your your fiance to be his he uses this tool all the time. It’s for it’s an infrared tool, right? And it’s made by FLIR but I noticed that all foods has got them set up to for every employee comes in us to stand in front of it, and it takes their temperature, right. And I know that that’s a device that they’re looking at many, many buildings are looking at to have it there sort of their entryway to the building. What other types of inventions Have you seen or anything exciting in that regard? But you seem
Stormy Friday
it’s funny, I haven’t necessarily seen it operating in in a building environment. But somebody sent me a video today of a woman in Israel who has invented a substitute for plastic. Hmm. And she’s a scientist and her her product, she’s, I think, going to try to get into production, it could be used for anything that we use plastic for today. And it’s water soluble. And so instead of clogging up our environment, you put it there’s a demonstration where she puts this plastic substance in a glass of water, it dissolves. And then she said it’s safe enough to drink. Wow. opportunities like that when you think about how we could use that and what it could do for the environment. And particularly from a facility standpoint, the plastic that’s consumed by folks in buildings is just astronomical, even though are involved in recycling and environmentally friendly and alternative products. So things like that. I think people as you said, are trying to come up with what’s the best way to take temperatures? What’s the best way to get a sense of how people are feeling? What’s the best way to position people and space people have? I think justice schools are trying to figure that out. You know, do you put plastic shields around? You put bubbles around the desk? How do you deal with that? So it’s trial and error in many instances?
Greg Owens
Right, right. Yeah. The schools the universities are on are sort of on that forefront in a lot of ways because they’re having as we speak, they’re having people come back by the thousands into their dorm rooms into the classrooms and trying to figure that stuff out. And it’d be interesting to see what what new data comes out.
Stormy Friday
Yes,
Greg Owens
yeah. I noticed you have a little a little friend behind you back there that got up and turned around and and caused the change. to rock back and forth.
Stormy Friday
We have two cats, American Shorthair cats. The one that you see back there is pony, and the other one is Express. And we have pony and express. And they’re a little tired today because they had their teeth cleaned yesterday. Oh, so and poem kid was a little more groggy than then we call her pressy. So I had to put Presley in the other room because she kept jumping up on the keyboard, and wagging your tail and pressing the keys. So sometimes she’s not great podcasts? Ah,
Greg Owens
yeah, we haven’t, I haven’t employed it as a cat. And every time we’re on, the cat comes right in front of the screen. And I said, Oh, does it do that when we’re not on? He said, No, only one we’re like, on a, when we’re on the zoom calls, the cat knows that there’s an interaction going on and wants to be involved.
Stormy Friday
I think ours do too. They they like people catering to them and finding all.
Greg Owens
Yeah, what and for your own company? What have you like what kinds of challenges or opportunities have you been coming across as you’ve been going through this last six months?
Stormy Friday
I think the challenges for companies like ours, because we do, we do strategic planning for facility organizations, we do a lot of reorganization facility organization engineering, we do a lot of assessments on third party strategic sourcing relationships. So we’ll assess those relationships. And often we’ll help our clients write RFPs and help them select a vendor. And we found the challenge to be that those are the kind of services that right now are not high on people’s list. Hmm, because they’ve got some basic services that they really need to do. So I would say that this, this is a challenge. And a lot of folks that I know, I would not want to be starting a facility management consulting firm right now. I think it’s a difficult environment. And it will be for six months to a year as things sorted out. But a lot of my colleagues have reinvented themselves as they find other opportunities and things in the facilities world to begin to think about a lot of people are doing more training and education because there’s a big need for that and a big call. So and I think a lot of it is a lot of people just need sounding boards, we find a lot of our clients just want to talk to somebody about their issues and their challenges. And because I’ve written a lot about organizations and leadership and customer service, people are asking those questions. And so they want to know if they’re doing the right things.
Greg Owens
Right. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen even in within my own industry, there’s a lot of what you just said, just a lot of like people wanting to talk and talk through their ideas and, and have a forum and a place of being able to share those experiences. And I know you’re also really active in efma, International Facilities Management Association. So as Katrina, she’s on the board here. Are you on the board Katrina in San Francisco,
Katrina Hayes
on the programs committee. So I hope with the events back in the day when we used to have events in person now, tool.
Greg Owens
Yeah,
Stormy Friday
I’m an IFMA fellow I used to be a lot more active in IFMA than I am now. I’m very involved now with ProFMI. I’m the chair of the commission of ProFMI, which is the new credential for facility management, and was instrumental in helping my fellow commission members sort of craft the curriculum for that credential. So that’s been I’ve spent a lot of time on that effort. That’s where Stan and I have been spending time together. So a lot of work there, which is been a lot of fun.
Greg Owens
Oh, nice. Yeah, we don’t know as much about ProFMI Can you give us a little bit of more background of of that organization.
Stormy Friday
Um, it’s the ProFM Institute. And two, I think it’s about two and a half years ago now. professionals from around the world came together to talk about what should be a global standard for facility management. And after working together and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, we came up with kind of a body of knowledge that we thought all facility management professionals should know about, and those we grouped into several buckets asset management and business management operations in May nuts. And we also have overarching things like communication and sustainability that cut across all of those. And so it’s a credential program. And it’s, it can be self directed, it can be a classroom. But the beauty of it is it has some global standards, it was developed globally, it’s very much in tune with the ISO standards. And so it’s kind of being recognized as the credential now, for the world, if you will, globally, and it’s an independent Institute. It’s not a membership organization. So it’s not member driven. And it’s, it’s coming along quite nicely.
Greg Owens
Oh, that’s great. Because I know that, you know, coming up with standards is not easy to do, especially, you know, buildings. buildings here in San Francisco are complicated. And getting everybody to agree on something must be tough just here in San Francisco, I can only imagine what it’s like to start reaching out and going global.