FM : THE EMERGING CAREER

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FM THE EMERGING CAREER

• by
• Dennis Beitz
• November 1998

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What does a 7 billion FM market in Australia
mean for us, and how do we realise our full
potential?
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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• The successful facility manager needs the
  imagination to see the future, the ability to
  ensure that FM is on the boardroom agenda, and
  the power to make it happen.

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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• Strategic or goal-driven deployment of people and
  assets is vital to reaching corporate goals.
• But still, not all executives see value of the
  strategic use of facility management.

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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• The successful facility manager needs the power
  to effect change and the imagination to foresee
  the consequences of change.

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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• Three roles which constitute the management
  agenda for FM
• Managing the mission
• Managing the business
• Managing the assets

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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• The facility manager claims a comparative
  advantage over his generalist peers.
• His challenge is to turn this advantage into real
  power to influence the organisation.

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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• The potential is to place FM on the boardroom
  agenda
• The alternative is to create a neo-professional
  ghetto

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A MANAGEMENT PROFESSION

• THE TECHNOCRACY
• The question facing the facility manager in
  both the private and public sectors is do you
  want to be a technocrat or a policy maker ?

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CREDIBILITY

• Corporate facilities are the tangible reality of
  the corporations plans by its employees.
• Creating top management understanding is the next
  big frontier of FM.
• FM is about achieving the goals of the
  organisation.

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ACHIEVING ORGANISATIONAL GOALS

• The meaning of a company cannot be found in its
  annual report.
• Without a mission statement disasters will
  continue to happen.

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ACHIEVING ORGANISATIONAL GOALS

• The currency of boardroom debate and corridors of
  power policy making is the manipulation of power
  and imagination.

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ACHIEVING ORGANISATIONAL GOALS

• If a formal mission statement does not exist then
  the facility manager must invent an informal one
  for himself.
• Economic criteria are no substitute for knowing
  the reason why.

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MANAGING THE BUSINESS OF THE ORGANISATION

• A common thread of agreement
• FM should not be thought of simply as a support
  activity.
• FM must demonstrate its relevance as a core
  activity to the business performance of the
  organisation.

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FM WITH ATTITUDE !

• Traditional building professionals have
  disintegrated into specialisations.
• Facility managers integrate the work of the
  disparate building professionals to give their
  organisation competitive advantage.

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FM WITH ATTITUDE !

• The most important thing that facility managers
  do is integrate these wide ranging activities.
• This is a challenge which requires a
  sophisticated level of understanding of the
  technical issues.

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FM WITH ATTITUDE !

• This is why so many building and design
  professionals are seduced into the emerging new
  career.

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FM WITH ATTITUDE !

• Most facility managers are basically practical
  and hands-on practitioners.
• Their most difficult task - to understand the
  vagaries of the organisations management system.

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FM WITH ATTITUDE !

• Peter Drucker
• Academic management thinking is an uneasy hybrid
  of science, mathematics, psychology, social
  history and economics.

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FM WITH ATTITUDE !

• Peter Drucker
• Management theory is not to find the truth, but
  simply to define how to make money or use
  resources effectively.

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MEASURING FM PERFORMANCE

• Facility managers are plagued by benchmarking
  targets.
• In any business plan, that which can be measured
  will always tend to have more prominence than
  that which can only be articulated.

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MEASURING FM PERFORMANCE

• As a support activity, what is usually measured
  are the inputs
• As a core part of the business what needs to be
  measured are the improved outputs

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FM ASSET MANAGEMENT

• In managing assets there are only business
  decisions and corporate value decisions.
• Understanding of the business plan will be a
  pre-requisite to enable economic rationalism to
  be challenged by a facility manager.

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BUILDING COMPLEXITY

• Stability is no longer the name of the game.
• Change is the name of the game !

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BUILDING COMPLEXITY

• Within increasingly complex buildings, increasing
  the levels of sophistication became
  counter-productive.

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THE FUTURE OF FM

• Three issues
• 1. The speed at which the concepts have
  travelled...
• 2. The varying levels of maturity stability in
  the market...
• 3. The need to keep our options open about what
  FM can be...

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THE FUTURE OF FM

• Business should not be losing control of vital
  elements of infrastructure that cannot be
  delivered by others in the same cultural style.

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THE FUTURE OF FM

• We must rightsource not outsource
• We must have ownership not partnership

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THE FUTURE OF FM

• The emerging FM career has two parallel paths
  -
• the in-house facility manager
• and the consultancy
• A synergy between the two is required

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CASE STUDY

• Powerlink Queensland new corporate facilities
  - an FM success story.