On Property Managers

In my current role the Admin Manager, who is responsible for dealing with the property manager, reports to me.We have been having some issues with the building and the lack of action by the Property Manager which prompted the following story from a long time collegue. Here is his story about a Property Manager.

As I waded through the Ganges delta this morning to the lift still smelling of the decomposed remains of rats in the bottom of the lift shaft, I was reminded of a lesson I learned about property managers a few years ago.

A few years ago when I was younger I was a manager at X hospital and because my wife was pregnant at the time I was assigned managerial responsibility for the Maternity service, a fair call I thought as in the judgement of our leader of the time I was more expert in such matters than Geoff.

The first issue I was confronted with was the extreme temperatures suffered during summer by birthing mothers due to the lack of air conditioning in the maternity hospital. We summoned the property manager, who will be known as 'A' and I will reserve any comments as to his IQ. 'A' immediately entered what I came to discover was property manager mode. He first offered the opinion that the temperature wasn’t that high compared to the outside temperature of 25c and that it didn’t seem to him to be that hot (though one could observe a trickle of sweat down the side of his face). After some pressure from myself, the chief midwife ('J') and the CMFIC ('M'), 'A' agreed to do something. OK we said, how long? "a week", and we left with a sense of partial victory.

After two weeks of no response and heading towards February, we confronted 'A' who entered property manager phase two, “oh, yes, sorry, I haven’t had a chance, I have been busy, give me another week”. On this occasion we set a binding time and he returned in a week to enter phase three, obfuscation (a word Geoff cannot pronounce so I love using it). “Yes, I have had a look, it will be very complicated and very expensive and we don’t have any money”. We further prevailed upon him, but discovered a brick wall.

At this stage we decided a tactical retreat was appropriate and I consulted my colleagues 'J' and 'M' who disclosed a gem of information – “he does this every year”. He stalls us, first he will offer to investigate, then he will forget, then it’s too expensive and complex and next he will say that we have to prove our case by measuring the temperature for a month, then we have an argument about what is the right temperature for birthing and finally winter comes and we lose our sense of energy”. What a gem of information and to some extent similar to what we are facing with our equivalent of 'A' and the Ganges Delta.

Armed with this information we reengaged and sure enough the next phase emerged, "you will have to prove your case". We immediately pulled out last year’s results and after he protested that it was a particularly hot summer last year, we confronted him with our knowledge of his pattern of procrastination. It was not necessary for me to play bad cop as our chief midwife and our CMFIC had imposing personalities and their usual hearts of gold had turned to granite.

We offered the opportunity for a discussion with the CEO where we would discuss the several years he had delayed any action on the very high temperatures in the maternity hospital through his delaying strategies and sure enough he changed his mind and after a few days came up with a creative solution that saw air conditioning installed as part of a revamp of the maternity hospital that was opened by Joan Bolger (a productive mother herself) a few months later.

Perhaps the moral of this story is that you need to get the 'A' for our building, pin him to the ground and place a stiletto heal on his throat and he might perform. We must also never forget that there is a problem, when winter comes or when it stops raining, because that is what property managers live for, problems going away without them having to lift a finger or part with a single dollar.