What is Facilities Management FM
As mentioned previously facilities management was recognised as a profession in the UK in 1985 but it had already been identified in the USA in the 1970’s.
Facilities Management can be defined as:
The provision of a total work environment (including buildings), office equipment and services of the highest acceptable standards at value for money prices, that will enable an organisation to optimise its core skills base and through that, the profitable production of its core product.
This definition is broad because so many different disciplines are involved and it is the co-ordination and management of these services and their suppliers that gives us the need for facilities management. A good Facilities Manager will bring together the specialists, build relationships with them and act as a focal point for both client and end user, it is essential they are good business managers as their in-depth understanding of their organisation's business is fundamentally important.
Facilities Management (FM) is an age-old practice which for many years has been undervalued simply because its importance to the organisation has not been understood.
It is a complex and confusing business understood by too few people who have an influence on it and the way in which it is deployed within organisations. The fundamentals of this discipline are constantly being rethought with new ideas and theoretical approaches in order to build its image and to ensure that it is planned, organised and implemented to match the organisational need.
Facilities Management is fundamental to all organisations. Without the buildings, the equipment, the services and the environment being delivered to best practice standards, the organisation itself could not produce the core product, as it would like.
The provision of the buildings, the environment within which people work and the equipment they use constitutes a large portion if not the majority of the organisation's capital assets. The services provided to enable the core staff to operate, probably constitute the second largest revenue cost. It stands to reason that the protection and maintenance of the physical assets and the controlling of service costs become essential to the good management of the organisation.
The Facilities Manager, being responsible for this field of activity, therefore has a crucial role to play within both the strategic long term planning and the day to day operation of the establishment. In simple language, this means that the Facilities Manager should be responsible for delivering a variety of support services to the staff of the organisation in a way that enables them to maximise their effectiveness.
Which services the Facilities Manager delivers will depend on the needs of the organisation. The manner in which they are delivered will depend upon the knowledge and skills of the Facilities Manager, the value placed upon FM by senior management and the culture of the organisation.
Structured, planned, organised and managed well, FM adds value to all goods and services supplied by maximising resource utilisation, controlling costs and providing services to standards required by its customers.