Facility Management: risks & opportunities
| Type | Book, Whole |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Nutt,B. , McLennan,P. |
| Publication year | 2000 |
| Notes | ID: NUTT2000A; This volume presents the edited proceedings of the 1999 conference on Facilities Futures organised by the editors. Such is their contribution to FM development that F$acility Managemen$t (a reversion to the American usage) $Risks and Opportunities $is bound to attract attention. Nutt's four futures, around which the book is organised and McLennan's concept of the speed of feedback between a facility and business results are important developments: indeed the latter provided the framework for the first Occupier,org review. With expectations thus raised it is a disappointment to find very little in the volume that is new. Most of the contributors have stated their positions in recent published work. What is perhaps valuable is to find each synthesised in a single volume. That alone will earn it a place on many library shelves. What else does it tell us about the four futures and what does it contain that is new. The 'Business Trail' receives 6 papers. Oliver Jones restates outsourcing of property provision to specialised 'infrastructure providers' as a vision of the future. Some evidence (e.g. Deng and Gyourko, 1999) would support the case, but those providers have yet to demonstrate, in public, an ability to add genuine client value rather than reduce risk and cost. Is freeing up capital for higher return core business investment really the only reason for FM. If so where will knowledge of the workplace reside? Bennet repeats that organisations should develop a support services strategy, without evidencing the benefit. Stack and Fox argue for integrating all of an organisation's asset management. Without detracting from their argument it is again a rebadging of the 'property/facilities should be strategic' argument sans evidence. Hinks summarises predominantly operational service measures and envisages a growing divide between an FM industry and what he terms small 'f', large 'M' facilities Management as an in house, strategically orientated function. Maybe, but the basic theoretical construct for that function is still missing. Do the other trails provide it? The people trail has five papers, four concerned with workplaces, and one, by Dobson on the journey to work. Of the four only Grimshaw and Garnett who raise the issue of the democratic workspace versus the control culture bring a perspective which is slightly different and adds, at least terms of the theoretical argument, to the position that 'new' workplaces and their success or failure are a cultural issue. Using workplace to drive culture in a dynamic manner is not addressed (c.f. Ward and Holtham, 2000). The property trail' then appears, six papers embracing matters also considered in either of the first two trails. Gibson talks about the need for more dynamic property portfolios. She has subsequently published the first results to suggest that some corporate occupiers would consider paying a premium for flexibility (Crosby, et. al., 2001). Brown restates old debates about FM and design, Oseland and Willis discuss operational measures of building and workplace performance, Bon restates the view that real estate management is the corporate issue while FM is operational and Kincaid summarise, as he has done elsewhere, the environment and sustainability issues. In the middle of the section Arge presents new evidence surveying 7 workplace design initiatives by large Norwegian corporates (see separate entry for Arge, 2000). The knowledge trail has another five papers, Building Intelligence (Bradley and Wooding), Generic risk databases (Holt), Measurement Systems (Broyd and Rennison), Change Management through design (Harrison and Landorf) and Intellectual Capital (McLennan). Four would sit comfortably in any of the other three sections. McLennan, correctly for this reviewer, argues that FM (or its workplace derivative) needs to understand how it contributes to knowledge value added or intellectual capital. Becker said the same thing 10 years ago but perhaps as the financial and strategic world begins to appreciate that knowledge is key the time is now ripe, however if workplaces are where knowledge is created then this is part of the people trail, or perhaps more on workplaces and less on IT systems is where FM needs to take the knowledge trail. As Harrison and Landorf put it, (presenting some new case work into two new workplaces: $Office accommodation is a significant investment for any organisation and it deserves to be undertaken in the knowledge that better performance will in fact result from better design. $Unfortunately this volume still fails to develop the principles that will underpin the making of that link. |
| Volume | 1 |
| Start page | 1 |
| End page | 278 |
| Availability | standard |
| Relevance to practice | Moderate (mainly a synthesis for masters students) |
| Ease of application | Not Applicable |
| Stage of application | All |
| Evidence base | Low |
| Readability | High |
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