Editorial

Citation

Finch, E. (2007), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 25 No. 5/6. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2007.06925eaa.001

Editorial

This issue brings together a diverse range of papers which fully explore the boundaries of facilities management as a discipline. The paper by Hui, Wong and Mui considers the dilemma of air sampling – how much is enough? The paper suggests that is may be possible to reduce the cost of sampling by using alternative air sampling strategies without compromising robustness. With the increasing interest in air quality, the economics and efficacy of such approaches will certainly be an issue for facilities managers.

The paper by Ryd and Fristedt illustrates how business requirements are translated and developed as a collaborative process involving client and contractor. The particular case study is that of the postal centre project, implemented within the Swedish postal service Posten Sverige AB. It is interesting to see how the authors observed that at “the start, the corporate real estate organisation was described more as an implementer, but it gradually came to be seen as a direct internal collaborating partner and an equal party in a joint project.” Indeed, one might argue that this is a convincing argument for promulgating facilities management expertise within contractor organisations.

On a related topic, the paper by Eriksson, Dickinson and Khalfan considers “the influence of partnering and procurement on subcontractor involvement and innovation.” The experiences from the case studies undertaken indicated “that there is not an isolated direct link between increased involvement/integration and innovation/value creation”. This is perhaps surprising and an issue worthy of further research. However, the author does defend the principle of partnering suggesting that it is “beneficial to let project participants work together over a series of projects in order to reap the benefits of closer relationships, increased knowledge sharing and continuous learning.”

Residential facilities management is a major undertaking, particularly in countries with large condominium developments such as Hong Kong. In the paper by Yip et al. the concept of agency theory is applied to examine alternative strategies for condominium management. Clarifying the idea of agency theory, the paper quotes a key definition as: “Whenever one individual depends on the action of another, an agency relationship arises.” The paper considers the three key agency costs that need to be considered:

1. 1.

   monitoring;

2. 2.

   bonding; and

3. 3.

   residual loss.

This analytical model appears to be insightful and might well prove a useful concept in related facilities management areas.

In the paper by Ventovuori et al, Facilities along with other facilities management (FM) journals come under the spotlight. From the 584 FM papers reviewed, 308 papers were found to be empirical in nature compared to 194 that were normative in nature and 82 which were literature reviews. The authors provide a reasoned analysis of past publications. Within the empirical papers it was suggested that the most common type of research performed were exploratory studies. The paper criticises the fact that authors “seldom justify their selection of research method. Furthermore, the reporting of the methods used was inadequate.” However, it is reassuring to see that facilities management has now reached a stage of activity maturity whereby such an analysis could be undertaken.

In the paper by Lai and Yik, the authors reviewed management tools that can be used for monitoring contract performance. The paper reports on the findings of a study which, through face-to-face interviews with 28 practitioners, investigated what management tools were in use and how much resource they entailed. The study showed that “the balanced scorecard and benchmarking are rarely used. Customer satisfaction survey is commonly used, but quantifying the cost of such surveys is difficult without a proper record of relevant human and time resources.” Clearly, the costs associated with performance monitoring are not insignificant. As with air-sampling discussed in the first paper, facilities managers are faced with the dilemma of acquiring robust information at minimal cost. Perhaps the concept of the “Pareto curve” applies here, whereby 80 per cent of the consequential factors appear in only 20 per cent of the figures.

Edward Finch