Editorial

Citation

Lavy, S. (2015), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 33 No. 13/14. https://doi.org/10.1108/F-06-2015-0037

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Facilities, Volume 33, Issue 13/14

Being a facility manager for higher education facilities presents significant challenges such as identifying what best serves the community needs, and how to adapt for future advancements and changes. This issue of Facilities focuses on various aspects of facility management in the higher education sector, including: satisfaction level as a factor for attracting students, student satisfaction and their test scores, decision-making processes of Corporate Real Estate managers, examining space from a business perspective and the outsourcing of facility management services.

A paper by Hanssen and Solvoll explores students’ opinions of their universities and what attracts them to the schools they choose. It is interesting that among the major factors found to play a role in this decision are the quality of social areas, including auditoriums and libraries. These findings may help planners and designers better satisfy students as higher education institutions could use this information to plan, design, build and operate healthier and more adaptable campus facilities. This paper indicates that additional thought is needed to build university facilities that meet the needs and the expectations of today’s students.

Hopland and Nyhus report on a study conducted in Norwegian high-schools and explored possible correlations between student satisfaction with the facility and students’ test grades. Previous studies have sought to find out how classroom and school design impact student learning; however, this study collected data from five years of student satisfaction surveys. Even though a modest, yet significant, correlation was found between the two factors, this study offers a new perspective for campuses to pay more attention to what makes students satisfied with school conditions, mainly related to aspects such as indoor air quality, temperature and cleanliness.

Corporate Real Estate (CRE) and the role it plays within an organization has become increasingly important for facility management. The objective of a paper published by Beckers, van der Voordt and Dewulf is to learn about the thought process used by CRE managers for education facilities. The paper, based on 13 large Dutch universities, explores how decisions are made and how CRE managers develop their strategies. The study found that alignment of CRE and corporate strategy helped maximize the company’s value added to its consumers. Of course, these findings also highlight the importance for a CRE manager to be flexible enough to adjust their own strategies and actions to changes in the corporation’s goals.

A paper by Rytkönen goes over how diverse campus development projects can be classified at a specific time, what kinds of spatial transformations can be identified in diverse campus development projects and what are the implications of diverse business models for facility management decisions over time. The author offers a definition of space as three abilities: function, meaning and form. Using a case study approach, the author explores Aalto University’s vision and efforts to centralize their campus and merge their three major fields of study, namely, business, technology and arts. The paper talks about how the business model as a concept should be capable of reflecting how Aalto’s vision can be converted into practice as it lays between the strategic and operational levels.

The main objective of a paper published by Lok and Baldry is to study the relationships between higher education facilities and outsourcing their facility management business services in Hong Kong’s higher education sector. The paper presents outsourcing’s progression from the early 1950s through the present, wherein facility management outsourcing for higher educations is more popular than ever before and also seems to be very successful, if done right. This paper is significant as it shows a link between the quality of facility management outsourcing services and how this can potentially increase the substitution of ownership, substitution of control, competitive positions and long-term planning, and eventually, affect the satisfaction level of staff and students, as well as affect the organization’s image.

Sarel Lavy - Co-Editor, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA