The Building Liaison Program was created to provide communication between Facilities Management and building occupants. Building Liaisons play a central role in notifying building occupants of facilities issues, receive calls from building occupants, initiate work orders for the liaison's needs and keep building occupants updated on projects.
The newly established FM 311 team will maintain an active list of Building Liaisons and, in turn, this list will be used for authorized communications to Building Liaisons for the benefit of their occupants.
The Facilities Management (FM) Building Liaison Program (BLP) was established in 2011 as a partnership between FM and campus representatives with the primary goal of fostering better communication and information sharing for the benefit of the entire campus community. Through the BLP, FM fulfills its central operating principles of providing outstanding communications and service to all of its customers.
Every major building on campus is assigned one or more representatives, known as Building Liaisons, who heighten the awareness, knowledge, and issues affecting the quality of their work environment and the protection of University resources. To date, the program has 96 liaisons across campus.
The BLP is led by Heather Barnhardt, client services coordinator; Julie Griffin, FM 311 supervisor; Solomon T. Franklin, chief experience officer; Melanie E. G. Witherspoon, director of Facilities Finance and Business Operations; and Rich Steele, associate vice chancellor for Facilities. This team works closely with Building Liaisons to ensure their job as a liaison can be completed efficiently and effectively. This is done by providing continuous world-class customer service along with the necessary tools and information needed.
On Monday, June 13, 2022, the team conducted an inaugural campus tour to meet with liaisons and inform them of new processes and build relationships. The tour, held in the PORTAL Building, was led by Ali Mateen, PORTAL building liaison, and included a welcome from Rick Tankersley, vice chancellor for Research and Economic Development.
The goal of the tours is to build relationships, create community, and provide liaisons with an opportunity to come together to share ideas and learn from one another. It also allows them to learn more about buildings across campus and the vast array of programs that UNC Charlotte offers.
The tour agenda covered information about many of the program’s new features including a new liaison dashboard, the FM 311 portal, BLP manual and Google Drive folder.
The new Building Liaison dashboard in ARCHIBUS allows liaisons to easily track active work requests in the building(s) they manage.
Our FM 311 portal is very useful when entering work requests during a building walk-through. The portal has a mobile view, making it easier to read and navigate from a phone. Liaisons have the ability to take pictures of the problem areas and upload them to the work request without saving the picture to their phone.
The Google Drive folder gives liaisons a place to find important information regarding the duties performed as a liaison. Some of the items located in the folder include:
- Building Liaison Manual;
- Tutorials for ARCHIBUS dashboard, Key Box access, and FM 311 portal;
- Presentations from our bi-annual meetings; and
- Emergency contacts list
The next tour will be hosted at the Dubois Center at Center City in August 2022.