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Continuous improvement
Rick Best, Craig Langston and Gerard de Valence*
1.1 Introduction
C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, a casement. When the boy knows this out of the book, he goes and does it. Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby, ch. 8
The rather novel approach to education adopted by Mr Wackford Squeers embodies an equally novel approach to the management of the facility known as Dotheboys Hall. It also illustrates the two sides of facility management that are discussed and compared in the rest of this book, the operational (the practical business of keeping the windows clean), and the strategic and/or tactical (the integration of the occupants, their work environment and the business functions of the organization). In fact, the system employed by Mr Squeers fits quite snugly into the definition of facility management adopted by the Facility Management Association of Australia (FMAA, 2002):
Facility management is the practice of integrating the management of people and the business process of an organization with the physical infrastructure to enhance corporate performance.
Corporate performance was undoubtedly enhanced from Squeers’ viewpoint and the physical infrastructure integrated with the business process; however, the students (i.e. the ‘customers’), who were expecting an education, were naturally less than pleased with the system.
In Dickens’ time the coining of the term ‘facility management’ (FM) was still more than a century away but at least some of the functions of the facility manager were obviously carried out by people, whether they had a job title or not – windows were cleaned, equipment was serviced and repaired, roofs were re-thatched, supplies of candles and coal
were ordered and stored, and so on. These were tasks of an operational nature, related to keeping a facility (probably a building) running and in reasonable repair. The poor conditions in which many people worked, in premises that were badly lit, largely unventilated, and with inadequate or non-existent plumbing and sanitation, did little more to promote the efficiency, productivity, comfort or good health of the occupants than the harsh regime of Dotheboys Hall did for the education of its students.
Today, FM is emerging as a discipline in its own right, and it embraces much more than the operational concerns of plumbing and lighting, and even more than the provision and maintenance of a productive and comfortable work environment. Increasingly the focus of FM is on the strategic management of facilities, with facility managers devoting their attention to a very broad range of concerns including human resource management, real estate portfolio management and quality management, as well as the more traditional operational concerns that relate largely to building maintenance.
Throughout the following chapters many authors argue that if FM is be a true value-adding pursuit within a corporate framework then it must be primarily concerned with filling a strategic role, i.e. facility managers must be pro-active not reactive in their approach, and be able to forecast the needs of their organizations and make forward plans that will support the aims of the organization in the future. Clearly this is about more than window cleaning and plant maintenance schedules.
A number of common themes and catchphrases emerge: alignment with corporate goals, strategic planning, sustainability, change management, space management, value-adding, churn management and so on – all these arise in the discussions provided by various authors as well as the more prosaic concerns of building maintenance, office design and financial management. Two main themes, however, become clear: there is considerable debate about what FM is, although most at least seem happy to agree that it is very broad in its coverage, and, if FM is to contribute as fully as it can to any organization and have its value recognized, then it must do more than keep the air-conditioning running and the carpets clean. These themes are explored in various ways by the contributors and the breadth of the topics that they cover gives some idea of the complex nature of FM.
1.2 Competencies and areas of expertise
Facility managers come from a range of backgrounds and given the diversity of concerns that the discipline covers some specializations are inevitable – it is unlikely that many people will have qualifications and experience in services engineering, human resources management and corporate real estate, yet these are only a few of the areas that are routinely brought together under the collective banner of FM.
An examination of the competencies required of those who wish to be certified by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA, 2002) reveals the breadth of knowledge and experience that a successful applicant must have if they are to become IFMA certified facility managers. There are eight broad competencies areas (e.g. Operations and Maintenance, Real Estate, and Human and Environmental Factors), 22 competencies (e.g. Oversee acquisition, installation, operation, maintenance and disposi-tion of grounds and exterior elements, Manage real estate assets, and Develop and manage emergency preparedness procedures) and 127 ‘performances’ or work tasks relating to the
competencies in detail. The scope is very broad and ranges from the very practical concerns of building repairs to the more abstract concerns of strategic facility planning such as evaluating the effects of economic change on real estate assets.
The FMAA has adopted a different approach to accreditation, having set up three levels of certification that reflect the varying emphasis on the operational versus the influential. The three levels (Parts 1, 2 and 3) are defined as follows:
Part 1 – practicing FM (operational concerns outweigh strategic concerns)
Part 2 – managing the practice of FM (operational and strategic roughly equal)
Part 3 – leading the practice of FM (strategic outweighs operational)
The FMAA competencies are grouped somewhat differently to those of the IFMA but naturally cover much of the same ground. The broad categories are:
use organizational understanding to manage facilities
develop strategic facility response
manage risk
manage facility portfolio
improve facility performance
manage the delivery of services
manage projects
manage financial performance
arrange and implement procurement/sourcing
facilitate communication
manage workplace relationships
manage change.
The range of skills and knowledge required of facility managers, if they are to successfully carry out all of these functions, is quite alarming as it includes everything from computer networking and mechanical engineering to human resources management theory, occupational health and safety legislation, contract negotiation, future financial planning (e.g. budgeting, life costing, discounting), subcontract administration, construction management – the list is endless. The perfect facility manager may be someone who is a services engineer with majors in project management and law, with great charisma and interpersonal skills, coupled with certificates in accountancy, real estate and an MBA, not to mention a keen interest in the protection of the environment.
1.3 Key concerns
At the heart of modern FM is the concept of continuous improvement. Any organization should be striving to improve its operations, whether from the point of customer satisfaction, increased productivity, better quality of output, better environmental performance or any of a host of other performance indicators. The facility manager’s role embraces all of the concerns to some degree as the physical facility (building, workplace, office, complex, space – ‘facility’ covers many alternatives) must accommodate and support the organization’s activities in ways that allow the organization to service its customers in the best possible way. That concept of customer service (together with customer satisfaction) can be seen as the key driver of FM, given that the ‘customer’ may
be an external entity (i.e. the classic customer who buys goods or services from an organization) or equally the employees who occupy the organization’s space, or the organization itself. It is every bit as important that the facility serve the occupants as it is that it serve the customer or client who does business with the organization.
Within this framework the facility manager must seek to add value to the company’s operation through a combination of strategic and operational activities covering all parts of the organization’s business. These activities, apart from being divided into strategic and operational, may be grouped according to whether they are concerned with the physical aspects of the facility (e.g. maintenance planning, energy auditing, upgrades, refurbish-ment, retrofits), human concerns (e.g. recruitrefurbish-ment, productivity, communications, change management, dispute resolution), business-related activity (e.g. corporate real estate management), operations management (e.g. outsourcing, security), etc. Naturally there is a good deal of overlap between the various branches of FM, and also some blurring of the boundaries between the functions of FM and those of other departments or units within organizations, such as finance, human resources and IT.
1.3.1 Sustainability
It is now trite to say that concern for the natural environment has become of increasing importance in recent years – it is obvious that environmental awareness has become a vital concern for people in all walks of life in most parts of the world. This concern is changing the way that we do many things and FM is no exception. As we move slowly but inexorably towards to the goal of sustainability a combination of legislation, public pressure and corporate expediency is making it imperative for facility managers to look for more environmentally friendly materials, technologies and procedures to use in their work. Environmental assessment of buildings and their performance, and measurement of greenhouse emissions and energy usage are becoming more common and legislation in various parts of the world will doubtless make these procedures mandatory in most places in the near future.
1.3.2 Information and communications technology (ICT)
It is equally trite to point out that microchip and computer technology has changed forever the way that many things are done in the developed world. Apart from reducing the drudgery of many repetitive tasks it has enabled the globalization of business and given unprecedented access to knowledge and people for anyone with the wherewithal to purchase a personal computer and an Internet connection. The application of ICT to FM has given facility managers the tools to monitor, record and respond to events in areas under their control more quickly, and even to install systems that can monitor and respond remotely and automatically. It also provides a range of software tools that give the facility manager the power to collect, store and manage a great deal of useful data about their facilities, and to use that data to do a myriad of things such as tracking the location and condition of tangible assets (e.g. furniture or computer hardware), recording the maintenance history of plant and equipment or even spaces in buildings or whole
buildings, keeping employee records, recording and analysing energy usages – hardly any part of the FM function does have a computer or at least an embedded microchip involved at some point.
1.3.3 Outsourcing
Outsourcing refers to any situation where an organization contracts with another organization for the provision of a service that could equally be provided by a person, unit or department within the organization that requires the service. Typical examples are the provision of security services (including surveillance systems and access control as well as the more obvious provision of security personnel onsite) and catering and laundry services in hospitals, where it is no longer common for the hospital to have laundry and kitchen facilities on site, and instead these services are taken care of by external organizations.
A large part of the functions of many facility managers is the management of outsourced services – monitoring the level of service, selecting providers, negotiating, managing and reviewing service contracts, etc. Not all outsourcing has proved to be as successful as the promoters of the concept have claimed; while it is established and seems to work well in some areas, such as those mentioned above, in some other areas the same cannot be said. Provision of ICT functions by external providers is one example of a less than successful outcome of outsourcing and there are several reasons for this lack of success:
Slow response to problems – it is recognized that one measure of success in FM is how quickly problems are addressed and resolved, e.g. rectification of air conditioning problems – when there is a problem with a computer system, users expect a rapid and effective response, and this often cannot be provided by an external provider as well as it can by a dedicated IT manager within the organization; logging a call with an outside company is not the same as calling someone you know in your organization and asking for assistance.
Lack of understanding of the organization’s business – IT professionals are experts in IT, not in the business activities of the organization who hires them, and this can lead to frustration for both parties as one knows what they need from the point of view of their business operation but does not have the expertise to implement it, while the other has the expertise but not the experience to apply it to the specific situation that arises in a particular business setting.
1.3.4 The building/occupant relationship
In the period 1927–1932, Elton Mayo, a professor at the Harvard Business School, conducted a long series of experiments at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works in Chicago, aimed at determining whether changes in the workplace promoted improved worker productivity (Accel-Team, 2001). These experiments followed an earlier study on the effect of lighting levels on productivity, which suggested that there was no detectable correlation between the two. The conclusion drawn by Mayo suggested that productivity
improved as a result of social interaction within teams of workers and the positive reaction of workers when someone takes an interest in them. One long-term result of the study was that the idea that there was any connection between the physical characteristics of the workplace and the productivity of the people working there was discounted – productivity would be improved, the theory went, by organizing teams differently and promoting the emotional well-being of the workers through recognition, security and a sense of belonging.
This idea prevailed almost to the end of the 20th century, but more recent research has shown that there is a clear connection between the physical workplace and productivity (Romm and Browning, 1994, 1995). This presents the facility manager with a great opportunity to add value to the organization – the provision and maintenance of a work environment that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism and allows the free flow of ideas, information and motivation must be a key goal for any facility manager, and every organization should not only demand that of its facility managers but support them in their pursuit of that goal.
1.3.5 Managing the intangibles
Contributing to office design, looking after building maintenance, auditing energy usage, and many other FM functions are basically practical concerns, but there are a number of less tangible concerns that also fall within the purview of the facility manager. These include risk management (including planning for unseen disasters, something that has been highlighted worldwide by the events at the World Trade Centre in 2001), conflict management and quality management.
Systematic risk management is becoming commonplace in many areas of business, mostly as a kind of forward planning with contingency plans already formulated and the consequences of the occurrence of identified risks considered and costed as a safeguard against potentially catastrophic consequences, should some possible events actually occur. Examples include mirroring computer networks at other locations so that in the event of a disaster at the prime location business can restart with minimum delay using the remote backup network. The Stock Exchange in Sydney is a good example – the whole operation is mirrored at another site in Sydney, well away from the main operation, and should something occur that destroys or cripples the main site the Stock Exchange can re-open within 24 hours and carry on trading as normal.
Conflict management is a key issue for FM, as the potential for conflict at many levels and with many degrees of seriousness is ever-present in any organization. Disputes range from the tiniest concerns, such as who left a mess of dirty cups in the tearoom, to large-scale disputes between organizations that involve years of expensive litigation. Many of these disputes will land in the facility manager’s lap and will require some action before they are resolved. Often they will connect with other areas of FM, such as office planning where territorial disputes arise or work practices will change as a result of planning modifications.
The commonly held view of quality management is that it is about the quality of a physical product, i.e. the number of defective widgets per thousand, and how can that number be reduced. Quality management in FM is related to a physical product, inasmuch
as the facility may be viewed as a product, but generally it focuses more on customer satisfaction and, as suggested earlier, the customer may be one person, many people or a whole organization.
1.4 Conclusion
The underlying premise is that space, ultimately, is not about real estate. It is about using all of the organization’s scarce resources to their fullest potential to meet pressing business challenges. (Becker, 2000)
Those scarce resources include finances, physical assets (from whole buildings down to pieces of furniture), information and, above all, people and their skills and knowledge. The facilities, which include buildings, computer networks, virtual workspaces and databases, provide the framework within which the organization operates, and optimiza-tion of this framework through a process of continuous improvement is the aim. User-friendly working environments, both real and virtual, must support the individual and the organization in their pursuit of improved performance in all segments of the triple bottom line, or now even the quadruple bottom line, as environmental performance assumes greater and greater importance and legitimacy.
Organizational change, whether described as re-engineering, downsizing, restructuring, re-positioning, integrating, harmonizing or whatever, can have profound effects on the business operation and the people involved in it. Managing these changes will inevitably involve FM whether the facility managers are leading the change, are part of the change management team or are simply in damage control as the decisions of others impact on the people and the business operations that they are engaged in. Flexibility is a key in a changing world, and that means not only organizational flexibility and some sort of flexibility in the physical workplace, but also flexibility in the attitudes of the people, from senior management to the operatives at the coalface, the frontline troops.
Clearly FM is a dynamic and growing area. Whether it has been clearly established as a discipline in its own right is, perhaps, still a subject for debate, as is the question of the operational versus the strategic and whether they are two parts of the same discipline or whether they should be seen as separate albeit related pursuits. What is undeniable is that the concerns discussed throughout this book are all vital parts of an overall picture of running a successful organization, particularly one faced with the increased pressures of globalization, the digital economy, an increasingly litigious environment and the demands by governments and society at large for better environmental performance. There is little doubt that the increased emphasis on FM in recent years will not abate and more likely the facility manager will aspire to, and fulfil, a much more dominant role in the running and planning of the operations of organizations and businesses throughout the world.
References and bibliography
Accel-Team (2001) Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Experiments. Employee Motivation Theory and
Practice. www.accel-team.com/motivation/hawthorne_02.html
Becker, F. (2000) Offices That Work: Balancing Cost, Flexibility, and Communication. Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program (New York: IWSP).
FMAA (2002) Facility Management Association of Australia. www.fma.com.au/main.htm IFMA (2002) Certification. International Facilities Management Association. www.ifma.org/
certification/index.cfm?actionbig=8
Romm J.J. and Browning W.D. (1994) Greening the Building and the Bottom Line [increasing
productivity through energy efficient design] (Snowmass, CO: Rocky Mountain Institute).
www.rmi.org
Romm J.J. and Browning W.D. (1995) Energy efficient design can lead to productivity gains that far exceed energy savings. The Construction Specifier, June, 44–51.
