Nearly 25 years ago a group of APPA members and facilities managers started to discuss an idea and to plant a seed about the need for a document, or series of documents, that would explain the need for staffing facilities operations and the implication of such staffing on levels of service. As the demand for increased budget cuts reached seismic proportions, facilities managers scrambled for assistance to validate their staffing requirements and the impact of budget cuts on levels of service. APPA's "Custodial Staffing Guidelines for Educational Facilities" was published in 1992, then updated and expanded in a second edition published in 1998. This was followed shortly thereafter by APPA's "Operational Guidelines for Grounds Management" in 2001, and APPA's "Maintenance Staffing Guidelines for Educational Facilities in 2002." These have become indispensible source publications for proactive leaders that seek to operate and provide efficient and effective services to stakeholders on campuses across the world. The new and improved "Operational Guidelines" for Custodial, Grounds, and Maintenance are an outgrowth of that support. Not only are these books distinctive, there are themes that flow through each book to include staffing guidelines, sustainability, benchmarking, position descriptions, use of computerized maintenance and management systems, and outsourcing options. The revisions to these books was based upon an APPA survey and task force member inputs, and chapters were added, deleted, or modified based upon that input.