How a Korn Ferry FM Gets Supplier and Contractor Management Right

Lewis O'Brien, Facilities Manager UK at Korn Ferry, joins the Comparesoft Facilities Management Podcast to explain how he manages suppliers and contractors across three offices, and why he still runs most of the operation on spreadsheets rather than a Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) system. Lewis started at Korn Ferry as an Operations Assistant in March 2020 before moving into the UK Facilities Manager role, and now oversees the London, Manchester and Dublin offices. This is a candid look at a manual facilities management (FM) operation: how contractors get selected and onboarded, how work orders are raised and closed, how planned preventive maintenance (PPM) schedules get built from call-out history, and what still gets missed when it all lives in spreadsheets. In this episode, Lewis talks about: Running FM across offices of 1,000, 200 and 50 people, and why the small sites are not a smaller job Managing work orders, maintenance schedules and compliance dates on spreadsheets Extending an existing IT ticketing system to facilities, and why nobody pushed back on adoption Building trust with contractors, and how quickly it breaks Handling substandard work face-to-face without a blame culture Onboarding contractors for a Dublin office relocation from another country Using response time and call-out history to judge contractor performance Three things every new facilities manager should get right about contractor management 🔗 Listen and read more 👉 https://comparesoft.com/facilities-management-software/podcasts/supplier-contractor-management/