Raising facilities management’s profile in organisations: Developing a world‐class framework

Abstract

Leading organisations expect that all business processes, including facilities management (FM), achieve world‐class standards. This paper presents the results of an international, collaborative investigation, on behalf of a UK‐based blue chip company and a member of the Facilities Management Foundation, to identify organisations that are recognised as exemplars of world‐class FM (WCFM) and to understand the processes that underpin world‐class performance. Much FM practice remains cost focused, rooted in operations and concerned primarily with maintaining the steady‐state position of an organisation. In contrast, most authors propose that facilities should be strategically planned, aligned to business needs and demonstrate contribution to achieving explicit business objectives. They argue for a common language and for conditions that ensure that facilities add value to the business. Very little is known about how these conditions are created in different organisational contexts. The paper describes a heuristic study of three cases, selected as exemplars of WCFM, focusing on the underlying processes. Project partners in Australia, Norway and the UK conducted the case studies to a common brief. The paper presents the framework that was created to enable comparison of FM processes in the case studies and a matrix of business drivers and FM outputs that was adapted for the project. The investigation identifies three FM roles ‐ as translator, processor and demonstrator. Facilities management identifies business needs and translates strategy into workplaces, owns the processes of providing those workplaces and demonstrates their impact on organisational outcomes. The paper develops a WCFM framework to provide a management tool for considering and relating FM projects at different levels in an organisation. The study highlights the importance of reframing FM projects as business projects, and concludes that participation at senior management, business unit and individual levels in the organisation is an important factor in obtaining value. The study also highlights the need for effective change management processes continually to adapt the workplace to changing business needs, and shows how FM provides value through sustaining the organisation through business cycles.

Facilities management innovation in public-private collaborations

“…These stakeholders include the local government, all end users-e.g., civil servants, teachers and students who work and receive the public services in the targeted facilities-and the community as a whole. Kaya et al (2004) do not include the external provider in their figure, which is why we also leave it out of our adaptation-although we are aware that the external provider(s) often collaborates with the internal provider, i.e., the FM unit of the local government, to ensure that the latter can carry out its function as FM processor. In the analysis reported below, we examine the data in the light of this analytical framework with the aim of understanding how internal FM units navigate and manage the collaboration of different, intra-and inter-organisational actors when innovating throughout the course of public-private partnerships, such as ESCO collaborations.…”

“…On the contrary, FM units are seen as routine functionaries that should share responsibility to helping the organisation to reach its strategic goals (Kaya et al 2004). In addition, FM units often have problems demonstrating their results.…”

“…This implies that the FM unit also fulfils the processor role, i.e., that it implements and operates the projects that contribute to business needs, and the demonstrator role, i.e., that it demonstrates its contribution to the business strategy. Figure 1 proposes an adaptation of Kaya et al (2004) to the characteristics of the FM value chain in the public sector in an attempt to visualise the analytical framework that we use in this paper. The public sector must ensure public innovation that better responds to the needs of its citizens (Bommert 2010).…”

“…In addition, FM units often have problems demonstrating their results. To demonstrate their strategic value, FM units might increase their integration within their organisations (e.g., through increased collaboration with other in-house units); increasingly, FM units contribute to business outcomes (Kaya et al 2004). This goal can be achieved by playing the roles of translator, processor and demonstrator.…”

“…To investigate how public-private partnerships such as ESCO collaborations unfold and produce FM innovations, we developed an analytical framework based on (1) the complex relationship between supply and demand in FM services (Coenen et al 2013) and (2) the roles that internal FM units play within organisations (Kaya et al 2004). As stressed by recent FM literature (Coenen et al 2013;Jensen et al 2012), innovation is an important part of the activities carried out by FM internal and external providers to add value, which is why we apply Coenen et al (2013) and Kaya et al's (2004) frameworks, originally developed for FM activities in general, to FM innovation in the public sector. Because we recognise the importance of a facilitating party for public collaborative innovation (Ansell & Gash 2012;Bommert 2010;Sorensen & Torfing 2012), the analytical framework aims to outline how an internal FM unit navigates the innovation processes that are associated with ESCO collaborations and manages the collaboration of different, intra-and inter-organisational actors.…”