If FM is to evolve, can it rely on the ‘accepted wisdom’ on which decisions are based and projects managed? And if academic research can provide an objective source of knowledge, is this brain work being put into practice? Kevin Stanley reports.
Best practice in facilities management can depend on who you’re talking to, or the combined wisdom of people involved in a specific project at a specific time.
Indeed, says Professor Edward Finch, School of the Built Environment, at the University of Salford, “the term ‘best practice’ is an alluring expression reassuring us that somewhere out there is a group of sage-like individuals who have stumbled on the answer.”
But the idea of ‘best practice’ runs the risk of becoming simply ‘common practice’. In this way, according to Finch, the emergence of consensus seems to be more important than the merits of the decision itself.
This risk-avoidance stance seems to stand in the way of innovation. “FM has traditionally been driven by issues of compliance and due diligence; health and safety, as well as risk avoidance, represent the key drivers in facilities management decision-making.”
Since the birth of facilities management as a discipline, the industry has evolved over the decades based on incremental changes to conventional wisdom about how things are done rather than on models of delivery underpinned by established research. And yet, says Dr Carmel Lindkvist, research fellow, at the Design Innovation Research Centre, University of Reading, “there’s a lot of active research in facilities management, some of which is published in academic journals.”
He points to organisations like the BIFM who he says are “useful for keeping track of the different research that’s going on.” He feels it’s important to talk to facilities managers and examine FM projects to learn lessons that can be generalised to the wider industry. “It’s through this process that best practices from facilities management can be accumulated.”
For some, however, the idea of ‘best practice’ is less than concrete. The industry needs established standards, models and templates to which clients and contractors can refer, says Barry Varcoe, global head of corporate real estate & FM at Zurich Financial Services. Varcoe highlights the fact that other industries such as aeronautics and computing have established ‘platforms’ for the benefit of the wider industry and their customers, examples of which include Bluetooth, internet protocol (IP), WiFi, USB and Adobe ‘PDF’, “all examples of technology that has widespread adoption — standards that everyone benefits from.
The only similar thing I am aware of that FM has close to this in practical terms is OSCRE — a data exchange protocol. Even this has not had widespread adoption. Our industry is incredibly fragmented, protectionist and introspective,” says Varcoe.
Wood for the trees
Peter McLennan, FM course director at University College London, says that there is more than enough material available, and research being done, to provide FMs with useful models for managing.
McLennan dismisses the suggestion that too much FM is based on ‘received wisdom’. “That’s only the case for those who are not able to use or access the service operations management or related business literature in the area,” says McLennan. “The need to have some knowledge and ability to use these models is a market differentiator in a number of ways.”
McLennan cites, “fashionable constructs” such as ‘6 Sigma’ or ‘lean manufacturing’, which, when applied to services, require an understanding of the underlying concepts and technical issues involved with implementing these ideas successfully. The larger problem in the FM industry, according to McLennan, is the idea that these models are somehow for academic use only, and not useful in practice. “Engineering is an exception, as there they understand the application of abstract models to solve practical problems or find ways of optimising processes.”
Standard practice
McLennan points to the new BS/EN standards in FM, discussed at some length in the pages of FM World, and suggests that a lack of communication or training in these standards is perhaps the wider issue. Professor Finch agrees. “In relation to the standardisation of process, the European standard prEN 15221-4 (British Standard EN 15221-1:2006) provides a much-needed taxonomic framework of facilities management.
It also provides a basis for cost estimation.” Finch explains that this standardisation serves to identify a set of classified facility products which, if widely adopted, “will allow organisations to align internal structures/costs and subsequently benchmark with other similar companies with far greater certainty.”
Despite such standards and templates, there remains a belief within the industry that data and knowledge is unavailable to FM professionals and that as a consequence they are forced to rely heavily on received wisdom from many quarters including the client, specifiers, agents and users. Finch warns that “a servile approach may leave assumptions unchallenged and simply bring about the successful implementation of a flawed project. A leadership-based approach based on evidence provides a far sounder footing. In order to do this, FMs need to be more informed.
This requires the exercise of much greater critical judgement about the source and validity of people’s arguments; whether the answers are obtained from detailed observation (e.g. post-occupancy evaluation) or from other, reliable sources of research.
Back to basics
As it stands, the industry is into its third or even fourth generation of perceived wisdom. This means that the problem has been compounded, suggests Varcoe, who likens the situation to a house built on sand foundations. “We need to get back to the basics of the value we are trying to deliver and start building the knowledge and evidence base from there — otherwise it could all come crashing down. If the industry doesn’t wake up soon to this dangerous situation and begin to demonstrate value-add — rather than the avoidance of value-loss — then the in-house FM role might disappear.”
Blind adherence to the code of ‘The way we do things around here’ is possibly impeding the growth of the industry, believes Jill Fortune, senior lecturer in facilities management at Sheffield Hallam University’s Facilities Management Graduate Centre. “The lack of education within facilities management is limiting growth and development. At Sheffield Hallam University we are working with the BIFM to try to address this problem.”
She believes that education is about developing people as independent learners, “with an understanding of how to critically evaluate, draw upon numerous resources and identify appropriate approaches to a given situation.” This enables them to be “an intelligent client and to apply received wisdom, but to make a conscious choice.”
It is therefore vitally important that any meaningful research is disseminated throughout the industry. But it does seem that there are several barriers to this happening freely. “There is a lot of good research happening within universities; however a combination of factors limits the ability to disseminate the findings, such as commercial confidentiality and opportunities to publish.”
Fortune explains that this makes bringing these disparate pieces of research together into coherent messages more difficult. “There is a need to develop a means of publishing research findings in an accessible language that facilities managers would have access to and would find valuable.”
The other type of research, according to Fortune, is being done is by suppliers. However as this potentially gives them a competitive advantage, it is not published. “In order for there to be dedicated, independent research into the industry, we need to tackle the thorny matter of funding.”
A question of cost?
These difficulties with funding might possibly be set to change as a growing number of large FM service providers recognise the importance of having a close partnership with a UK university. This could be in relation to engineering solutions, management solutions or community engagement solutions.
Such a partnership could extend well beyond capturing highly qualified postgraduate students. It also represents an chance to develop a research and development capability that provides market differentiation.
But would it require a new skill set to develop within the industry? “Many of the leading ideas, insights and findings of relevance to facilities management remain ‘locked into’ repositories of information which, though increasingly accessible in open access journals, are incomprehensible to busy facilities managers dealing with day-to-day issues,” argues Finch.
He suggests the time has come for “a new dedicated facilities management role: that of facilities management innovator. Such an individual would be able to harness ideas from a wide range of research disciplines and fully explore research that is already out there and ready to be found,” says Finch.
Share and share alike
Research and information must be shared. In order to develop accepted standard models and templates, there will need to be a fundamental change and a strong collective desire to make those changes — individual companies or universities cannot make changes on their own. “There needs to be a coming together of key stakeholders, both clients and customers, to collectively decide what is important and then sponsor a profound programme of research with secure multi-year funding and, critically, access to real operation data.”
Better still, says Varcoe, if this can be done through one or more leading business schools. “Then the people that really matter might start to take note and get interested as well,” he concludes.
The BIFM could play a major role in this change. It’s a challenge that they say that they are ready to take on. “The BIFM is keen to play its part in contributing to facilities management’s development path in practice, education and research,” confirms Stephen Bennett, the institute’s strategy director. He points out that the UK has some of the leading practitioners, educators and researchers in facilities management worldwide.
Practical cases, he believes, “feed into generic research and back again in a dynamic cycle that casts understanding of FM as a collective enterprise in which ideas sometimes originate from practice and sometimes from scholarship. Practice, education and research each make contributions in different ways and on different timeframes,” he says.
Bennett believes that, universities and the other professional bodies are all subject to varying pressures leading to collaboration and competition, and feels the resulting diversity can be an advantage. “In the broader discipline of general management for example, different schools of thought are often discussed. A middle ground is being negotiated as a basis for meaningful thinking between FM covering too diverse a set of services and arguing that everything can be managed in the same way whatever the situation.”
Bennett’s message is a positive one: FM is on an evolutionary path, like any professional discipline. Some of the research into practical standards, models and templates has been done. Now, the industry must build on it.
