Adam Birkett
The owner bears causal liability both for damages and for insufficient safety in the construction and operation of a building or other work, regardless of whether the defect was caused by the owner or by a third party. The owner can delegate duties and responsibilities to third parties only to a limited extent. For example, the duty to organize, the duty to select or the duty to supervise are non-transferable areas of responsibility.
In summary, operator responsibility thus encompasses all tasks and competencies required to prevent hazards and damage arising from the operation of a property as a whole.
The perception of operator responsibility is a great challenge, especially for facility management, as it has to safeguard the interests of the owner while at the same time complying with its own duties (entrepreneurial and personal duties). We can support companies with legally compliant implementation of operator responsibility, and clarify and derive measures. In a first step, we identify operator obligations relevant to the company at the level of laws, ordinances, standards and guidelines. Their risk- and topic-based classification leads to an overview of operator obligations that must be complied with and establishes the basis for legal compliance.
We examine the specified business processes with regard to their completeness, quality and inclusion of the operator obligations. In the process, we examine the organizational structure and process organization as well as the specified reporting with regard to instructional and verifiable documents, including their storage.
Conducting assessments is a core element of our services. On the one hand, intep shows how business processes are lived on site and the extent to which operator obligations are implemented. On the other hand, intep helps companies operating in multiple regions to identify locations that do not comply with the law and uncover regional differences.
Measures planning and continuous improvement process
On the basis of integral analyses and checks, intep summarizes potential for improvement and implementation measures with regard to fulfillment of operator responsibility and provides a corresponding plan of measures, taking their prioritization into account. Experience has shown that this leads to a reduction in the potential for losses to occur and thus to the preservation of reputation and the avoidance of fines.
We recommend recurring assessments to help companies to discover any weaknesses and to check the ongoing implementation of measures. The results are incorporated into the optimization of tools and the training offered, thus ensuring a continuous improvement process.
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