Facility management

The management of a user's computer installation by an outside organization. All operations including systems, programming and the datacenter can be performed by the facilities management organization on the user's premises.

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The process of operating corporate- or government-owned property occupied and used for the corporation's or government's own purposes.
Example: The purpose of the facilities management department of the university was to maintain proper operations of its buildings. The department hired painters, plumbers, and janitorial service people as required.

In an article for Managing Office Technology, Kit Tuveson defined facility management as "the coordination of the physical workplace with the people and work of an organization. It integrates the principles of business administration, architecture, and the behavioral and engineering sciences." In the most basic terms, facility management encompasses all activities related to keeping a complex operating. Facilities include grocery stores, auto shops, sports complexes, jails, office buildings, hospitals, hotels, retail establishments, and all other revenue-generating or government institutions.

Responsibilities associated with facility management typically include a wide range of function and support services, including janitorial services; security; property or building management; engineering services; space planning and accounting; mail and messenger services; records management; computing, telecommunications and information systems; safety; and other support duties. It is the job of the facility manager to create an environment that encourages productivity, is safe, is pleasing to clients and customers, meets government mandates, and is efficient.

Different Businesses and Their Different Facility Needs

The term "facility" is used to refer to a broad spectrum of buildings, complexes, and other physical entities. "The only thread common among these entities is the fact that they are all places," wrote Alan M. Levitt in Disaster Planning and Recovery: A Guide for Facility Professionals. "A 'facility' may be a space or an office or suite of offices; a floor or group of floors within a building; a single building or a group of buildings or structures. These structures may be in an urban setting or freestanding in a suburban or rural setting. The structures or buildings may be a part of a complex or office park or campus."

The key is to define the facility as a physical place where business activities are done, and to make facility management plans in accordance with the needs and demands of those business activities. After all, the facility needs of a movie theatre, a museum, a delicatessen, a plastics manufacturer, and a bank are apt to be considerably different, even though there will likely be certain basic needs that all will share (furniture, office space, air conditioning systems, light fixtures, etc.). Good facility management is concerned with addressing those needs in the best and most cost-effective ways possible. Indeed, facility management encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, including the following:

• Monitoring organization efficiency, since, as the J.K. Lasser Institute noted in How to Run a Small Business, "personnel, machines, supplies, work in progress, finished products, and deliveries must all be coordinated if your plant is to be successful. Production efforts must be judged by time, cost, quantity, and quality."
• Ensuring that the business receives the most it can for its facility-related expenditures (this is often done through standardization of company-wide needs so that high-volume purchases of necessary products can be made).
• Real estate procurement, leasing, and disposal (or facility construction, renovation, and relocation).
• Ensuring that the divergent processes, procedures, and standards present in a business complement rather than interfere with one another.
• Monitoring all aspects of facility maintenance and upkeep so that the business can operate at highest capacity.
• Tracking and responding to environmental, health, safety, and security issues.
• Ensuring facility compliance with relevant codes and regulations
• Anticipating future facility needs in areas as diverse as fluorescent light procurement, new space for expanded assembly lines, automation, and wiring for new computer networks.
• Educating work force about all manner of standards and procedures, from ordering office supplies to acting in the event of a disaster.

The Evolving Character of Facility Management

Facility management has traditionally been associated with janitorial services, mailrooms, and security. Since the middle of the twentieth century, though, facility management has evolved into a demanding discipline. Factors driving the complexity of the facility manager's job are numerous. For example, facilities have become much larger and more complicated, often relying on computerized and electronic support systems that require expertise to operate and repair. As Randy Brown observed in Buildings, "personal computer networks, telecommunications systems and other technological tools have significantly increased office tenant requirements in the past 15 years." This trend is evident in manufacturing sectors as well.

Of course, many other factors have impacted on the challenges of facility management in recent years. For example, the newfound corporate cost-consciousness that emerged during the 1980s has generated an emphasis on operational efficiency. Writing in IIE Solutions, Steven M. Price summarized the facility manager's situation thusly: "Facilities professionals are being asked to contain costs while achieving maximum beneficial use—that is, to achieve more with less." In addition, philosophical changes such as increased reliance on teamwork, cross-functional teams, and telecommuting have created new spacing and infrastructure demands. Finally, the responsibilities of facility managers have continued to broaden into all areas of facility upkeep, including insuring that the business adheres to regulatory requirements in such areas as handicapped access, hazardous material handling and disposal, and other "safe workplace" issues.

The end result of new technology, efficiency pressures, and government regulations has been an expansion of the facility management role. By the 1990s, facility managers were often highly trained and educated and must wear several hats. Depending on the size of the complex, the manager will likely be responsible for directing a facility management and maintenance staffs. In addition to overseeing the important duties related to standard maintenance, mailroom, and security activities, he or she may also be responsible for providing engineering and architectural services, hiring subcontractors, maintaining computer and telecommunications systems, and even buying, selling, or leasing real estate or office space.

For example, suppose that a company has decided to consolidate five branch offices into a central computerized facility. It may be the facility manager's job to plan, coordinate, and manage the move. He or she may have to find the new space and negotiate a purchase. And he or she will likely have to determine which furniture and equipment can be moved to the new office, and when and how to do so with a minimal disruption of the operation. This may include negotiating prices for new furniture and equipment or balancing needs with a limited budget. The facility management department may also furnish engineering and architectural design services for the new space, and even provide input for the selection of new computer and information systems. Of import will be the design and implementation of various security measures and systems that reduce the risk of theft and ensure worker safety. The manager will also be responsible for considering federal, state, and local regulations. For example, he or she will need to ensure that the complex conforms with mandates associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), clean air and other environmental protection regulations, and other rules. The ADA dictates a list of requirements related to disabled employee and patron access with which most facilities must comply, while clean air laws impose standards for indoor air quality and hazardous emissions. Similarly, other laws regulate energy consumption, safety, smoking, and other factors that fall under the facility manager's umbrella of responsibility.

Facility Management in the Future

Price and other analysts have suggested that evolving business realities in the realms of process improvement, cost containment, speed-to-market accelerations, quality control, and workplace arrangements and concepts will all have a big impact on future notions of facility management. Price argued that "the challenge for facilities planning will be to integrate knowledge workers into a dynamic business environment of global competition, technological developments, and changing values." He laid out four primary precepts that will likely form the underpinnings of future financial management planning:

1. Understanding the evolving nature of knowledge-based business—"The new workforce and the content of its work is migrating from a bureaucratic control of resources and the movement of materials through a process toward a highly flexible and networked organization whose added value is exploiting specialized knowledge and information to solve complex problems," wrote Price.
2. Understanding workspace trends—Price and other business analysts believe that computing and communications technologies are fundamentally transforming the workplace landscape. As shared jobs, telecommuting, home-based businesses, flexible work hours and other trends make further inroads in the business world, facility management philosophies will have to keep pace.
3. Understanding how new technologies have removed old restrictions on conducting business—This, said Price, basically entails recognizing that "the removal of physical limitations caused by transportation and communications technology has changed the scope, strategy, and structure of the business world."
4. Understanding "Job Factor" basics—Price noted that IBM and other companies have developed facility management philosophies that study the interaction of all job factors, including those of physical environment and job content.

Contract Facility Management

Increasing numbers of business owners are choosing to contract out their facility management tasks to specialized facility management companies that operate the complex for the owner on a contract basis. This arrangement has become more common in part because of the increasing scope and complexity of facility management. Companies that hire contract managers prefer to focus on other goals, such as producing a product or providing a service. Many of those firms find that outsourcing facility management duties to a specialist reduces costs and improves operations.

Contract facility managers may be hired to manage an entire complex or just one part of a large operation. For example, some companies hire contract managers that specialize in operating mailrooms or providing janitorial services. In any case, the company expects to benefit from the expertise of the manager it hires. A contractor that manages data processing systems, for example, may bring technical know how that its employer would have great difficulty cultivating in-house. Likewise, a recreation facility owner that employs a facility manager specializing in the operation of sport complexes may benefit from the contractor's mix of knowledge related to groundskeeping, accounting and reporting, and sports marketing, among other functions.

Besides expertise and efficiency, several other benefits are provided by contract facility managers. For example, they reduce the owner's or occupant's liability related to personnel. By contracting a firm to manage one of its factories, an organization can substantially reduce its involvement in staffing, training, worker's compensation expenses and litigation, employee benefits, and worker grievances. It also eliminates general management and payroll responsibilities—rather than tracking hours and writing checks for an entire staff, it simply pays the facility management company. In addition, a company that hires a facility management firm can quickly reduce or increase its staff as it chooses without worrying about hiring or severance legalities.

Whether a small business chooses to outsource or maintain internal control of its facility management processes, however, the ultimate goals are the same. As Raymond O'Brien commented in Managing Office Technology, "both the in-house facility management department and outsourced services must recognize that the facility management business is changing. While, traditionally, interior planning has been driven by preconceived notions of what is appropriate, business today increasingly is not being conducted in a traditional manner or in traditional locations…. Changing roles, combined with changing technology, drives the environment of the future."

Although he concurred that the field of facility management is in a state of flux at the moment, O'Brien argued that quality facility management could became an even greater advantage for attentive businesses in the future: "[Facility management] offers those with entrepreneurial spirit enormous opportunity. Whether working within a corporation or as an outsourced service provider, imaginative facility managers can find myriad ways to improve service to the company or the client while creating an interesting, challenging position for themselves."

Further Reading:

Becker, Franklin. The Total Workplace: Facilities Management and the Elastic Organization. New York: Van Nostrand, 1990.

Brown, Malcolm. "Rulers of the New Frontier." Management Today. March 1996.

Cornacchia, Anthony J. "Facility Management: Life in the Fast Lane." The Office. June 1994.

Huston, John. "Mastering the Facility." Buildings. December 1999.

J.K. Lasser Institute. How to Run a Small Business. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Kaiser, Harvey H. The Facilities Manager's Reference: Management, Planning, Building Audits, Estimating. Kingston, MA:R.S. Means Co., 1989.

Kruk, Leonard B. "Facilities Planning Supports Changing Office Technologies." Managing Office Technology. December 1996.

Levitt, Alan M. Disaster Planning and Recovery: A Guide for Facility Professionals. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

Macknight, Diane. "Facility Management in the '90s." The Office. January 1993.

O'Brien, Raymond. "Facility Managers Provide Invaluable Services." Managing Office Technology. September 1995.

Price, Steven M. "Facilities Planning: A Perspective for the Information Age." IIE Solutions. August 1997.

Sopko, Sandy. "Smaller Staffs and Budgets Boost FM Outsourcing." The Office. August 1993.

Tuveson, Kit. "Facility Management in the 21st Century." Managing Office Technology. May 1998.

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (January 2009)

Facility management is an interdisciplinary field primarily devoted to the maintenance and care of large commercial or institutional buildings, such as hotels, resorts, schools, office complexes, sports arenas or convention centers. Duties may include the care of air conditioning, electric power, plumbing and lighting systems; cleaning; decoration; groundskeeping and security. Some or all of these duties can be assisted by computer programs.

It is the role of the Facility Management department to coordinate and oversee the safe, secure, and environmentally sound operations and maintenance of these assets in a cost effective manner aimed at long-term preservation of the asset value.

The term "facility management" is similar to "property management" but is typically applied to larger commercial properties where the management and operation of the buildings is more complex.

Contents 1 Role 2 Definitions 3 Technology of building automation 3.1 Administrative vs. Technical Management 4 Orthography 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Role

It is the role of a facility manager to ensure proper operation of all essential building services. These services can include:

• Normal power
  • Electrical Substations
  • Switchgear

• Emergency power systems
  • Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems
  • Standby generators

• Environmental conditions
  • HVAC-R

• Building monitoring systems
  • Automation systems
  • Monitoring systems

• Life/Safety systems
  • Sprinkler systems
  • Smoke/fire detection systems
  • Gaseous extinguishing systems
    • FM-200
    • FE-25
    • Halon

Along with building services, dealing with office spaces can also fall under the responsibility of the facilities department.

Definitions

One definition provided by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) is:

"A profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, processes and technology."

Another broader definition provided by IFMA is: "The practice or coordinating the physical workplace with the people and work of the organization; integrates the principles of business administration, architecture, and the behavioral and engineering sciences."

In the UK and other European countries facilities management has a wider definition than simply the management of buildings and services. The definition of FM provided by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and ratified by BSI British Standards is:

“Facilities management is the integration of processes within an organisation to maintain and develop the agreed services which support and improve the effectiveness of its primary activities”.

The British Institute of Facilities Management has formally adopted the CEN definition but also offers a slightly simpler description:

"Facilities management is the integration of multi-disciplinary activities within the built environment and the management of their impact upon people and the workplace".

In Australia, the term Commercial Services has replaced facilities management in some organisations. Commercial services can also define services other than just looking after facilities, such as security, parking, waste disposal, facility services and strategic planning.

A single or multiple buildings located on a single plot of land is referred to as a "Site". Multiple sites located in a single metropolitian area, but used by the same legal entity, are referred to as a "Campus." A Facility Management department may be responsible for a site; a campus; or, a regional area with multiple sites or campuses which may be a mix of owned and leased facilities. A Facility Management department will normally exist to manage the owner-occupied, physical assets of a company; whereas a Property Management department will normally exist to represent the only leased spaces. A Facility Management department is focused on cost effective, long-term utilization and value preservation of the owned assets while a Property Management department is typically focused on short-term lease returns.

Technology of building automation

Administrative vs. Technical Management

The support of administrative facility management through information technology is identified as Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM), Facilities Management Systems, or Computerized Maintenance Management Systems.

The collection of monitoring and supervising devices, control and regulation systems, management- and optimisation facilities/mechanisms in buildings within technical facility management are identified as Building Automation (BA). The goal is to accomplish functional processes in the overall industry independently (automatically), according to pre-adjusted values (parameters) or to simplify their operation and monitoring. All sensors, actuators, control elements, users and other technical devices in the building are interconnected in a network. Workflows/sequences can be summarized in scenarios. Characteristic feature is the decentralized structure of control units (DDC) as well as the integrated networking via a bus system (usually EIB/KNX or illumination (DALI))

Movement to technical management has been rapid in some industries while other industries still rely on the antiquated administrative approach. Industries with more linear structures and processes typically are more inclined to implement technical systems because ongoing management of these systems can be maintained by a top down organizational structure. Industries that are not as linear have tended to be slow adopters of technical management because of the belief that the system cannot be implemented or maintained effectively. Industries like commercial office and retail often tend to have the most challenges in implementing and maintaining technical systems because their organizations reflect a great deal of diversity with owners, brokers, managers, and tenants typically being from different organizations with disparate interest and priorities. Recent trends have shown a dramatic increase in the use of technical management largely due to research demonstrating the tremendous cost savings of converting to the technical approach. In addition, technical management providers who are capable of matching the organization's processes, constituencies, and provide comprehensive setup and maintenance support throughout the life of the system have delivered significant advantages and reduce the number of early project terminations and under utilized or "orphaned" systems [1].

Components of best in class systems may include:

• Certificate of Insurance [2]
• Incident Tracking
• Project Management
• Preventive Maintenance
• Automated & Mass Communications
• Visitor Access
• Security
• Fire & Life Safety
• Accounting

Orthography

In the United States both 'facility management' and 'facilities management' are widely used, while 'facilities management' is preferred in the UK, Canada, Australia and English-medium businesses in several European countries. In the US the 'facility management' departments of public or government origin are called '(State/County/City's Name) Department of Facilities Management', while if the 'facilities management' is part of private entity it might be called 'Facilities Management Department/Division of (ABC Corporation/Company/LLC/etc.)

See also

• CAFM
• Computerized Maintenance Management System
• 1:5:200
• Community Based Facilities Management
• Building automation

References

External links

• The Building Owners and Managers Association
• Facilities Management Association
• International Facility Management Association
• British Institute of Facilities Management
• Building Owners and Managers Institute International
• Hong Kong Institute of Facility Management

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