Look back to leap ahead

So how was the past 10 years for you, the period when facilities management was taking shape?

It was during the recession of the early 1990s when clients began to outsource seriously, so kick starting the rapid growth of outsourced facilities management services.

A few markers stand out: the march towards more consultancy-based services, the growth of flexible working arrangements, and compulsory competitive tendering, which gave facilities management an unexpected boost but needed tiers of managers to satisfy the public sector’s obsession with accountability.

Then in-coming professionals re-branded facilities management an ‘intellectual’ occupation, introducing an enduring conflict between the more and the less educated among us.

Do you recall how Frank Duffy of architect DEGW used to talk about boosting productivity through better use of space? How open plan won the battle against cellular space and architects spoke of designing buildings ‘from the inside out’. This was the time of clever thinking, long words and smart talk. Facilities management was to stretch from ‘boiler room to boardroom’, and to work ‘smarter rather than harder’.

Later, facilities management became the darling of the City. Partly because of its stability, with clients renewing contracts on ‘better-the-devil-you-know’ basis; partly because of its long contracts, but mostly because of its sustained growth. More recently, investment bank-backed firms emerged on the scene – Citex formed by DLJ; Trillium by Goldman Sachs; and in 1998 my own company, Servus FM, backed by Nomura.

Of course, we had failures. Many of us didn’t grasp that clients rated our innovations low, instead craving stability and continuity. Conversely, where rapid change was needed we were slow – slow to exploit the private finance initiative, to develop life cycle costing, to exploit IT. And we failed to help clients evolve in the change-obsessed 1990s. Our performance consistently improved, but we promised more than we could deliver: a property forum rated us on a par with lawyers and estate agents.

Our main challenge now is to improve continuously, but cost less. Clients will not pay more, so higher fees must come from savings. PFI will get a further boost as maturing schemes show good profits. As for education and training, FM needs people with good core competences who become generalists. Operatives and managers must work interchangeably.

Facilities managers must collect and analyse information, as well as use IT more: e-commerce will bring enormous opportunities. Clients will continue to increase their outsourcing with provision of property seen as just another service. We must develop the client’s understanding of what service culture means; master-servant attitudes don’t make for good working relations.

We need not muscle-power but intelligence, remembering the Taoist definition of added value: ‘less is more’. Facilities management is getting better all the time, but we’ve still got a way to go over the next 10 years or so.