Four competing futures for facility managementBev Nutt
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315670
Four generic FM "trails" to the future are explored. These trails follow the four types of resource that are basic to the FM function; the financial resource trail (business), the human resource trail (people), the physical resource trail (property) and the knowledge resource trail (information). These trail are considered in turn with speculations on the opportunities and risks that each competing future might hold. The paper concludes with nine strategic positions from which a rich, robust and diverse variety of viable futures for FM can be developed.
Facility management: future opportunities, scope and impactOliver Jones
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315689
UK's PFI (Private Finance Initiative) in the public sector has introduced radical innovations in the ways that new facilities and ongoing support services are financed. Fundamental changes in the concepts of business accommodation and service delivery are also under way, in which property is coming to be viewed as a business service rather than as a financial asset, helping to free core business capital while reducing the costs and increasing the quality of support service delivery. The diversification of the rules governing the property market, coupled with an increasingly sophisticated range of outsourcing arrangements, promises to provide a much greater variety and more flexible set of business support environments for the future.
The future of workspace managementWes McGregor
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315698
In the near future work will no longer be a place, but a range of activities that can be conducted virtually anywhere and at any time. This paper gives a comprehensive view of the critical management issues that need to be considered when providing a responsive and effective human support service to underpin a wide variety of transient work patterns, undertaken at different venues and at dispersed locations. In the future, facilities management may need to move nearer to the core of an organisation's business in order to support the "free-style" deployment of its human resources to working practices that are increasingly space and time flexible.
Corporate commuter management: the wider perspective for facilities managementAshley Dabson
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315706
This paper summarises Compaq's corporate commuter management experience in facilitating the transport of its human resource to its site at Worton Grange in Reading, UK. This edge of town, 20-acre site was selected for Digital's UK headquarters some 18 years ago, largely because of its accessibility by road. Since this acquisition much has changed, culminating in Compaq's take-over of Digital in 1998. The paper reflects on these changes and the basis of Compaq's Worton Grange commuter plan. It summarises the experience gained and provides key pointers to the future management of the journey to work.
Property portfolio dynamics: the flexible management of inflexible assetsVirginia Gibson
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315715
Resource flexibility is increasingly vital to meet the ever changing needs of organisations. Property is, by its nature, a highly inflexible resource. It needs to become not only more physically flexible, but also more functionally and financially flexible. The paper argues that core property, which is functionally flexible, should be supported by peripheral property, which is financially flexible. A framework for evaluating the flexibilities of a property portfolio is proposed as a basis for assessing when and where flexibility is required.
Adaptability potentials for buildings and infrastructure in sustainable citiesDavid Kincaid
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315724
A significant shift in the demand for buildings is under way due to IT innovations, new working practices and tightening of the environmental agenda. This is both reducing the extent and altering the nature of the demand for space. The paper explores how existing buildings may be adapted to support new needs and how new buildings may be designed to support a variety of uses and functions. It concludes that a degree of physical redundancy, use ambiguity and flexibility, within a permissive and dynamic regulatory system, could lead to a more adaptable and sustainable future for facilities, buildings and infrastructure.
Intellectual capital: future competitive advantage for facility managementPeter McLennan
2000 Facilities
doi: 10.1108/02632770010315742
In the office sector, facility management serves two divergent concerns: the needs of the customer as the facility owner/investor and the needs of the customer as the facility user. This places FM in a potentially powerful position. It should exploit its intellectual capital, realising the unique strategic value of the FM knowledge base, linking, as it does, the knowledge of physical facility performance with the knowledge of business objectives, operations and support services. The generic knowledge chain that links these two divergent areas of concern is described, highlighting the critical importance of the business brief, the operational brief and the design brief in the future exploitation of the facility knowledge base.