Despite rhetoric of added value, facilities management suffers a dearth of objectively researched, publicly available information concerning the impact of facilities on businesses at the level of market sectors or individual organisations. This paper aims to correct that situation for UK higher education institutions. A survey of undergraduates starting university in 2001 has confirmed, to high levels of significance, earlier research with the 2000 intake. For many institutions, facilities factors, where provided to a high standard, are perceived as having an important influence on students' choice of institution. Yearon-year comparisons show strong agreement at the global level and, where data could be gathered, at the institutional level. Individual institutions show marked differences, significant at levels of confidence of over 95 per cent. A comparison of``reputational pull'' and``facilities pull'' is suggested as a means of differentiating the``brand'' of different institutions.

The research discussed in this paper is part of an ongoing doctoral study funded by Sheffield Hallam University. The authors would like to thank Joe Cassidy at the Department for Education and Skills for assistance in conducting the research.

Despite well-publicised successes and failures, the evidence base for the impact of a workplace on an organisation's business performance remains small and confused. Theoretical perspectives are, with few exceptions, limited to matching physical environment to task. The 'edge of chaos' at a critical density of connectivity (Kauffman's K) between the agents in a network may explain how workplaces enable, or retard innovation. Formal rectilinear open plan offices are conceived as freezing occupants in a state of connectivity as low as traditional cellular designs. Offices without minimal acoustic or visual privacy (high K) may create chaotic stress and reversion as individuals seek to recreate safety. In between are offices known to have enhanced informal conversation between their occupants and resultant innovation. Do these represent edge of chaos conditions? The hypothesis can be justified by reference to examples. A first test of the hypothesis is reported identifying an interaction / disruption factor valid to varying degrees for all categories of work

Facility/facilities management's (FM) continuing struggle with its search for a strategic identity is attested by publications of many leading authorities in the field. Some advocates of the alignment of strategic management with the real estate of facilities resource argue for new terms, for example infrastructure management or real estate asset management. This paper argues a different approach. FM is considered as a replicating memetic discourse; one that has traded the original strategic vision of the discipline's founders for wider spread. To close the gap between strategic business alignment and operational management FM must learn to consider its performance with language and measures relevant to a particular business sector. While one can argue that core businesses should change the language in which they speak of FM, the blunt assertion is that most of the effort must be the other way. The alternative is that some other discourse will capture the strategic niche.