NHS Estates recently placed a job advert for the role of ‘Associate Director (facilities)’. The salary was £60,000 a year and the key requirements were a recognised post-graduate qualification and five years experience.
Facilities management has come a long way from images of loo cleaning and air conditioning maintenance. Since the recession of the early 1990s, and especially since the Private Finance Initiative was launched, FM has not only been edging closer to the boardroom, but is also being seen as a genuine source of added value.
Martin Davies, the new director of training at the British Institute of Facilities Management sums it up rather well. He says: ‘I’ve seen people who’ve found their way in the facilities management from an administrative background and the next thing is that there dumped with responsibility for a property portfolio and are making huge strategic decisions.’ He adds: ‘This has serious core business bottom line effects.’
BIFM has recently reviewed its training and qualification structure after extensive research. Its emphasis has always, says Davies, been on practical courses to help people do their jobs and this will continue. BIFM has identified 20 core competencies to place at the heart of its professional qualification (see panel). But it has also introduced new elements to its range of short courses. For example there is now a one-day course available on Environmental Issues for Facilities Management. ‘It is increasingly recognised as important,’ says Davies. Eric Kemp, regional facilities manger at Computer Associates and David Lander, head of engineering at London City Airport agree on another topic of crucial importance: healthy and safety. Lander says: ‘It’s about knowing where you are and understanding changes in legislation.’ In the UK, says Kemp, health and safety is the most important issue.
But emerging topics are only part of the story. Jane Bell, who founded Catalyst Management Development with former BIFM general director John Crawshaw, says: ‘in the early years [of FM] there was a huge emphasis on technical skills, such as engineering or property. Over time people issues have emerged.’ She believes this stems both from the recognition that people are the main business asset and from changes to work patterns, with people more willing to change jobs. ‘From a training point of view, first and foremost people have to be good managers,’ she says.
Bell also identifies another emerging trend. Because companies are seeking to extract added value from assets they are recognising that a major proportion — perhaps 90% - of the costs of a facility come after the initial set up. This brings procurement skills to the fore. A slight shift in the balance of skills is needed, says Bell, with less emphasis on day-today issues and more about procurement planning.
Professor If Price, co-director of the facilities management graduate centre at Sheffield Hallam University agrees: ‘It’s about whole life value of delivery, rather than annual budgets,’ he says.
Just as the kind of skills required is constantly evolving, so also are the areas in which they are being deployed. Eric Kemp, at Computer Associates, identifies two key requirements. ‘There is more and more need to get a view on Europe as a whole,’ he says. When training on the property portfolio, it is important to see it in the pan-European context. This is not too surprising, given the global companies have been at the vanguard of developing modern facilities management. But a more surprising requirement stems from a very different school of management thinking: branding. Kemp says ‘Take receptionists. We’re making sure you get a standard experience. So we are training on how to deal with calls and people attending [computer] training courses.’ It is, he says, about give a consistent experience adding, ‘It’s quite a challenge when we have buildings ranging from 500 staff to just 20.’
‘You have to understand the core business, a sales organisation in our case’ says Kemp, ‘One negative visit can detract from the rest of the day.’ He concludes: ‘If we were an external company we’d be shot to pieces [if we didn’t give good consistent customer service]. There’s no reason why an in-house team should be any different.’
Keeping abreast of new developments in relevant areas and ensuring facilities staff deploy their skills in appropriate areas are undeniably important for facilities management training. Both, however, deal with horizontal functions.
Almost certainly the biggest challenge facing facilities managers is moving FM vertically — towards the boardroom. Lynda Hinxman, co-director of Sheffield Hallam FMGC, says it is about moving from the boiler room to the boardroom. ‘If we want to move the profession forward we have to make an impact at board level,’ she says. ‘To do that,’ she adds, ‘help people get competence to speak at that level in the language they understand.’ Professor Price adds that this means speaking in terms of profit and value added, rather than budget and cost. The three year post graduate course at Sheffield Hallam starts with the core skills like health and safety, environmental awareness, risk assessment and real estate asset management. The second year become high practical, with real life case studies. But the final year is about strategic thinking. ‘It’s about leadership, strategy and holistic thinking,’ says Professor Price.
At BIFM Martin Davies says: ‘It is clear more people are climbing up the ladder.’ But Jane Bell of Catalysts is more cautious. She says: ‘The real need is for facilities management to get more skilled in other branches of support services. They must be at the forefront of information technology and human resources or they will lose out. There is a danger that FM is being seen as too narrow and technical, but there is a huge amount it can contribute.’
Panel 1: Approaches to training
You may not have heard the term ‘webinar’, but it is probably self-explanatory: a seminar held over the World Wide Web. Martin Davies, director of training at BIFM says webinars can ‘deliver instant training’. BIFM has no immediate plans in employ this approach (the technology is not quite good enough yet), but Davies notes they are happening and it is hardly rocket science to see that the methodology of training is always open for review.
At Catalyst Management Development, Jane Bell says that the most important issue is that employers are getting more selective about which courses they invest in. She says ‘Training providers are moving towards working with individuals and teams within organisations using coaches and mentors.’ Lynda Hinxman at Sheffield Hallam adopts a similar approach. ‘People often feel nervous about learning, so we’ve introduced workplace learning to help [staff] see it in context.’ She says.
At Computer Associates, where training is the responsibility of the human resources department, Eric Kemp suggests that the choice of approach — traditional taught course, internal training, mentoring on the job or through new technologies, is a business decision: ‘We’re looking for cost effectiveness. We have to justify the expense,’ he says.
Panel2 : BIFM Qualification Core Competencies
UNDERSTANDING BUSINESS ORGANISATION
1. Understanding the Structure and Behaviour of Organisations
2. Understanding Business and Organisational Strategy
3. Developing FM Strategy
MANAGING PEOPLE
4. People Management
5. Communication
6. Working with Suppliers and Specialists
MANAGING PREMISES
7. Property Portfolio Management
8. Understanding Building Design
9. Building Fabric Maintenance
MANAGING SERVICES
10. Managing Building Services
11. Managing Support Services
12. Project Management
13. Managing Customer Service
MANAGING THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT
14. Environmental Issues
15. Space Management
MANAGING RESOURCES
16. Procurement
17. Risk Management
18. Financial Management
19. Quality Management
20. Information Management
© 2000 Ian Cundell