Strategic FM: Broken speech
The need to align real estate with core business aims is a constant battle for FMs. Barry Varcoe’s in-depth research suggests that better communication is the key to better working
Facilities management provides organisations with their physical working environments. In my 25 years’ experience as a practitioner within this discipline, I have found that one frustration and challenge stands out beyond all others: that is, the struggle to align and make relevant what the workplace delivers for the business and its strategy.
To try and make life easier for myself (in the long term!) I undertook a doctorate research programme to find out what was underpinning this critical area of leadership responsibility.
My initial review of the available literature indicated that FM is a very broad and complex field. It embraces a wide range of disciplines, including:
- Building economics
- Property asset management
- Building performance, including components and environmental impact
- Business support services
- Space use
- People performance, including productivity
- Cost
- Performance models, including quality
I discovered that many concepts and measures have been defined within each of these areas, and several standards, techniques and models have been developed to capture learning, provide consistency of approach and repeatability.
But none are all embracing, nor tie together a cohesive view across the entire field. Few are founded upon a base of proven data and many require considerable resources in terms of time and money to implement. It is possible that the fractured nature of the industry as a whole has hindered the development of good practice in at least two ways:
- By keeping functional and discipline ‘silos’, which holds back the development of holistic models that are more aligned to the strategic management and customer perspective
- By fracturing feedback and learning ability
The field of FM is n ot yet supported by an adequate knowledge base and research. As Bev Nutt and Peter McLennan have said: ‘Its knowledge base is at a primitive stage of development, its terrain largely unexplored’. As such, FM makes claims for itself that are for the most part untested — much of what is currently held as theory has little or no factual foundation.
There is also a fundamental weakness caused by the failure to address the interrelations between the many component variables of what is, in reality, a complex system. Bev Nutt once again agrees. He cites a lack of coherence within and between the supply and demand side of the industry and, most worrying of all, a lack of ‘intellectual coherence’ with the academic world.
The review of business management’s perspective of FM also drew some interesting conclusions. FM seemed to warrant a comparatively minor amount of content and significance. Most writers made no mention of them, even when they were discussing fundamental shifts in the nature of work.
Re-occurring themes
Where FM is mentioned, common themes can be identified:
- Consideration of them as an asset of production
- Their being an organization enabling (or constraining) ‘place’
- Their potential to negatively impact job satisfaction through poor standards and quality
- Their role as a visual representation of the organisation’s image and culture
From these literature reviews it became clear that, for most businesses, the key consideration is how FM impacts on workforce satisfaction and therefore productivity.
MacGregor and Then (1999) summarise this as ‘management [needing to] be driven by a clear motivation that balances:
- The demand to control costs
- The increasing need to provide workplaces that enhance productivity
- The provision of satisfaction to the workforce, individually and collectively
My research, however, led me seek evidence for the existence of this key relationship. Was it merely assumed that this was the way things worked, or were there any hard facts? I began to consider whether there was a correlation between the variables of FM cost performance, FM service quality, and consumer (facility user) satisfaction.
Measurement tools for each variable (including a consumer satisfaction survey) were designed, tested in a pilot study, and then deployed in a study within a financial services organisation’s UK portfolio. The data sample obtained was extensive: 1887 respondents in 154 office facilities.
The research, using various recognised statistical analyses, identified no meaningful correlations between these variables.
The findings of this research have potentially significant implications for the field of FM, in particular, for senior leaders responsible for its overall performance to the organisations it exists ?to support, as well as for academics.
Diagnosing FM performance practices in the context of organisational priorities demonstrates the deficiencies of the discrete approach to facilities performance practice.
Lacking an integrated approach
When looking at FM with a view to identifying the discipline’s contribution to overall business aims, one quickly realises the inherent difficulties in analysing practices in isolation. The lack of an integrated approach between related fields is compounded by scant evidence of systemic and strong linkages within the discipline, both between aspects of facilities performance and with the organisational needs they seek to address.
Where connections exist, there is generally no evidence or understanding of defined cause and effect relationships. I would argue, therefore, that facilities management is in a weak position to demonstrate its relevance and value to the organisation it supports. An exception to this rule is in the case of extremes of negative performance where catastrophic failure of the facilities will lead to similar failure or major disruption to the business of the enterprise.
The converse of this conclusion is that FM performance practice has significant scope for improvement, including in ways that will lead to benefit for the organisations it is supporting, by both:
- Establishing whether relationships exist between FM performance and organisational requirements
- Developing a performance model that provides ?an inter-related and complex, system-based measurement
The failure to find any meaningful correlations between the variables also calls into question FM’s existence as a system, and thereby as a field that can systematically improve.
Furthermore, and perhaps just as worrying, my initial attempts to use measurement tools (before the successful field study at the financial services organisation) came up against considerable caution, and, at times, resistance, to the potential discovery of new knowledge by FM practitioners, who seemed almost instinctively wary of anything that risked a change in their current status quo.
If their reaction is representative of the field in general (which in my experience it probably is), then once again another serious impediment for the field of FM has been identified — that (regrettably) the majority of its practitioners are resistant to any advance away from their current domain of practice.
Taking positive steps
So what should we do? Perhaps a starting point would be to reach a consensus on the industry’s shortcomings, both from ‘our’ (industry) perspective as well as that from the organisations we support. The hope would be that, having realised afresh and gained a consensus around the issues that affect our own ability to perform, we would quickly gain the motivation to do something about it.
This demand for new knowledge would then need a solution, which logically the academic world, in partnership with practice, would supply. To be successful it would need to be practical in its outlook and focused on the agenda at hand. There would need to be a collective passion for hard data, and ?lots of it.
For this to happen there needs to be a catalyst to start the process. Logically, this could be one of more of the established industry associations.
Alternatively, perhaps a new industry research foundation can be set up (even better if this ?is aligned to an eminent university with a ?strong brand).
Either way, it needs to take the lead in helping to set the agenda, rather than being a more passive clearinghouse or aggregator of others’ somewhat disconnected work.
Exploring the future
It is my hope that I will be able to make further contributions to the continuing discovery of new knowledge for FM in the future, especially working with others. These, alongside many others from fellow explorers (perhaps in the manner I have suggested) will help lead to an FM industry (in its broadest context) that will more successfully fulfil its potential from the perspective of the enterprises ?and individuals who consume its services ?and solutions
Barry Varcoe
Having been a partner in Bernard Williams Associates, a senior strategy executive at Johnson Controls, the group property director at the Royal Bank of Scotland, chair of CoreNet Global, and now a research Doctor of Philosophy, Barry Varcoe set up consultancy Real Estate Resonance as a business to make the most of his unique industry experience. Drawing on the theme of resonance — a special richness and significance — he is helping corporate real estate teams and their service partners to increase value by achieving a closer alignment between the corporate real estate/property function and the enterprise it supports. In particular, he is focusing on corporate real estate strategy, portfolio master planning, performance management and organisation transformation.
Varcoe has championed FM as an integral part of the life cost of property since leaving the South Bank Polytechnic in 1984 with an honours degree in building economics. At Bernard Williams Associates he helped to develop the premises audit concept to include the cost performance of running a building and later the concept of space audits and corporate productivity. At Johnson Controls, his work included global corporate strategies and lease development. He joined the RBS in 2002, and his £2.5bn portfolio included 5,000 properties across 53 countries. In 2009 BIFM members voted him one of the Pioneers of the Facilities Management sector.
