Happy birthday, Facilities

Citation

Bell, J. (2007), "Happy birthday, Facilities", Facilities, Vol. 25 No. 11/12. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2007.06925kaa.002

Happy birthday, Facilities

“What do you mean, there are 104?” enquired Joanna Eley, our harassed technical editor. It was true. A well-meaning reader had just faxed over an enormous list of job-titles to help identify potential subscribers to our new publication, Facilities, launched only two months previously in February 1983. Suddenly our goal of creating a “standard” reader profile appeared to be slipping away, and on only my second day in the office as researcher/editorial assistant I began to realise that very little about Facilities was going to be straightforward.

Readers and contributors alike were keen to know whether their view of the emerging concept of “FM” was shared by anyone else – and constantly called to discuss the point. Most practitioners felt they were battling enormous challenges alone, and found it inconceivable that others could be experiencing the same managerial or technical difficulties as themselves. Contributors in their turn struggled to know how to position their material: how much technical depth was appropriate? What did readers really want and need to know – and who were they anyway? All this was of little comfort to our publishers, the Architectural Press, who had hoped for and expected the kind of clarity of purpose in FM that would be normal in the established world of design. No wonder early issues focused on the twin themes of insularity and segregation, which according to the editorial of May 1983 had produced a situation in which “there could be no common standards, no shared values – in short, no prospect of professionalism – in the field of facilities management”.

Facilities had been set up precisely to help overcome this damaging gulf by Dr Francis Duffy, a partner in the influential architectural practice, DEGW. His original vision was to produce a management newsletter in the style of other high-powered financial publications of the 1980s, which were simultaneously “very scruffy and very expensive”, but packed with nuggets of information.

In its turn, Facilities was intended to provide a unique vehicle for practical advice and guidance for the emerging FM community, and a mechanism to collect and communicate invaluable feedback on operational building performance. A revolutionary concept at the time!

For this was the period when “facilities management” began to challenge the notion of the unassailable professional team. It dared to raise questions about design decisions and criticise poor standards in a manner previously unheard of in the UK – or elsewhere. For the first time, the occupiers and consumers of buildings had a voice.

Of course, the arrival of a so-called facilities management “profession” was not without its critics within the property “establishment”.

Spread by the multi-national corporations of the US, it presented a curious, confusing image and attracted the kind of humorous criticism generally reserved for management “hybrids”. “FM” was branded by many as a low-level, tactical function – more akin to care-taking than serious management. It is an image that many still feel lingers to this day.

But despite its uncertain start, Facilities Management has made it through its first generation, and nearly 25 years later there are signs of growing confidence and maturity.

FM is “bigger” and more visible by far than in those early days. Its scope and purpose is far broader than we could possibly have imagined, encompassing a potentially vast range of operational support services as well as the more conventional building and property-related areas. As one would expect, its practice across a broad range of public and private sector organisations is starting to create specialisms, and for the first time FM is beginning to look like a serious career.

Facilities, too, has grown up and evolved from its original newsletter format into an established academic journal. Building on that all-important desire to collect, analyse and disseminate high quality information, it has introduced a new dimension – that of academic rigour – which provides a vital underpinning for any maturing professional discipline.

In many ways, the FM “identity crisis” has never been resolved. If anything, the challenge of developing generalisable descriptions of facilities managers and their activities has become more difficult than ever. But certain core aims and values point clearly to FM as a kind of resource management, which has a significant strategic as well as tactical value in a wide variety of contexts.

Still high on the agenda is the desire for universal recognition and the associated credibility conferred by achieving the respect of related professions. But this is not an automatic right: it has to be earned.

In my role as consultant today, I meet many FMs whose main goal is to “professionalise” the function. It can be an elusive concept, which for many begins and ends with training and qualifications. But if FM is to move to another level in this journey it must look to its knowledge base. In a world where innovation and creative leadership are increasingly prized, the ability to harness knowledge and research as well as individual talent is key.

If facilities managers are to overcome the barriers of segregation identified all those years ago, and promote a convincing case for “common standards” and “shared values” they must do so on the basis of robust data and informed debate. Opinions alone, no matter how well grounded in personal experience, will never carry the day.

Jane BellFacilities editorial team 1983-1990