By assessing its facilities using APPA's Facilities Management Evaluation Program (FMEP), Philadelphia University earned an award from APPA and gains further recognition via this article in NACUBO's Business Officer magazine. You may be able to view this video about the award. Below, more from the article:

We did this without significant infusion of annual operating dollars. We did, however, strategically focus our capital improvements in a way that also addressed or eliminated maintenance concerns rather than increasing their numbers. We are proud to say we now have a significantly more efficient deployment of manpower, are available to take customer calls around the clock, have made overall improvements to our physical facilities, and have cared for our grounds such that they are an enhancement to the campus.

You could say our plan was a leap of faith, since we did not have the funds to add extra supervision for the increased staffing to cover extended hours, but we moved forward anyway. We felt we had a good staff of responsible workers, and we put in the systems that would allow work to be tracked and assessed. We made customer service a priority, but did so in a way that ultimately allowed more dedicated time for facilities stewardship.

There is no question that winning the APPA Award for Excellence in facilities management in 2009 was in true recognition of all of our hard work and the university's commitment to make significant improvements. One of the best observations was to see how many other departments championed the physical plant department when the Award for Excellence audit team came to campus.

The results prove that once institution leaders know where they stand, where they want to go, and how to put the funding methodology in place to get there, the rest is a matter of communication, campus buy-in, and finally, execution. It was a testament to the willingness of Philadelphia University's administration and physical plant department to assess performance, and ultimately, implement new processes that achieved results and national recognition.