Editorial

Citation

Grimshaw, B. (1999), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 17 No. 1/2. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.1999.06917aaa.001

Editorial

The Guest Editor

Bob Grimshaw joined the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of the West of England in 1996 as a Reader. He is Professor of Facilities Management and Director of the Construction and Property Research Centre.

He was educated at the Universities of East Anglia and Reading. He is a building surveyor by professional background, working at St John's College, Oxford for eight years, specialising in conservation, refurbishment and maintenance management. He joined the University of Salford as a lecturer in building surveying in 1984, directing the building surveying course for much of the time, and became the Head of School of Building and Building Surveying at the University of Central England in 1992. In his four years as Head, the school introduced its first taught Master's programme, enrolled its first research students and developed formal links with an institute in Malaysia.

His research interests focus on the link between the physical and social environments across all sectors; his work has spanned supported social housing, the management of the maintenance process and facilities management. He has carried out nationally funded research including projects for the Department of the Environment (an evaluation of hostels for the homeless), EPSRC (the modelling of maintenance processes) the YMCA (the suitability of the accommodation for their client group), and the Housing Corporation (an evaluation of response maintenance). His current work involves the development of methodologies to evaluate shared space in both the workplace and supported housing. He has published widely and spoken at many national and international conferences. In November 1998 he delivered his inaugural professorial lecture entitled "Control and appropriation: facilitating the physical and social environments".

He has been heavily involved in developing the professional infrastructure of facilities management via the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM). He is a member of the Professional Development Committee of BIFM and chairs the Higher Education Accreditation Panel. He is also the Chief Moderator of the BIFM Professional Examinations. On the international front, he is the joint co-ordinator of Working Commission W70 of the International Council for Building Research Studies (CIB) and jointly leads the CIB Working Group on Facilities Management established in 1996.

Three of the authors in this issue examine the context and future of facilities management (FM). Although very different in their emphasis, the papers have a common thread linking practice to a policy for the development of a research base that will underpin the continued growth of FM. All three argue that FM has reached a critical stage: it needs to reflect on its very nature and develop a framework that will bind together its multiple threads. Together with these three position papers are the papers by John Hinks and Graeme Baldwin. The paper by John Hinks describes the use of an analytical tool for FM performance assessment. This tool makes use of the well-known Delphi technique to elicit expert opinion. The paper by Graeme Baldwin applies statistical analysis to determine what aspects of shop design affect patronage. These include variables such as aisle width, floor area and size of window frontage.

Bev Nutt's paper, which is derived from a paper delivered at the 1998 BIFM Conference, looks at the need for a dedicated research base to be established which both informs and stimulates practice. He suggests a general framework that encompasses FM function, FM roles, and key areas of practice and relates them to the links between design, management and engineering. He also proposes a matrix for developing the collaboration and networking that are necessary for FM to develop.

George Cairns and Nic Beech's paper pleads for a more theoretical approach to FM and examines its strategic organisational context. It focuses on how power relationships and the central role of knowledge reflect major changes in organisational culture. They demonstrate that the growth of flexible working has many losers as well as winners. The paper links the challenges facing FM to the wider forces that are changing the world of business.

Bob Grimshaw's paper develops this theme and looks at the much broader social economic and political context of FM and argues that we need to get to grips with these fundamental change factors that are driving FM in order to understand where we are going. These forces can be loosely grouped under the heading of postmodernism. If the predicted changes happen it will have important implications for FM, especially in respect of the nature of research and its link to practice.

Taken together these papers make an important and timely contribution to the debate on the future of FM and the way that the academic community can support and strengthen this growth. It is hoped that this will be part of a long awaited and ongoing dialogue about the fundamental nature of FM.

It is also interesting to note that all three position papers refer to the 1998 BIFM Research Forum and Annual Conference held at Cambridge, which seems to be becoming an increasingly important focus for this debate in the UK.

This editorial would not be complete without mention of CIB Working Commission W70 which celebrated its 25th year of operation at its biennial symposium in Singapore in November 1998. This commission has its roots firmly in building maintenance and building engineering, but since 1990, W70 has increasingly become the main home for researchers in FM within CIB. There have been many papers on FM in the last three symposia, and the whole theme of the 1998 Singapore event is FM. The position of FM within W70 was consolidated in 1996 with the setting up of a special task group to develop FM. This group, which is jointly co-ordinated by George Cairns and Bob Grimshaw, is the first worldwide body devoted to research in FM. A programme of action will have been agreed in Singapore for the development of this group; I hope this can be reported in a future issue of Facilities and that many of the readers will contribute to its success.

Bob GrimshawGuest Editor