DIFFERENT BUSINESSES AND THEIR DIFFERENT FACILITY MANAGEMENT NEEDS
Facility management encompasses all activities related to keeping a complex operating. Facilities include grocery stores, auto shops, sports complexes, jails, office buildings, hospitals, hotels, retail establishments, and other revenue generating or government institutions. Responsibilities associated with facility management typically include a wide range of functional and support services, including janitorial services, security, property or building management, engineering services; space planning and accounting; mail and messenger services; records management; computing; telecommunications and information systems; safety; and other support duties. It is the job of the facility manager to create an environment that encourages productivity, is safe, is pleasing to clients and customers, meets government mandates, and is efficient.
The term “facility” is used to refer to a broad spectrum of buildings, complexes, and other physical entities. The only thread common among these entities is the fact that they are all places. A facility may be a space or an office or a suite of offices; a floor or group of floors within a building; a single building or a group of buildings or structures. These structures may be in an urban setting or freestanding in a suburban or rural setting. The structures or buildings may be a part of a complex or office park or campus.
The key is to define the facility as a physical place where business activities are done, and to make facility management plans in accordance with the needs and demands of those business activities. After all, the facility needs of a movie theatre, a museum, a delicatessen, a plastic manufacturer, and a bank are apt to be considerably different, even though there will be a certain basic needs that all will share (furniture, office space, air conditioning systems, light fixtures, etc.). Good facility management encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, including the following:
- Monitoring organization efficiency since personnel, machines, supplies, work in progress, finished products, and deliveries must all be coordinated if your plant is to be successful. Production efforts must be judged by time, cost, quantity, and quality.
- Ensuring that the business receives the most it can for its facility-related expenditures (this is often done through standardization of company-wide needs so that high-volume purchases of necessary products can be made).
- Real estate procurement, leasing, and disposal (for facility construction, renovation, and relocation).
- Ensuring that the divergent processes, procedures, and standards present in a business complement rather than interfere with one another.
- Monitoring all aspects of facility maintenance and upkeep so that the business can operate at highest capacity.
- Tracking and responding to environmental, health, safety, and security issues.
- Ensuring facility compliance with relevant codes and regulations.
- Anticipating future facility needs in areas as diverse as fluorescent light procurement, new space for expanded assembly lines, automation, and wiring for new computer networks.
- Educating workforce about all manner of standards and procedures, from ordering office supplies to acting in the event of a disaster.
Contract Facility Management
Increasing number of business owners are choosing to contract out their facility tasks to specialized facility management companies that operate the complex for the owner on a contract basis. This arrangement has become more common in part because of the increasing scope and complexity of facility management. Companies that hire contract managers prefer to focus on other goals, such as producing a product or providing a service. Many of those firms find that outsourcing facility management duties to a specialist reduces costs and improves operations.
Contract facility managers may be hired to manage an entire complex or just one part of a large operation. For example, some companies hire facility managers that specialize in operating mailrooms or providing janitorial services. In any case, the company expects to benefit from the expertise of the manager it hires. A contractor that manages data processing systems, for example, may bring technical knowledge that its employer would have great difficulty cultivating in-house. Likewise, a recreation facility owner that employs a facility manager specializing in the operation of sports complexes may benefit from the contractor’s mix of knowledge related to grounds-keeping, accounting and reporting, and sports marketing, among other functions.
Besides expertise and efficiency, several other benefits are provided by contract facility managers. For example, they reduce the owner’s or occupant’s liability related to personnel. By contracting a firm to manage one of its factories, an organization can substantially reduce its involvement in staffing, training, workers’ compensation expenses and litigation, employee benefits, and worker grievances. It also eliminates general and payroll responsibilities – rather than tracking hours and writing cheques for an entire staff, it simply pays the facility management company. In addition, a company that hires a facility management firm can quickly reduce or increase its staff as it choose without worrying about hiring or severance legalities.
Whether a small business chooses to outsource or maintain internal control of its facility management processes, however, the ultimate goals are the same. Both the in-house facility department and outsourced services must recognize that the facility management business is changing. While, traditionally, interior planning has been driven by preconceived notions of what is appropriate, business today increasingly is not being conducted in a traditional manner or in traditional locations. Changing roles combined with changing technology, drives the environment of the future.
Whether working within a corporation or as an outsourced service provider, imaginative facility managers can find myriad ways to improve service to the company or the client while creating an interesting, challenging position for themselves.
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