Facilities Management involves managing your buildings and your people by utilising multiple disciplines, ensuring functionality, comfort and safety. The integration of people, processes and technology are key to this.
FM services are defined as ‘Soft’ and ‘Hard’.
Hard Services: building maintenance, electrical wiring, air conditioning, fire safety & CCTV.
Soft Services: catering & vending, managing reception, cleaning, waste management & security personnel.
There are a whole range of ways how FM can be delivered but they tend to fall into these categories:
Single Services
Bundled Services
Total Facilities Management (TFM)
Integrated Facilities Management (IFM)
Single Services
One or more services will be outsourced to a range of different contractors. This has the advantage of specialism. For example, the service provider will normally be a specialist in their field. In addition, you will be using contractors who are also specialists in their work and should be completely up to date with their working practices.
Bundled Services
A bundled service contract usually ‘bundles’ three or four similar services together to be provided by one contractor. This tends to be a cheaper option than single service contracts as the provider can use the same staff to undertake the various services.Although as a client you can’t guarantee the contractor isn’t sub-contracting out some of the services they are not familiar with, which might lose you some control.
Total Facilities Management (TFM)
This is where you are outsourcing all your facilities management requirements to one supplier. There are obvious benefits to this as there is only one contract and one point of contact for all services. In addition, TFM can often prove more cost effective.
Integrated Facilities Management (IFM)
Integrated Facilities Management is a method of consolidating all your business’s facility services and functions under one outsourced team of experts. This streamlines communication and decision making between business leaders and facility managers. TFM is very popular; however, it’s increasingly difficult for outsourcers to demonstrate the value clients expect from a supplier simply by acting as an administrator of individual FM services. As a result, the delivery of bundled services has been moving to the IFM model, underpinned by greater technology. This has been a slow transition but it is in answer to customers requiring a higher level of management service. IFM delivers an optimised structure with the cost benefits alongside the use of specialist subcontractors to ensure the best service for the client.
Staffing
The FM model means all your vital infrastructure issues are managed by an organisation expert in all these fields, so you receive better service and support, with fewer headaches. The FM company can also migrate staff between different sites in a proactive effort to smooth out specific issues.
An important aspect of outsourced FM is that the provider employs the staff performing all these duties, another time and cost-benefit for customers. Training and development is also handled by the FM provider, which will be more proficient as it can increase investment in training facilities and staff in the knowledge that costs can be spread across a number of customers. These benefits will be greater if a single FM provider is contracted for all services.
What about Facilities Managers?
Facilities Managers (FMs) often have varied job titles and arrive at their position through diverse career paths. They contribute to the bottom line via their responsibility for the most vital assets such as buildings, equipment and inventory. Ideally, they will need a broad base of experience in site or office management, and human resources experience is useful too. A successful facilities manager would have a blend of many of these core skills and traits:
Leadership and motivational skills
Desire to always deliver a first-class service
Thorough understanding of soft and hard service delivery
Excellent time-management skills
Outside-the-box thinking with the ability to multitask and prioritise
Excellent IT knowledge
Ability to communicate technical information to all levels of staff
Skills in relationship-building and communication
Procurement and negotiation management
The FM models discussed here can be very effective depending upon specific requirements, but all require the right key people to make them work.
Moorcroft have worked with some of the biggest companies in the FM sector. We don’t just want to work with you, we want to understand your culture, your ambition and what kind of people fit your company. How do we do this? Well, we talk to real people and build real relationships. Technology is vital to all our work. However, it is no substitute for picking up the phone. This is what we do and our skill lies in identifying the right people – we pride ourselves on it! We have a proven track record and we strive to work with the best people for each project.
If you have a recruitment requirement, please contact Simon Moorcroft in the first instance.
Email: simon@moorcroftconsulting.com
Website: www.moorcroftconsulting.com
Twitter: @MoorcroftRec
