Whats is facilities management and where is it going

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 organization'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 organization 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 organizations. 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 organizational need.

Facilities Management is fundamental to all organizations. Without the buildings, the equipment, the services and the environment being delivered to best practice standards, the organization 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 organization'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 organization.

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 organization in a way that enables them to maximize their effectiveness.

Which services the Facilities Manager delivers will depend on the needs of the organization. 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 organization.

Structured, planned, organised and managed well, FM adds value to all goods and services supplied by maximizing resource utilization, controlling costs and providing services to standards required by its customers.

Over the last year or so we have seen the Facilities Management market place in the UK become more service provider led due to cost saving and mitigation of risk by the organizations that own or lease buildings.

We believe that the facilities management industry is the only industry sector that has shown growth throughout the economic crisis, which we live.

 Also noted that the Investment banks and corporations are investing again in their infrastructure, the data centre market remains buoyant as well but with the new technology being introduced on a daily basis the traditional maintenance of plant will become less labor intensive.  Will we go more into this in our next article?  Remember www.fmjobsearch.com the place for facilities management news and jobs.