ABOUT: History of University of Michigan Leadership in Education Facility Regulatory Advocacy (1993-2016)

When global standards bodies and accredited standards developers claim "academia is involved" we recommend that they clarify whether or not academia is in service of incumbent interests*

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History of University of Michigan Leadership in Education Facility Regulatory Advocacy (1993-2016)

“Lo Scheggia – The Seven Liberal Arts” | Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi (1460)

Educational campuses are the locus of the brand identity and the economic well-being of the communities that hosts them.   There are about 1000 – 10,000 of them in the US alone; including K-12 school districts, private colleges and large research universities.  Higher education campuses — effectively “cities within cities” —  are remarkably affluent.  Many believe that higher education campuses in the United States constitute a sovereign nation onto itself.   S. Joe Bhatia, CEO of the American National Standards Institute makes this point during a speech at the University of Michigan in 2014:

From the very beginning, we understood that by slicing horizontally through the silos of an industry that runs about 4 percent of US Gross Domestic Product would not be an undertaking for the timid.  We understood that we were going to annoy many stakeholders just a little bit; not to any large degree — just a little bit.   We would be stepping onto the territory of incumbents — competitor stakeholders, education industry trade associations and standards developers  — who had made their business model work for private industry (but not public infrastructure markets).  In startup ecosystem parlance, we saw a “gap”.   It was obvious that an industry whose costs were running at multiples of the US inflation rate was not in the meetings where technical and business standards were being developed and that participation in the leading practice discovery that takes place in those processes could contribute to cost control.   We found that all standards developing organizations welcomed the participation of the user interest in the education industry; and still do.  The failure to participate in these global processes — and the opportunities the standardization stream presents for the reduction in redundancy and destructive competition — lies with the education industry itself.  

Market incumbents — manufacturers, insurers, accreditation laboratories, labor, etc — have a long, storied and well-financed footprint in the consensus standards system in all nations.  Virtually all resources of the US education industry are devoted to enforcement, inspection and compliance whose interests align most closely with market incumbents because they all receive money from the user-interest.  There are a few teaching enterprises (i.e.  faculty “spreading the gospel” about standards without getting down into the weeds to make the system contribute to cost efficiency by sustaining a grind through the process).  More than any other college or university in the US the original University of Michigan enterprise succeeded in proving that the global standards system could work for an industry whose business enterprises needed to look outward. 

At the University of Michigan alone, the annual spend on building and maintaining the physical campus ran about three  times the annual budget allocation received from the State of Michigan.   Advocacy for this allocation was supported by a Government Relations enterprise very much like the government relations enterprises in other public universities.    And, very much like the government relations enterprises in most public universities, there was no priority — let alone a skill set that required both technical and business expertise and influence — for managing the cost of their “city-within-a-city” through the global consensus standards process.    We can claim with confidence that the original enterprise placed downward pressure of about 1 to 2 percent on the #TotalCostofOwnership in a deep, fundamental and enduring way.  The problem, of course, is that the results are described in avoided cost; a number that is difficult to see (though implicit in the “Infrastructure Recovery Cost” on tuition invoices issued by some colleges and universities).   

 

No enterprise is exempt from the need to adapt to changed priorities —  especially so when new leadership is put in place.   Unlike deep cycle industries such as energy, chemical and pharmaceutical industries that invest in innovations that take decades to realize financial benefit, the lead time for effective standards advocacy spans across the tenure of most college and university presidents.   The original @StandardsUMich enterprise was discontinued suddenly in July 2016 as part of a very large University of Michigan reorganization of its business and finance division.   (See the historical summary below)  

A reconstructed enterprise was formed within 36 hours after the sudden change in organizational geometry — now @StandardsMich — still under construction — but hewing to the same mission — is now a limited liability corporation in order to be receptive to, and innovate upon, the broadest possible span of financing possibilities.

Experience suggests that the non-profit business model may not be optimal for advocating on behalf of the public sector.   These trade associations — and there are a surprising number of them — are not in the same business as their members; though they provide an essential platform for communication among members.**  They need to be in the standards space just enough to provide content that supports membership and other auxiliary forms of revenue.   We are hard pressed to find even one education industry trade association that has been effective in consensus standards development that has resulted in a measurable reduction in #TotalCostofOwnership.   Competitor stakeholders employed by individual institutions have been, but not trade associations.   We welcome any information to the contrary.

Assertive, streaming, independent advocacy on behalf of the user/owner/final fiduciary work continues; with the seeds of advocacy objectives planted at the University of Michigan in the early 1990’s continuing to bear fruit in the most important consensus standards for building and maintaining education and healthcare facilities.   The avoided cost the original enterprise delivered accrues to every college, university and school district in the United States.  (Click here: UM Welcomes ANSI 2014)   Effective technical and management standards advocacy requires a very long runway — the 6 to 12 year length of a typical college university president’s term in office, for example.   Most education industry management structures cannot accommodate the long-lead time undertakings that are common in the private sector.   They want to see measurable results on a per-project basis rather than suffer through claims that standards advocacy produces results for all projects and all colleges, universities and school districts.  Deep cycle industries such as the energy and pharmaceutical industries routinely invest in projects that take decades to ripen.   This perspective informs the raison d’être of Standards Michigan.

“The School of Athens” | Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

One measure of our success in the past 3 years is that leaders of non-profit education industry trade associations have been persuaded by the success of the original University of Michigan enterprise and are now assembling subject matter experts to pull together informed positions from their memberships on how technical and management standards should be developed to lower #TotalCostofOwnership.   Since there are 100’s of education industry trade associations — complicating the development of a single position — a component of the value proposition of Standards Michigan will be to serve as a “watchdog” organization that will follow the performance of these trade associations and their advocacy contractors as they scale up their participation in the development of American national standards.

 

 

The social negotiation of technological change:   

Too much standardization — you stifle innovation and delight.  

Too little standardization — you get interoperability crises and destructive competition. 

 

There is an “arms race” going on now in the education industry; with campuses growing to meet the demand from students from developing economies with newer, flashier facilities; coupled with the supply of philanthropic money.  Accordingly, the US education industry is building and renovating at a clip of about $90 billion per year — about the gross annual revenue of Microsoft Corporation.  Overall, the education facilities industry has an annual spend of $300 billion; making it a Fortune #4 company.  Despite the enormity of this industry,  virtually all resources of the largest non-residential building construction market in the United States is devoted to conformity and compliance with existing codes and standards largely set by other stakeholders in the global standards system.   The education industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the US according to IBISWorld and it is a culture of compliance insofar as safety and sustainability standards are concerned.   There are exceptions, of course.  A few universities free up their best minds to participate in consensus standards development but the efforts and successes of these experts are generally unrecognized and unrewarded in their home organizations.  Their work — not unlike watching paint dry because it requires patience and endurance — is recognized by the relatively small ANSI federation and the larger organizations whose revenue is derived from conformity and education , however.    Experience suggests that user-participation remains an uphill battle. 

The problem the user-interest faces in the the US standards system — and it is a problem shared by the user-interest in all of the global standards systems — is the weakness of participatory democracies.  Not everyone wants to get involved.   There is more money to be made in conformity and certification and the results show up as revenue not avoided cost.  In the public sector especially the underlying reason for non-participation is that “it’s everybody’s money” or “other peoples money”.   Executive management of these “cities-within-cities” have demonstrated indifference to the opportunities to leverage the economic footprint of the education industry to reduce its cost structure through national and international consensus standards processes.   Perhaps no other industry in the world is immune to the consequences of overlooking a $10 billion avoided cost opportunity than the US education industry.   In a speech made at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, S. Joe Bhatia, CEO of the American National Standards Institute, makes this point:

In the near future we will resume our reports on the progress and results of education industry trade associations.   Ahead of that, and concurrently, we will continue participation in the commenting opportunities presented by all global  standards development organizations to collaborate with other stakeholders to develop cost effective and sustainable solutions to building and operating real assets that are one of the most important and politically visible assets at any level of government.   We will be building state-affiliates.   The United States is, after all, a democratic republic of 50 different states; each of which may have other ways of adapting to, and inspiring nationally developed consensus and open source standards. 

While this site remains largely “under construction” at the moment, the original network of colleagues remains intact (See Contacts) and are contributing to its reconstruction after funding for the original enterprise was abruptly withdrawn in a division-wide reorganization in July 2016.    

SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

* Incumbent Interests.  In nearly every nation, the user-interest — the final fiduciary — is outnumbered and under-financed compared with the stakeholders (such as producers and general interests) who are able to build the cost of their advocacy (professional time, travel expenses, administrative incidentals, etc.) into the price of the product or service they provide to the user interest.    The user-interest in academia should not be confused with faculty who consult with producers and general interests.   Multinational industrial conglomerates frequently retain faculty from business and/or engineering schools to advance their economic agenda and consensus standards developers err when they claim that “academia is involved”.  The interest for which @Standards Michigan advocates is more accurately described as the tuition-paying student.   More information on the categorization of interests can be found in Section 2.3 of ANSI Essential Requirements: Due process requirements for American National Standards .

** For example, the University of Michigan was the inspiration and catalyst for the creation of the APPA Standards and Codes Council and for decades financed its first and only vote in ANSI accredited standards so we are familiar — arguably, the discoverer — of the weakness trade associations in asserting the economic interest of the user/owner/final fiduciary.  Among those weaknesses are the reinforcement of the Producer and/or General Interest in the global standards system.   Many trade associations need the sponsorship revenue from Producers and General Interests.


Background Information:

 History-of-University-of-Michigan-Leadership-in-Campus-Infrastructure-Standards-Development-1997-2014

2014_Annual-Report

@StandardsUMich-Report-to-MIAPPA-Summer-2016 (1)

ISO Focus January 2015 Anthony-Robben – Education Enterprise pp 33-37

ANSI Membership Roster Education Industry November 2017

The wicked problem faced by the public sector user-interest  — which we are trying to solve — can be understood from the perspective of two classical economic theories:

Tragedy of the Commons

The Free Rider Problem

 


Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy  of a trade association or standards developer.

Retweets are not endorsements


 

© Standards Michigan Group, LLC

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