UC Davis is wasting no time in changing the way we do our administrative business, for increased efficiency and effectiveness at less expense.

Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Enrique J. Lavernia only last week formally announced an Administrative Process Redesign Initiative, listing several works in progress — and one of those projects is already a done deal.

It is the consolidation of the Office of Administration and the Office of Resource Management and Planning, in the works since June and going so well that administrators decided to accelerate the effective date to Oct. 1. The consolidation is expected to save $900,000 a year.

So, as of now, OOA and ORMP are gone. In their place is Administrative and Resource Management, comprising three elements: resource planning and finance, facilities and land management, and safety.

In a nutshell, said Vice Chancellor John Meyer, who led ORMP since its founding nine years ago and now heads the new office with some 1,650 employees: “We keep the campus running.” It is a slogan he used in a memo announcing the consolidation to employees.

Stan Nosek, who had headed the Office of Administration since 2001, is briefly deferring his retirement to lead the Administrative Process Redesign Initiative, effective Oct. 1, for further reorganization along the lines of the OOA-ORMP consolidation.

Lavernia, writing at Chancellor Linda Katehi’s direction, rolled out the initiative in a Sept. 21 memo to the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors and the Academic Senate. He said the initiative will provide the framework “to help us systematically improve services on which the campus community depends, and when appropriate, reconsider some of the assumptions under which we have operated.”

“This initiative,” he said, “is necessarily aggressive in its goals for improvement and change” — aggressive because “the financial crisis is well upon us,” referring to state funding cutbacks that left UC Davis with a $39 million shortfall last year and a $113 million shortfall this year.

“We must act quickly not only to avoid taking actions that further compromise our administrative infrastructure and hinder our ability to support the academic mission, but also to take advantage of the current crisis to become a better institution,” Lavernia said.

The Administrative Process Redesign Initiative is a response to long-term budget planning that began last November as the campus dealt with the first stages of what has become a multiyear budget crisis.

The Budget Advisory Committee and five subcommittees “provided many useful ideas and observations,” Lavernia said, “and the campus already is taking action on many of the recommendations.” In addition, administrative and academic units are in the process of implementing their own process and structural improvement initiatives to reduce costs and-or improve service.

He listed the Office of Administration-ORMP consolidation as one of the works in progress, along with four others:

• Restructuring of the library.
• Streamlining of academic personnel processes and procedures
• Improvements in space use on campus (an effort that already is decreasing the use of off-campus leases).
• Restructuring of research gift assessments, to result in additional revenue for the campus.

Besides addressing the Budget Advisory Committee recommendations, the Administrative Process Redesign Initiative team has been charged with managing administrative unit reviews to identify efficiencies in the delivery of core services.

Katehi has asked for an administrative assessment of the Offices of the Chancellor and Provost as well during this academic year.

Shared service centers

A third area of focus is the development and implementation of shared service centers for select administrative functions, such as human resources, accounts payable-purchasing and technology support.

Shared service centers, Lavernia said, “organize administrative systems with an approach that maximizes the strengths of centralized and decentralized service models, while minimizing the weaknesses of both.”

Lavernia said he has charged a task force representing academic and administrative units to work with the Administrative Process Redesign team to develop a detailed framework for a shared service center by Jan. 31.

Simultaneously, Karen Hull, associate vice chancellor for Human Resources, has been directed to work with providers and customers of other administrative services to identify additional opportunities for shared service centers.

The OOA-ORMP reorganization

Vice Chancellor Meyer, in his memo to employees on the Office of Administration-ORMP consolidation, said Chancellor Katehi “has challenged all of us to explore new and innovative ways of providing services in support of our core academic mission.”

Meyer said he expects the new Administrative and Resource Management unit will be on the forefront of this effort. “In many respects, we already are, as this reorganization demonstrates,” he said.

The new unit will have “more flexibility and better processes,” Meyer said, with the ultimate goal of providing better, more economical services. As an example, Meyer said, the unit is examining the possibility of establishing a flat-rate system for paint jobs and comparing prices with those in the private sector.

ORMP had previously picked up some of the Office of Administration units, notably Architects and Engineers, and Facilities Management, to go along with ORMP’s budget and planning work. With this move in the summer of 2008, ORMP became the campus’s central unit for capital planning, project implementation and maintenance.

Now, with the complete consolidation of the Office of Administration and ORMP, the campus moves all of its municipal-like services into a single administrative unit.

Budget problems, of course, figured large in the decision to consolidate. Together, the Office of Administration and ORMP cut $4.4 million in expenses in 2008-09, and are due to cut $6.5 million this year.

Meyer and Nosek noted a couple of other factors that made the timing opportune: Nosek’s pending retirement, after some 33 years at UC Davis, and the recent retirement of Maurice “Mo” Hollman as associate vice chancellor for Facilities Management.

Neither is replaced in the new set-up, which gives Meyer eight associate and assistant vice chancellors, a chief operating officer, plus the police chief and fire chief. Facilities Management, without an associate or assistant vice chancellor, is led by two directors, one for Building Maintenance and one for Utilities.

The Office of Administration and ORMP implemented two elements of the consolidation over the summer, establishing two new divisions out of six independent units. The new divisions:

Design and Construction Management — Brings together all of the functions involved in delivery of the campus’s capital improvement program, specifically Architects and Engineers and Facilities Management’s Project Management Department.

Campus Planning and Community Resources — Brings together all those functions having to do with planning and management of the campus environment, specifically Campus Planning, Buildings and Grounds, the arboretum and the Putah Creek Reserve.

The other divisions in Administrative and Resource Management are: Budget and Institutional Analysis, Accounting and Financial Services, Human Resources, Capital Resource Management, Facilities Management, Safety Services, Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability, Police Department and Fire Department.

ON THE NET

The new Administrative and Resource Management (including organizational chart): arm.ucdavis.edu

More budget news: budgetnews.ucdavis.edu

Oct. 15 Staff Open Forum to address the vision for the campus, budget updates for 2009-10, initiatives to help the campus address the budget crisis, and furlough and campus closure issues. Sign up to attend, or watch the live Webcast.