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FACILITIES MANAGEMENT SKILLS INTERVENTION – ASSIST IN ACHIEVING OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE AND REDUCED COST

Situation

Facilities Management is a management discipline that concerns itself not merely with the management of premises, but with the services, people and facilities those buildings contain.  It is a concern that runs from the initial design of the building to day to day maintenance, and has as its constant aim the use of manpower, energy and related resources as intelligently and cost effectively as possible. Facilities Management formally arrived in South Africa in the mid 1990’s, but its growth has been slow. 

During the transitional political changes, corporate South Africa became introspective and developed a desire for core business focus and the outsourcing drive began. As a result of this outsourcing initiative the local FM industry began to be defined.

The initial growth was primarily focused from within the large financial and property environment, but has penetrated the industrial, chemical, health and educational sectors.  The anticipated Government initiatives towards privatization have been slow which has delayed the growth of Facilities Management in this sector significantly.  In early 2000, however, a number of government Facilities Management contracts were awarded to the private sector. 
The question is: Were facilities in South Africa managed prior to 1994?  The answer is an obvious “yes”; but they were managed differently.

In the past, the support function of an organization, together with the management of that function, was generally performed in-house.  Many corporate companies owned significant property asset portfolios and used a large amount of this space for housing their own functions, which lead them to having a Facilities Management division to represent the internal tenant.  The asset management, or in those days the property division, acted as landlord and rented the space in bulk to the facilities division.  Custom services were added as per the needs of the internal user and “rented” to the business.

But the focus on core business allowed the non-core support functions to be outsourced. 
This also lead to many of the core functions that currently fall under the umbrella of FM to being controlled by several internal divisions i.e HR, Finance, Properties and thus a single responsible entity was not created. 

This opened up opportunities for restructuring the relationship between the property, facilities and business users.  Single point outsourcing facilitated the translation of service delivery to a single company who then had the option to either render the service themselves or subcontract it in.  Over the years various models have been used to render facilities services.  Either way, however, the service delivery process to “bulk users” has been professionalized and moved from what is termed “out of the basement” and into the boardroom

Problem

Traditionally the people appointed to administer and manage non-core services such as mailroom, maintenance, cleaning, security staff, to name but a few of the 80 services considered to be non-core, were and in some cases still are, Personal Assistants and Secretaries who supervise employees engaged to do mundane routine services considered to be a “necessary evil” or “bitter” spend for the core business.

In other companies, Facilities Management services are managed by HR Management – the rationale being that the service delivery is by the human resources for human resources or the Finance Departments whose focus is to drive down cost.  As a result staff members’ valued and dedicated job functions becomes diluted, and frustrating, by having to become responsible for aspects of FM which are on the opposite of the spectrum as the latter’s core job function. 

Being responsible for this “hot potato” called Facilities Management is not a comfortable situation for both HR and Finance Managers and Administrators and as a result, there are many employees in those organizations who lack formal Facilities Management training and insight into smarter structured systems and processes such as helpdesk solutions to manage quality and simply because FM is not their primary focus and strength.

Whilst organizations who own portfolios of buildings have more defined and sophisticated systems in place to manage non-core services, there are many companies who fail to see or do not understand the value of defined processes and measured solutions for this highly underrated business expense. 

South African companies are already beginning to feel the impact of the recession and this will place even more pressure on Facilities Managers to be innovative in leveraging physical, financial and human resources to reduce spend.

It then comes as no surprise that the FM department is often the leanest team who can seldom be spared for training and development, which limit their exposure, and make them less effective than those skilled employees working for Facilities Management companies.

Implications

Companies derive less value from these employees by not investing in their training and development.  When visiting any business, the first impression people have of the organization and what it stands for is their experience from the time the clients arrange for parking and access to the building, to the time they leave.  Unskilled resources can be inadvertently detrimental to the reputation and image of an organization.

On a day-to-day level, effective facilities management provides a safe and efficient working environment, which is essential to the performance of any business – whatever its size and scope.

How does shortage of FM skills affect Government

Problem

Government owns a very high percentage of buildings that municipalities have to manage and programs are in place to keep these buildings operational.  Across the many sectors of government, there are buildings situated in under-developed areas that are often low grade buildings thus receiving even less attention from a budget perspective.  This does not mean that budget isn’t available, to the contrary, often staff do not know how to motivate, acquire and/or spend the necessary funds to successfully manage these facilities.

Transformation and infrastructure is a focus area for government, particularly in under-developed areas.  Over and above this there are buildings that need to be managed and there are initiatives in place to work with members of the community as stakeholders and in so doing build capacity, participation, and a sense of pride to protect these buildings.

Recently the City of Cape Town declared on radio that for every R3.00 spent on building facilities, R2.00 is spent on repairs due to vandalism and this holds true for the less privileged communities.  There is a huge need to address the lack of knowledge and creation of a sense of ownership in impoverished areas and in so doing increase competencies, create jobs to achieve sustainability.

Implications

Lack of follow-through on some programs/initiative designed has made people wary of government’s true intent underpinning such programs to political agendas and hence progress has been slow and often unsustainable.

From a commercial perspective, often procurement structures within government do not provide flexibility for efficient building management and this makes the management of such facilities extremely frustrating and difficult.  Lack of knowledge of the organization’s policies and processes exacerbates this problem over and above the skills required to operate strategically to achieve the organization’s goals and objectives.

Needs

According to the British Institute of Facilities Managers, it is confirmed that - Successful organizations in future will approach FM as an integral part of their strategic plan. Those organizations that treat FM as a ‘commodity overhead’ will be at a significant strategic disadvantage. 

Facilities Management services in their entirety have a direct effect on customer comfort levels and their ability to perform in their jobs.  Rather than being task driven, FM needs to be solutions focused. 

Misalignment often creeps in due to lack of integration and “bigger picture thinking”.  Eg. If the night cleaning team is accused of stealing, assign the security company to shadow the cleaners as part of their shutdown procedures at night.  The solution is therefore preventative and not reactive thereby giving the client peace of mind.

Facilities Management is strategic and thereby asset management throughout its life cycle, risk management, and alignment of non-core services to the business’s key objectives is vital.  In order to achieve this, resources need to be skilled and have an understanding of best practice and assist to ensure that these benefits could be derived for the company. 

In a very demanding and often thankless business environment Facilities Managers are required to have the following skills to realized value to core-business.

These skills are necessary to manage the core FM team and contractors as well as contribute to the business management team for whom the Facility Manager would align support systems to assist in achieving the goals of the business. 

In order for FM Supervisory and Administrative staff to be effective and productive they too need to be equipped with the following skills and behavioral competencies, and more so, up- skilling:

Although the larger majority of people providing various FM support services lack formal training in FM, one cannot underestimate the inherent knowledge and exposure these employees get whilst doing the job.  These skills amongst others are problem solving skills, customer service and on the job experience in specific tasks. This knowledge acquired in the workplace is important and forms the foundation of the training process.

In addressing Government’s challenge/needs to mature the under developed communities, it is encouraging to learn of local government’s initiative of community participation and related forums to engender pride and sense of ownership.  It is believed that that this is not a shift/handover of responsibility but rather joint ownership and participation.  The challenge however is that training, mentorship and systems alignment should be intensive rather than watered down for successful implementation.  Participation and effectiveness will accelerate when results/success can be measured and demonstrated. 

Skills Intervention

Afroteq Facilities Management is a company who not only practice Facilities Management but design and plan workspaces to meet the demands of the ever changing business environment.  Furthermore, we provide consulting services to those companies who need to have a thorough understanding of the total cost of ownership of their Facilities Management Services and provide support where specific skills are not available within that organization.

Shortage of skilled resources in the FM sector, has lead Afroteq Academy to developed 7 short courses for Facilities Managers and Administrators to enhance and formalize training in this diverse discipline.  The courses offered are:

These courses equip the learners with best practice, templates to use in the workplace and simulation in the classroom to entrench the knowledge transfer. Further to this, we have tailor made courses to assist government in their skills alignment initiatives and worked with specific departments to establish unit standards by which these resources can be assessed and be accredited. 

Facilities Management is about skill and having the right attitude for the job. WE TEACH BOTH SUCCESSFULLY!

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