Today Europe, Tomorrow the World

Mike Liddle and I were very proud to be re-presented with the EuroFM Partners Across Borders Award 2008 at the PFM Awards held at the Brewery earlier this week. It’s always a great night and an opportunity to catch up with old friends as well as to network with new, but having such a personal interest in the proceedings made it extra special. (I well remember Edifice winning the marketing award too, back in 2002… it’s frightening how quickly the years go by.)

Anyway, this award was for work we carried out in support of Microsoft’s initiative to harmonise the management and delivery of facilities services across EMEA. The project started more than two years ago, and it’s interesting to see how the market has changed in that time. It’s still evident that a single-source solution across such a diverse geographic area is problematic, but there’s no doubt that the market is maturing quickly and that a host of the major players have aspirations to extend their reach well beyond the domestic market here in the UK. Indeed, many have already made major inroads, although in my view there’s still a long way to go if we’re truly to achieve consistency in terms of service delivery, the advantages of a uniform approach to reporting and information management, and a real benefit from the migration and sharing of best practice.

Another thing that I find particularly interesting is that those who practice within the “traditional” FM sector are finding that the real estate professionals are now muscling in on what is a growing and valuable market. The benefits of a professionally managed real estate portfolio are vast when one takes a pan-European view and big wins are available to those who are ahead of the game. The danger, as I see it, is that with this change comes an inevitable transactional focus; this might be where the headlines are made but – once FM becomes a bi-product of the real driver behind the relationship – the danger is that operational performance will suffer. Once that happens, the cost to a business can be more significant than any headline savings in real estate because, after all, it’s the people within a business who deliver the profit. Keeping FM on the agenda in such a scenario will itself be a challenge, but it’s a challenge that simply has to be overcome.

I suspect that the next couple of years are going to see a number of large-scale, cross-border contracts coming to the market, and the value of these contracts will inevitably shape the strategy of the more aspirational service providers as a greater and greater number seek to get their hands on a piece of the pie. Such a strategy is fraught with difficulty, with a need to focus on supply chain capability, management structure, training & development, system integration, etc – all across national borders… and that’s in addition to the cultural and legal issues that will inevitably arise in any such opportunity.

There’s no doubt that these are interesting times, particularly with a global recession adding fuel to the fire, and I feel fortunate indeed to be playing even a small part in navigating a way through the transition.

Wake Up and Smell The Coffee

Shortly after I returned from the holiday referred to in my previous post, I was intrigued to read i-FM’s mention of the Drivers Jonas report about workplace productivity entitled Property in The Economy, and soon set about downloading a copy for later consumption. After all, we in FM have been pushing the convergence agenda for many years now (and long before we were talking about sustainability) and I was therefore looking forward to some leading-edge thinking from the property side of the fence; that said, I wasn’t altogether encouraged by the fact that the report’s subtitle was in the from of a question; “Workplace design and productivity: are they inextricably linked?”

Hmmmm… one could only hope that it was rhetorical and that all, perhaps, was not lost.

Anyone interested in the history of management theory might enjoy the some of the earlier sections, covering the Scientific Management of Frederick Winslow Taylor, Elton Mayo’s infamous Hawthorne Experiments of the ‘30’s and even Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This is all very interesting (at least, to historical theorists) but is it relevant to the needs of the modern-day corporation? That’s debatable… technology and other factors have rendered today’s workplace almost unrecognisable from that of the 50’s (let alone the 30’s) and frankly this isn’t exactly ground-breaking stuff. There is some good content in the report, however, when it comes to justifying the push for a more efficient environment for the people that work within it. How about this:

• inefficient buildings cost British business £135bn per annum and a better designed workplace could improve productivity by 19% (Gensler, 2005);
• the economic loss to the US of poor indoor environmental quality was worth approximately $60bn in 1989 and the average productivity loss for all workers in the US due to poor internal working environments equates to approximately 3% for all white collar workers (US Environmental Protection Agency, 1989);
• the self-reported productivity loss for UK workers in a survey of office workers was, on average, 3% (Raw et al, 1999);
• US studies suggest that a 1% improvement in productivity has a larger economic return than a 100% saving in energy costs (CIBSE, 1999); and
• productivity improvement of a fraction of 1% would be sufficient to cover the cost of necessary infrastructure improvements to enhance the indoor working environment (Clements-Croome, 2003).

Compelling stuff, for sure, but look at the dates of the research – 1989, 1999, 2003 and 2005… not what you’d call latest news! And some of the conclusions are equally worrying, not because they’re disputable (because I don’t believe that they are) but because they’re so obvious. It’s the kind of stuff we in FM have known for years!

“…there appears to be incontrovertible evidence that the working environment directly impacts the health and well-being of occupiers, and exhibits a direct causal link to sickness and absenteeism rates. An implication is that real estate professionals and building designers should work closely with HR professionals to help ensure buildings are designed, and continue to be operated, as occupier-friendly facilities.”

“…workplace design must not be regarded as a discreet activity but a link in an integrated process that starts with understanding what people need of their workplace to do business, and ends with an understanding of how the design has worked in practice – there must also be a feedback loop to re-engineer aspects of the design to fit the changing needs of people and the business over time.”

Even more astounding is the “advice” given to FMs in the report, which leaves me almost speechless (almost, I said. I’m not actually speechless very often, as those who know me would testify.) Citing temperature, lighting, noise, air quality, (environment) controllability, workstation design and configuration as examples of the factors involved, the report suggests that there’s “a causal link between physical factors in the workplace and the productivity of employees”. As FM practitioners we would never have guessed that, of course, which is why conclusions of the report also include the following recommendation:

“…a move within the facilities management industry to treat occupiers as customers could lead to increased customer satisfaction with the working environment – to be followed by an increase in the productivity level of those customers.”

Now, I should probably make it clear at this stage that my roots are firmly bedded in the property sector and I’ve always felt an affinity with and for my surveying colleagues as a consequence, but sometimes I can’t help but despair, and this is a perfect example of why. In fact, if you take a look at the Articles page on the Edifice website you’ll see an entry entitled “Diversify or Die” – a lecture on this very subject presented to the RICS by a former colleague in March 2002. (Maths isn’t necessarily my strong point, but I make that about 6½ years ago.) So, here’s a little advice of my own to anyone who’s starting to believe that there might just be something worth thinking about in anything I’ve referred to above.

Wake up and smell the coffee.