Service West | Best Practices

Study how other people approach the same kind of work and compare your results. It’s a proven way to find out if you’re really "best practice" and something we’ve been doing at Service West for many years.

Best Practices in Furniture and Facility Services
We’re always looking for better and faster ways to do things. And we’re not hung up on Not Invented Here. If someone knows a better way and is willing to share it, Service West is willing to learn and eager to improve.

To expedite the learning process, Service West joined forces in 1999 with two other installation outfits in California. Meeting informally a couple times a year, we started identifying the obstacles to quality, timeliness and affordability in contract furniture projects. With coincidence, luck and perseverance all in play, we discovered other outfits around the country that shared our commitment to elevating the professionalism of contract furniture services.

The result was Facilities Services Network, which now has 14 corporate members across the United States, Canada and Australia. The members are the best — and in many cases also the biggest — independent installation companies in the primary markets they serve.

FSN meets one or more times a year to study issues of common interest and share benchmarks and best practices. The principals and key managers exchange information by phone and email on almost a daily basis. The aim of all this activity is to identify, develop and implement best practices that reduce the time and cost of furniture and facility projects and help our clients be more productive and/or profitable.

Together with our FSN colleagues, Service West is a leader in procedure and process improvements for the front lines of change.

Best Practices in Manufacturing and Distribution
Service West activism in developing and promoting best practices in furniture and facility services has increasingly heightened the company’s influence among manufacturers and dealers as both an information resource and a thought leader. We maintain open lines of communication with both of these communities and willingly share what we know and learn in an effort to make all members of the industry more collaborative and more effective in their service to end users.

These running dialogues benefit all concerned. Dealers and manufacturers come away with a clearer understanding of front-line challenges, have a chance to test and clarify their own thinking, and discover opportunities for product, process and operational improvements. Service West gains insights into how we can improve coordination with manufacturers and add value to our support of their distribution partners.

Best Practices in Sustainability
Once primarily a concern of certain product developers and corporate marketers, the emphasis on sustainability in the workplace is becoming a driving force in workplace change as an ever-expanding field of players — suppliers and end users alike — pursue the economic benefits and competitive advantages.

Service West has long applied basic sustainability practices to our work on the front lines of change. We started with cardboard recycling in 1984, added paper, pallet and metal recycling between 1999 and 2001, and began developing a full-blown recycling program in 2002.

Now operating what many consider a best-practice recycling program for installation and commercial moving services, Service West has procedures and partners for the recycling of cardboard, paper, clean wood, metal, plastic, Styrofoam, and constituent recyclable materials found in workspace products our clients designate for disposal. The results speak for themselves.

Attention to the Future
Service West is part of a constantly evolving industry whose history spans only about a decade more than our own. As implementers of change in that industry, Service West people have always understood that “being the best” means not just doing a superior technical job with today’s contract furniture. It also means keeping an eye on what lies ahead — making time to understand how shifts and trends in real estate usage, organizational and workplace design, and product design and manufacturing are impacting the nature of workplace change. Using what we learn, we constantly update our knowledge and skill sets to ensure that Service West clients can always count on us to meet new and emerging requirements.

By constantly preparing for tomorrow while delivering consistently superior service today, we channel our drive to be the best in positive ways which work to the benefit of our clients as well as to Service West. We exert our natural curiosity. We have meaningful talks with the manufacturing, distribution, and facility management communities. We make every day’s work a learning experience. We train and we practice. All these efforts keep Service West a leader on the front lines of facility change.

Government Contract Services
Office Furniture Installation
Architectural Wall Installation
Hospitality FF&E Installation
Storage & Asset Management
Receiving & Delivery
Commercial Moving
Trade Show & Theatrical Logistics
Refurbishing, Repair, Maintenance

To learn more about FSN, visit FacilitiesServicesNet.com.