i-FM: The online resource for facilities professionals

Last week's EU FM Summit, held in The Netherlands, provided a heady mix of elements: from practical illustrations of where facilities management, particularly changes to workspace strategies, have demonstrated significant benefits to organisations, through powerful thought leadership on the development of the organisation of the future, all the way to the potential death of FM as a profession before it has even got through its adolescence.

A fascinating feature of the conference was the international spread of the attendees, many from across the whole of Europe, the United States and the Far East. It was part refreshing and part reassuring to hear how facilities management professionals are dealing with common issues despite geographic differences, how local flavours have created palatable solutions for difficult problems, and yet how consistent was the feeling that there are so many more opportunities to be harnessed for the individual, the organisation, the profession and the world. Where else could you flip through a discussion covering desk usage, climate change and cloud computing over the depth of a single espresso?

There were a number of key themes ran through the conference.

The new age of work
Several presentations asked us to consider that we are now in a new age of work, not just moving to new ways of working. Indeed, a number of discussions questioned our perceptions of what an organisation is and how it works together, in addition to the continuous struggle for individual work/life balance. Also questioned was whether the technologies available to us today are really able to harness our capabilities and, even if so, do we have the enlightened approach to management which will motivate and reward our people appropriately in a knowledge-driven world?

Is FM a political movement?
Ria Oomen, Member of the European Parliament, presented a call to arms to the FM industry during her keynote speech. She went on to argue the benefits of moving towards a harmonised approach to facilities management across Europe through the application of EN 15221. This would lead to consistency in the language of FM and in benchmarking across the region and enhance the capabilities for cross-border education, she said. The case rests on the belief that Europe will continue to work towards open markets and freedom of trade. In that context, consistency of approach will aid the development of opportunities for business and individuals alike.

Oomen also called for our industry to recognise the influence it has over the European business environment: we should begin to engage more with both our national governments and with Brussels to influence future policy and direction, she said. This argument was supported by two key ideas: that FM (and CRE) has a huge influence on the use and application of resources (in their broadest use) and that services are a massive part of the overall EU economy, both in financial and employment terms.

Art or science?
As we were being urged to thrust ourselves forward into the political environment, there were also consistent musings on whether FM, and in particular the trend of new ways of working, is really fulfilling our current obligations. Barry Varcoe put forward a strong case that the FM industry also needs to look internally and consider if we offer concrete evidence of the benefits we bring our organisations. On the back of in-depth research, Varcoe asserted that many of the benefits claimed for new ways of working have not actually been proved. There is strong evidence of subjective benefits, but limited work has been done to move these into the realm of positive, objective business benefit from increased flexibility, communication and team productivity. Varcoe broadened the argument into the FM industry in general with a review of what a number of major providers say about themselves and what they can bring to their clients. He recounted many features and internally driven statements, which were remarkably consistent across the landscape; but very little is said on real, tangible benefits to clients. Does this reflect how service providers think, or is it that there is an inability to provide hard evidence?

Varcoe was not calling for our industry to recruit research scientists, but he was strongly arguing that our relevance may be put at risk unless we can begin to give real proof over and above bottom line costs for the benefits of what we offer.

The power of community
Just when we thought we had the technology of tomorrow available for today, it may already be too late.

Janet Day-Strehlow of Cisco offered a very positive picture of the use of technology in the modern workplace and how this can be used to increase flexibility and communication. The benefits are indeed attractive in a world where teams are frequently spread across great distances, as well as several time zones.

There were also some enlightening thoughts offered on how technology can change your perception of who is in your team – and, for the younger ones amongst us, in your community. Internal company forums and blogs can turn up some of the best ideas, often coming from people you don’t even know some of whom may be undiscovered experts in new processes and new environments.

The Holy Trinity broken before it’s made?
It was made clear more than once at this Summit that the FM industry ignores colleagues in HR and IT at its peril. The agenda for new ways of working means that these three groups need to work together to achieve benefits for the organisation - and indeed, lines of responsibility between us are increasingly being blurred. No new ways of working project can be successful without having an IT support infrastructure, nor can it succeed without the HR strategies to maximise the opportunities. But are we still maximising our knowledge and the information available? Philip Ross or Cordless questioned for instance how many times email traffic information has been used to in considering individual and team co-locations during redesign? Surely this is a very strong indicator of communication needs in today's world. Unless of course someone has managed to break that bond between managers and their inboxes?

But then over the hill came the potential of cloud computing. Just when design and selection of properties and ways of working were being dictated by the design and operations of IT systems, therefore driving IT to the heart of any property decision, their influence could be greatly diminished by this new computing technology which will in principle deliver new levels of flexibility without the need of local equipment, thus reducing capital budgets and the complexity of design. Sounds promising - but is this dream a real opportunity and is the horizon sufficiently close for us to recognise it in today’s investment decisions?

It can be done
There were some very refreshing demonstrations of organisations taking practical steps forward to solving complex problems. Amongst these presenters was Bridget Hardy from our own Office of Government Commerce. Hardy has been central to the government's initiative to improve the use of its own space, both in terms of delivering guidance and gathering the evidence of progress being made.

What was impressive was the pragmatic implementation of an approach to gathering data across a complex portfolio, in addition to the evidence that the government is actually making progress against this significant challenge. Hardy provided firm evidence through her knowledge of the portfolio of where the real opportunities and sensitivities in the data are when faced with the eternal question about statistics being used to support any argument you fancy.

Both Gianmaurizio Cazzarolli of Tertapak and Gordon McMillan of GSK provided accounts of their experience implementing facilities management and new ways of working strategies within their properties.

Cazzarolli demonstrated how aligning facilities-related strategies to mainstream business initiatives can provide powerful impact, bringing stakeholder buy-in to deliver significant results. He showed how his facility in Italy had taken new ways of working principles and developed them through occupier involvement to be acceptable to the workforce by incorporating elements that made change more palatable to the local culture without detriment to the productivity benefits. McMillan illustrated how the use of surveys at GSK had enabled them to demonstrate that people's perception of the amount of time they spent at their desk and how they work is significantly different to how they actually work. This has enabled them to completely redesign how they implement space rationalisation projects.

Measuring productivity in a knowledge-based world
Henny van Egmond of Rabobank provided a stimulating account of how the organisation is accepting that the world is changing rapidly and how they are adapting these principles into their operation as a business - and therefore into their new facility in The Netherlands. The arguments were compelling and illustrated how old measures of productivity for individuals are no longer valid in the knowledge-based world. The implication of that is significant: how we traditionally performance manage our teams may also be no longer valid. This opens up whole new ways of working based on trust, which in turn changes how you design properties as the model of how you operate and interact with your customers changes too.

Where to from here?
Conferences are often great for reminding yourself of things that you should be doing but may have allowed to slip down the priority list due to other pressures. The first EU FM Summit was not just about this, however. Yes, we had good practical demonstrations of what organisations have achieved, each within a different culture. But the real power of the event was in providing a number of very different signposts for the future - some showing incremental but rapid development of existing technologies and practices, some demonstrating the real power of a global working community, and some showing that perhaps we need to jump tracks completely to be successful and fully engage the workers of the future.

Underlying all of this was the continuing concern of how FM can develop as a profession and become a real driver of business success. How do the ideas and practices illustrated at events such as this get carried into the larger FM community? How do we push home the FM message in the wider commercial and public sector communities? Perhaps this is the starting point for next year's agenda.

Pete Brumby is Managing Director of facilities management specialist Macro.