Citation
Finch, E. (2003), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 21 No. 3/4. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2003.06921caa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2003, MCB UP Limited
Editorial
Facilities management is currently in the eye of a storm in the UK. This has been brought about by the public-private finance initiative (PFI) which was developed to relieve the UK Government of a large bureaucratic burden. Instead of producing money upfront for a new £10 million school, the Government agrees to pay a private firm an annual fee of, say, £1million a year over 25 years, encompassing the entire construction and facilities management process.
At first inspection, one might be led to believe that this was a positive step for facilities management. Here we have a situation where the design and construction team are forced to "carry the can" for what they do: not just in terms of remedying any defects but in covering the cost of ongoing maintenance and operation. The inevitable outcome must surely be better quality buildings designed with the future in mind. To ensure this outcome, feedback from facilities management would provide the key.
The experience in the UK in relation to the first schools to be built under PFI has been far from positive though. A public spending watchdog suggests that such schools were "significantly worse" than other new schools in England.
The Audit Commission says they lost out in terms of space, heating, lighting and acoustics. That seems to cover just about everything! Important design aspects such as classroom size and layout have been overlooked. Cleaning costs appeared to be higher and unit running costs seemed to vary widely.
One of the difficulties is that shortcomings in the designs were often difficult to express in the specification; for example, poor acoustics, which is both harder to define as a performance measure and not easily remedied once the school is in.
The UK Government claims that it has learned lessons from the early PFI projects. One hopes that one of the lessons it has learnt is that facilities managers should be more fully involved in the design stage.
Edward Finch