Facility Management

Facility Management

Facility (or Facilities) management (FM) is an interdisciplinary field devoted to the coordination of space, infrastructure, people and organization, often associated with business services functions such as offices, arenas, schools, convention centers, shopping complexes, hospitals, hotels, etc. However, FM facilitates the business on a much wider range of activities than just business services and these are referred to as non core functions. Many of these are outlined below but they do vary from one business sector to another.

Across the globe there are two types of accepted definitions of FM. First the ones used in official national (BSI, UNI, DIN, etc.), continental (such as EN for Europe) and global (ISO) standards and norms. Secondly there are commercial standards and norms defining FM such as the ones from RICS, IFMA, etc.

According to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), facility management is "a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, processes and technology."

The European facility management association, EuroFM, uses the EN15221 definition. The definition of facility management, EN15221-1, provided by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and ratified by 31 European countries is "(the) integration of processes within an organisation to maintain and develop the agreed services which support and improve the effectiveness of its primary activities." According to this European standard the scope of FM is 'Space & Infrastructure' (planning, design, workplace, construction, lease, occupancy, maintenance, furniture, cleaning, etc.) and 'People & Organisation'(catering, ICT, HRM, HS&S, accounting, marketing, hospitality, etc.).

Currently a project is underway to develop an ISO standard that defines FM on a global level. This project is being led by the British Standards Institute represented by Stan Mitchell, former chairman of BIFM and Global FM.

Over the years, FM has been growing as a business field and also as a scientific discipline, slowly finding and anchoring its position among organisations’ business processes. Nowadays, the dedication of FM organisations to new developments and continuous innovation processes seems to be the way to stay in business, constantly exceeding customers’expectations and adding value to the core business of the client organisation (Mudrak, T., Wagenberg, A.V. and Wubben, E. (2004), “Assessing the innovative ability of FM teams: a review”, Facilities, Vol. 22 Nos 11/12, pp. 290–5).

It has now entered mainstream education with new courses being introduced for it across the globe called Facilities and service planning.