Since the middle of the last century, the supervision of facilities has become a complex set of skills and knowledge. If before it was sufficient to establish ties between security and mail delivery, nowadays, the number of factors requiring expert attention is noticeably increased. Such metamorphoses are associated with the enlargement of institutions themselves, which rely not only on social capital but on electronic control systems. Add to this the change in the outlook and orientation to cross-functionality, so, you will get a new vision of a familiar phenomenon.
Facility Management: The Scope
In general, numerous notions and procedures fall under the firm’s administration. But in 2009, under the patronage of IFMA, the next items were formulated, related to this competence:
- Ensuring business stability
- Environmental safety activities
- Financial Policy
- Human resource
- Leadership style
- Establish current processes and service techniques
- Project component
- Quality of goods
- Availability of real estate
- Close communication
Based on the presented statements, a ruler should proportionally allocate the space provided for its filling with the object. In addition, it requires compliance with all government regulations protecting the rights of wage-earners with disabilities, gender equality and regulating work with hazardous substances.
An excellent leader focuses on obtaining the maximum result, based on available resources. It is he or she who ensures that contradictory processes complement each other, rather than create additional obstacles. A topper predicts future purchases to expand scales by renting the place required or lighting.
Facility management also includes an evacuation plan in order to save necessary papers. To this end, a number of software programs have been developed that track potential gaps with assets and other BOMA standards. Of course, when everything works perfectly, no one notices the amount of work done.
Facility Management: The Goals
Before embarking on duties, the front-runner gets acquainted with the aims of an institution. As the latter, experts call:
- Implementation of safety norms
- Monitoring of production efficiency
- Compliance with construction demands
- Minimizing costs
- Increase the speed of response to the consumers’ needs
- Creating a favorable atmosphere for customers
The chief’s functions consist in constantly expanding, covering ever wider areas. They include the formation of a motivated team and remote analysis of the results obtained, especially when it comes to branches of a large corporation.
Methods of Facility Management
The most obvious way of making any project more manageable is to break its execution into successive stages. It is on this 5-line linear structure that the traditional administration is based. A big plus of such model is that it requires the customer and the company's director to define the specifics already at the first stage of the preparation. Potentially, a classic variant avoids stresses due to the availability of spare time. Its significant weakness is an intolerance to change.
But if in your proposal funds and time are not key constraints, it is worthwhile resorting to other project management standards. For instance, according to the Agile approach, the main idea is broken not into successive phases, but into small subprojects, which are then “assembled” into the finished product. I.e. development, testing, and other procedures are carried out for each mini-task separately. This allows you to transfer results faster and edit it without much expense.
The weakness of Agile is that each group has to design its own control structure independently. A more successful option is the concept of Sigma 6, focusing on eliminating problems. For doing this, a process of 5 steps known was proposed:
- Define: It determines the content of a facility by collecting information about its background, sets objectives.
- Measure: Name which indicators will identify the success of the task and what data should be collected and analyzed.
- Explore: The facility manager decides how a team could achieve its goals and fulfill all requirements on time and within budget.
- Develop: At this stage, plans and decisions adopted at previous phases are implemented.
- Control: It requires a careful documentation, analysis of data and application of the acquired knowledge in the company as a whole.
The concept of Sigma 6 provides a clear framework for implementing ideas. It is suitable for hard objectives, concluding new operations. The problem is that customer satisfaction frequently breaks out to the forefront. Given some differences in purposes at different stages, teams have confusion in priorities.
According to PRINCE2, components of facility management are expressed in 7 principles, 7 processes, and 7 themes. In the beginning, you have to identify three main features: 1) the business aspect; 2) the consumer one; 3) resource one. Each member has a clear role in the mentioned processes:
- Starting up. The facility manager is assigned and general requirements for product characteristics are defined.
- Initiation. Needed documentation is prepared, as a detailed scheme.
- Directing. This process provides an opportunity to share responsibilities for the success without going into details.
- Controlling. When the objective is implemented, certain changes will be made. It is the accountability of header to monitor the deviations from the planned parameters according to terms, content, budget, etc.
- Product Delivery is provided an interaction between the authorities and a team for creating defined commodities.
- A stage boundary. Project laborer prepares necessary information for evaluating the results of the previous stage and deciding on the transition to the next one.
- Closing a project. One of the differences between PRINCE2 is that completion does not stand out on a separate stage, but is performed within the final phase.
PRINCE2 could be adapted for ideas of any scale or subject area. The methodology offers specific recommendations for changing the life cycle of the device, the role model and set of mandatory documents in accordance with the client’s needs.
Thus, facility management integrates the rudiments of an administrative resource, an architectural vision and the accuracy of engineering. You are faced with a huge range of duties, including cosmetic repairs and the introduction of the latest information systems. The significant thing is that all this acted harmoniously and rhythmically, as one creature.