Facility Management

FACILITY MANAGEMENT IN THE FUTURE

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. The challenge for facility managers will be to integrate knowledge workers into a dynamic business environment of global competition, technological developments, security threats and changing values. Writing in IIE Solutions, Steven M. Price, in the IIE Solutions article entitled "Facilities Planning: A Perspective for the Information Age" 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 large businesses are choosing to outsource 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 these 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/management firm 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 grounds keeping, accounting and reporting, and sports marketing, among other functions.

Besides expertise and efficiency, several other benefits are provided by contract facility managers. One such benefit is the reduced liability to owner's or occupant's for 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 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."

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