Facility Management: Importance And Challenges Essay.

The facility management is the most effective management tools which help the business organization for managing the safety needs in business. It is professional development and practice which adopt by the management.  

The facility management focuses on the coordination of the physical space and devices with the people of the organization. The main focus of the  facility management is to emphasis on the safety and development such practice so they can help to employees and management in  business.  

The facility management is professional disciple of management which focuses on efficient and effective delivery support for the organizations. The facility management is an important discipline of the management as it optimizes the product and service delivery in the organization. It is an interdisciplinary business function wherein a balance is stricken between the supply and the demand of different services. The facility refers to the tangible assets of an organization which can be used to support various functions of an organization. The facility management focuses on the coordination of the physical space and devices with the people of the organization (Mullins, 2013). The facility management also covers supporting the business activities which are also called non-core functions of the organization. It results in continuous innovation, development, which can reduce the cost to the organization and add value to the operations of the organization. The main focus of the company is to provide safe and secure environment in the business. The present report is based on adoption of external facility management in the company and also provides recommendations to overcome different challenges.

Impact of External Environment

The center City tower is the commercial building in Birmingham, England, owned by Bruntwood.  This building has different types of blocks, departments and there are a number of corporates who are working. At present, the owners of the buildings adopt in-house building maintenance services. It means that the organization has recruited the staff members who are dedicated to the maintenance services of the organization.in the external environment of the company. In the external environment of the company is also considered as the different factors such as political, legal and economic factors. The facilities management refers to the professional services which focus on delivering support services to the organization (Tucker, et,al., 2017). It is integrated with the people, services, technology, and place. For the external environment, outsourcing the facility management services is good option for the organization. There are different types of benefits which are associated with the outsourcing services.

• The first benefit of using outsourcing for the facility management is that it is a cost-effective process. In the in-house services, the company has to pay the salary to staff and other incentives but in the outsourcing services the company has to pay the amount in the contract. Along with it, the organization has to provide several different incentives and facilities in accordance the employment laws. The salaries of the employees will be static, in spite of the work completed by the employee, whereas, in the employment contract, the organization can provide financial services in accordance to the services provided by the professionals. The organizations also transfer the risks to the contractor, so the organization can work effectively (Leiblein, et.al, 2016).
• The second benefits of outsourcing facility are that it provides flexibility in the services. In the facility management, the organization receives flexibility and high work quality. Sourcing work from the external contractors can provide proper flexibility to the organization. The external contractor can also recruit the staff members to implement quality check. For this, the building manager has to make less investment and also it is a time-saving process.
• Another reason for selecting the external facility management services is the use of advanced technology. The external facility services is related to providing advanced technology applications to support the organizational activities. In addition, the external facility management is also helping the company to maintain the equipment and tools (Shi, Du, Lavy and Zhao, 2016). The City center tower does not need to acquire advanced technology as the facility management provide all facilities when it is required. Through outsourcing from external environment, company is taking advantage of advanced technology.

In the city centre tower the management style is based on management of objective and leadership approach is based on the autocratic leadership styles (Lewis,2016).  Through the management styles is helpful for setting the object of the management and also leadership styles provide help to provide vision of the company.  The similar approach is also followed in the Alpha tower. 

 In the selection of outsources facility management services, there are certain types of the statutory requirement which need to be fulfilled by the organization. The building manager of City Center Tower is adopting outsourcing to help the company to maintain its staff and operational process effectively. However, there are some legal and organizational structure which is also influenced by this decision. So, the formation of the company is highly influenced by external facility management which is as follows:

According to the UK law, when the company makes any type of contract under the facility management then the entire risks will not be transferred to the third party. According to the UK employment law, each business organization has to abide its operations by the health and safety act, 1974. It means that it is the employer duty to provide secure and safe workplace to the employees. So, the company should make sure that by facility management contract, the employee’s risks will still belongs to city center tower (Grimaldi and Cano, 2016). The statutory liability of the company is still related to the City Center Tower. The formation of the company does not change as it has to follow all statutory obligations effectively.

Issues and Challenges

While making any type of contract, the building manager of the CCT needs to develop “A Service Level Agreement”. This agreement provides clear guidelines about the services which are undertaken by the contractor and clients. So, the company and contractor both become aware of the services and develop common understandings about the nature of related services and roles and responsibilities. So, management of the company needs to follow all rules and obligation.

The external facility brings different types of benefits for the company such as cost and time effective process, use of advanced technology and provides greater flexibility.  However, there are certain challenges and issues which are also associated with the facility management in the company (Aziz, Nawawi and Ariff, 2016). Following are the issues and challenges which are related to external facility management adoption such as:

The city center tower may lose control over the company and its operations.  The company cannot provide instructions and guidelines to workforce in the business. The external services do not provide staff flexibility or craft flexibility to the organization. The external services providers offer many different approaches and methods to provide facility in the company which can create problems for business to carry out its daily operations effectively.

Another challenge related to the external facility management is that they are not concerned about the organization’s value, rules, and process. In the in-house management, employees which are working in the company values about the City Center Tower and know the expectations of business in a better manner. On the other hand, external FM staff does not maintain a long relationship and also they do not hold loyalty towards business.  

Roles of employees can be duplicated within clients and contractors organizations. Roles and responsibility in such type of contractor are overlapping in the company. Overlapping the roles and responsibility in the company may lead to inefficacies (Tucker and Masuri, 2016). So, the manager can maintain its business operations effectively and also create many types of losses for the company.

Adoption of external facility management services may lead to both benefits and in the operations of the company. At the primary level, the company receives benefits for adoption of such external facilities. The CCT and its staff make the focus on their core activities and also they effectively conduct their all operations. On the other hand, the organization also lose their control over the safety and maintenance, which can create a legal obligation for the City center tower. So, the company adopts some strategies through which they can effectively integrate with external FM.

The facility manager and the managers of the building are needed to develop effective planning. Under this planning, business need to involve regular monitoring and control over the organization. The management of the company can also provide guidelines to services provider so they can be aware of ways in which the in-house work. So, no differences can appear in the approaches.

The external contractor and the staff can effectively integrate the organization structure by adopting the soft facility management approach. The soft FM approach refers to providing information and coordination of the people and process. Through this approach, the external contractor can easily develop effective interactions with structure (Shohet and Lavy, 2017).

The last recommendation is developing effective communication. In the external facility management the roles and responsibility are overlapping so while providing services the building manager of CCT need to clearly develop service agreement with roles and responsibility of each other.  Through this, they can develop effective communication and external facility provider integrated with organizations.

Conclusion 

Summing up the present report, it can be concluded that City Centre Tower can adopt the external facility management services. Through it, they can effectively manage activities of business and maintenance of buildings. With the help of this, the company maintains safe and secure workplace environment in the company. However, there are certain types of challenges which are needed to be solved by adopting effective strategies.

References 

Aziz, N.D., Nawawi, A.H. and Ariff, N.R.M. Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Facilities Management: Opportunities to be Considered by Facility Managers. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. 234. 2016.  pp.353-362.

Grimaldi, P. and Cano, P.F. Size and profile of sports facility management organizations. Apunts. Educació Fisica i Esports. 126. 2016. pp.72-78.

Leiblein, et.al. Legionella and risk management in hospitals—A bibliographic research

Lewis, G., 2016. People Management  CIPD L&D Show 2016: ‘Our leaders needed to be wide awake

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methodology for people responsible for built environment and facility management. International journal of hygiene and environmental health, 219(8), pp.890-897.

 Mullins (2013) Management and Organisational Behaviour, London:

Shi, Y., Du, J., Lavy, S. and Zhao, D., 2016. A Multiuser Shared Virtual Environment for Facility Management. Procedia Engineering. 145. 2016. pp.120-127.

Shohet, I.M. and Lavy, S. Facility maintenance and management: a health care case study. International Journal of Strategic Property Management 21(2) 2017. pp.170-182.

Tucker, et,al. Critical strategic issues for the integration of facilities management into the development process. Property Management. 35(4).  2017. pp.380-393.

Tucker, M. and Masuri, M.R.A., The rationale to integrate facilities management into the development process. Property Management. 34, no. 4. 2016.  pp.332-344.