Over 200 editions, we have charted the development of facilities management through its practitioners and representatives. So how much has the sector changed since we first published? We asked specialists to look back at the last eight years — and ahead by eight more to 2020.
Let’s be clear from the beginning — 2004 to 2012 is a pretty arbitrary period, and we’re not even talking an exact eight years.
The first edition of FM World was published in April 2004, so what we’re looking at here is actually a period of 102 months.
No obvious milestone, just a neat figure to go with the 200th print edition of our fortnightly title. Yet despite the awkward span of time, it has certainly seen plenty of change: smoking has been banned in all public buildings, restricting the management of that habit to an issue of grounds maintenance.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) directive, and a flurry of other waste and environmental legislation has been introduced against a backdrop of tighter compliance requirements and measurement.
Flexible working has emerged as a major catalyst for change in the management and design of the workplace, while the promise of building information modelling is the recognition for the operational importance that FM has always had but has struggled so consistently to prove.
Of course, plenty hasn’t changed nearly as much as many would have liked. In 2005 we were talking about “the rivalry between FM and purchasing”. Today that topic is just as relevant, and just as fiercely debated. Similarly, successfully communicating the value that FM offers to the wider organisation still remains as frustratingly elusive as it was in 2004.
Yet much has changed to the internal and external perception of FM.
The big issues
Back when the smoking regulations were just proposals, London won the right to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Expectations were rife that the scale of the project in east London would allow for some excellent examples of where FM can add value — and so it proved in spectacular fashion.
The games themselves are still too fresh in the memory for us to be able to gauge their lasting impact on the profession. But in terms of innovation in design, sustainability of construction and fitness-for-purpose, few would argue that the Olympic legacy from an FM perspective is looking anything less than rock solid. The energy technologies used across the Olympic Park and beyond were indeed cutting edge.
What’s also remarkable is just how quickly the extraordinary has become the everyday. Looked at from 2004, the tablet computers and smartphones we now take for granted would have seemed every inch the 21st century sci-fi gadgets we dreamed would influence the workplace. These devices have already had an impact on office fit-out decisions. They also open up possibilities for workers to use the ‘third space’ — workplaces other than the office.
Mobile working considerations are increasingly important to the real-estate plans of major multinationals. From serviced offices to coffee shops, the flexibility these workplaces offer weighs increasingly on the minds of CRE teams considering what to do about pending lease breaks and indeed lease terms generally.
This technological change connects to an obvious demographic factor — the introduction of ‘Generation Y’ into the workforce. The teenagers of 2004 are the graduates and apprentices of 2012, entering the workplace (when they can get work) with very different expectations of what they need to do these new jobs.
And other demographics still define the sector. Back in 2006 we reported that the typical FM was between 40 and 50 with around nine years’ experience. FM was not their first choice of career, and nor had any advice on FM as a career option been received at school or university. Slowly but certainly, this issue is being addressed (indeed, we at FM World are publishing the third edition of our guide to careers in facilities management).
Perhaps the most glaringly obvious statistic was that the FMs of 2006 were overwhelmingly male. Today, that is changing. Female FMs are increasingly represented and the BIFM’s Women in FM special interest group (SIG) is one of the institute’s best supported. Indeed, there have been eight BIFM facilities managers of the year since FM World first published; four male, and four female. In just a few days time, one of the sexes will take a 5-4 lead…
Sustainability
The concept and practice of ‘sustainability’ surely vies for the title of the most important issue facing FM. But to what extent is sustainability now a mature concept? Can we be proud of the way the sector has changed to adapt since 2004, or are there still fundamental issues that we need to address?
Lucy Black is the chairman of the BIFM’s sustainability SIG, which was first established around the same time as the first FM World. “There have been some significant changes since 2004,” she says. “When the sustainability SIG was first set-up, it felt like we were very much outside the mainstream, pushing for the issues to be on the agenda within the profession. Since then we have seen sustainability as the key theme for at least two of the BIFM’s annual conferences, and with more than a quarter of BIFM members signed up to the sustainability network, its importance is clearly recognised.”
Lucy believes that the sheer scope of sustainability, and how it underpins all business operations, is not yet fully embedded in the FM function. “There remains a tendency to focus on energy management, which has increased with the influence of the low-carbon agenda. Finding ways to integrate the economic and social aspects of business with environmental concerns remains critical, as does the need for sustainability to be automatically integrated with all activities.”
Looking to the future
When we reach 2020, will sustainability have become successfully meshed into the FM operation? Or is the current torpid rate of economic recovery likely to push sustainability down the list of corporate priorities as organisations re-assess the often sizeable cost of projects? According to Lucy, the national and international carbon reduction targets set for that date could prove to be a wake-up for the industry — if it’s held to be falling short.
“2020 is a key year in carbon reduction terms. In the years leading up to it we could see increased scrutiny and regulation from governments reliant on individual organisations to deliver on the targets, leading FMs to focus on their carbon-producing activities.”
The obstacle to ensuring sustainability is properly considered in projects is the separation of capital and operational funding, says Black. “When life-cycle costs are considered, many features of projects that fall under a ‘sustainability’ heading make good business sense.
However, when investment is separated from operational budgets, the very features that would enable the long-term running costs to be controlled are excluded to save short-term costs. For organisations creating a long-term sustainable business, sustainability in their buildings will play a key role.”
Building services
The distinction between hard and soft services in FM has matured over the past eight years, with perhaps an increased focus on the soft side. There’s an argument that the people-management issues involved in cleaning, security and catering receive more ‘air time’, at the expense of specialist engineering maintenance issues. Yet the need for M&E specialists remains.
One change we’ve reported on is the shortage of facilities managers with a solid building- engineering background. Geoff Prudence, the chairman of the Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers’ Facilities Management group (CIBSE FM), believes that building- maintenance service providers are sometimes moving further afield to attract people with the necessary skillsets.
“Getting people with the necessary skills remains an issue,” says Prudence. “Finding good people with a strong building-service maintenance background has become tougher in recent years. We’re seeing outsourced M&E providers, attracting people with backgrounds such as marine engineering or the armed forces — places where they’ve gained a solid background in M&E and controls and operating processes. After all, these are transferable skills and FM is the perfect place for them.”
Prudence believes there’s a widening skills gap between engineering and management skills. And while plenty of FM providers are offering training, too few are offering management training specifically around building services.
Looking back, Prudence believes that compliance issues, and awareness of them, have helped shape the last eight years. “There is now more appreciation of compliance as an entity in itself that demands effective management,” says Prudence. Perhaps there are more opportunities for outsourced compliance management; but there’s no excuse for a lack of such skills in-house too. Building operational risk management is a key attribute for any successful FM.
“Building services are the backbone of all effective building operations,” says Geoff, “that’s why good FM managers are likened to orchestral conductors, facilitating a range of appropriate services at just the right time.”
Contract management
Has the way that organisations audit the performance of their FM contracts changed significantly? Phil Ratcliffe of Procore Consulting suggests that while the methodology of audit — via KPIs and SLAs — has not changed over the last eight years, “there is still a lot of confusion as to the definition of these mechanisms”.
Ratcliffe believes it would be interesting to ask 100 FM professionals to state the difference between a KPI and a performance measure, between an SLA and a specification. “I wonder how many different answers would you get? The ability of FM service providers to demonstrate that they have delivered their services to the agreed standards they have committed to is still one of the great intangibles in the industry.”
Ratcliffe believes that relationships between organisations that outsource FM and their service providers have typically improved since 2004, partially the result of FM workforce mobility: “More people who previously worked for clients now work for FM service providers,” says Phil. “This obviously must help, as they understand the challenges from both sides — and that can only improve respect between the parties.”
FM is truly all about the people when it comes to client/provider relationships, says Ratcliffe. “The best partnerships exist between groups of people not companies. The test in these relationships is when people move on or when a true problem occurs.
“The ‘contract in the drawer’ is still talked about but this can be misleading. It is inevitable that the contract will ‘come out of the drawer’ when a problem arises. So the client and service -provider relationship needs to be in accordance with the contract so the partnership can focus on the day-to-day running. The courtroom is not the place to find out that partnership is not contractual.”
Martin Gammon, managing director for OCS Group UK, agrees that we’ve seen a shift in the relationship between client and service provider in the last eight years, but looks at it from a different perspective. “The decision-making process has been divested more to clients’ procurement teams over the past few years,” says Martin. “And while procurement has done a fantastic job driving down cost, FM has become increasingly commoditised with more decisions made on cost alone.
For example, we’ve recently seen bid criteria 100 per cent based on price. This potentially strangles the innovation and added value that FM providers have in abundance. We need to see a shift back to focusing on how service providers can add value.”
Phil Ratcliffe understands this point of view: “Procurement teams have become more educated and some procurement routes more complex, and that can be both good and bad.” What is dangerous, according to Ratcliffe, is when the procurement route is so complex that it dominates the engagement between the client and service provider, to the point where the complexity confuses the practicalities of what actually needs to be delivered on site.
“The question that needs to be answered, and kept in mind, is ‘who is the client’ — procurement or the internal FM? Where it can work well is when these two parties have clear goals and objectives. Where it can lead to confusion and frustration, especially for the FM service provider, is when the goals and objectives are not aligned, and in the worst case scenario, are in competition.”
Disability awareness
With the London 2012 Paralympics fresh in the memory, the question of whether FM does enough for the UK’s sizeable community of disabled workers is worth asking. Susan Scott-Parker is the founder and chief executive of the Business Disability Forum (formerly the Employers’ Forum on Disability).
She believes that the profile and human potential of disabled people has been enhanced by the Paralympics. But has the last eight years seen the profession’s awareness of the potential of disabled people in the workplace improve?
“Large public and private sector organisations routinely report that their FM providers lack the disability-specific expertise required to adapt so that employees can be more productive,” says Scott-Parker. “FM can take too long to install basic changes to the built environment, and does not know how to deliver an efficient, lean process that delivers adjustments quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.”
According to Scott-Parker, Business Disability Forum member organisations find that FM is “often not clear about who is responsible for what, and to what standard, when someone needs an adjustment — be that person an applicant, employee or customer. Often this outsourced process can involve occupational health and IT as well as FM — yet it’s often unclear how these departments should collaborate to find and deliver the solution, and who is ultimately responsible for it.
“Businesses are continually striving to improve their customer and employee experiences; but sometimes, a lack of disability-specific expertise in crucial parts of the business prevents progress. Over the last eight years there has been a heightened interest in improving the experience of millions of disabled customers and employees, but it is by no means consistent across different industry sectors.”
Scott-Parker believes that FM is pivotal if disabled and older employees are to maximise their contribution in the workplace.
2020 vision
Many of the research projects concerned with the world of work in 2020 point to the impact of collaboration technologies on the world of work. It’s surely true that new tools will arrive with capabilities that we can only guess at.
One thing that did not exist when we first published (but seems unavoidable at any conference these days) is social media. The tools that enable social media today will undoubtedly look very different by the time 2020 comes around. Perhaps the integrated communication nirvana they hint at will have become established by then, forging inescapable connections between departments — and, accordingly, establishing FM’s true value beyond doubt.
