Lodging Engineer
You Should Know, So, What’s The Excuse?
By Manny Higazi
As a department manager or supervisor it is important that you train the staff
on what they need to know and show your support by making resources within
reach so they can take care of things without hesitation.
We as Chief En- plumbing section and guess what? Five sideration when it comes to evaluation. It
gineers or man- valves left. I assigned a staff member to do is critical to the department to flow in the
agement staff touch up painting. I got a note stating that
direction of success. Without success the
in the engineer- they could not find a touch up brush. So,
foundation of maintaining the property will
ing department I go again and guess what? I found three.
weaken resulting in poor appearance and
come across I can go on and on. During their shift they
negative impressions from top manage-
the little hiccups could have called me to ask about where
ment to guest.
that slow the op- the location of the materials can be found,
eration down at but no calls were made. The effort of the
This article is written for both engineering
times. This has a staff is what helps the department move
staff and management in the engineering
lot to do with staff and our communication ahead or move in slow motion because of
department. As an engineer, know what
abilities in training. It is most important to delays with the projects or tasks not com-
is required of you and what role you play.
have monthly meetings to re-energize the pleted in the time assigned. So in turn ev- Your contribution and efforts makes a big
staff and to weed out the little hiccups that erything else piles up. So, as department difference and impact on how success-
are slowing things down. The hiccups are managers we take everything into con- ful the department can become. Always
where the staff is responding with I don’t
know notes or can’t find something notes
for you on your desk. This is a sign of poor
communication from the top or the staff
looking for an excuse. When I have my
monthly meetings I reinforce my stand
and say there is no excuse as an engi-
neer not to complete the tasks assigned.
All assigned tasks needs to be addressed
and resolved. After training and reinforc-
ing what the expectations are you get an
idea of how much effort the staff is willing
to take to complete the tasks. They know
as I repeated over and over my phone is
available 24 hours if they have any ques-
tions with their assignments. I share my
experiences to give you an idea of what I
came across.
Our shop is well organized and labeled. I
assigned a staff member to take care of
a plumbing problem that required a valve
replacement. The response note I got
was, “I looked all over the shop, could not
find a valve, we ran out.” The next day I
Back-of-the-house Storeroom / Maintenance Shop
was certain I had five left. So, I go to the
PAGE 10 | Winter 2009 / 2010 | Lodging Engineer
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