The Change in Building and Facilities Management

A change from the workplace as we know it to the future worker is here in the facility management space. Considering recent development of how workers perform their duties from the comfort of their home is making companies rethink their approach to Facilities Management. This significant shift in the workplace begs to re-engineer the future of the facilities within the workspace.

With the recent catalyst of the Covid-19 pandemic, companies have to come to terms with answers to specific questions like – Do companies need Facility Managers and the facility itself? How should companies approach Facilities Management?

To get the best productivity from staff members, companies now have the responsibility of working hand-in-hand with Facility Managers to shape this significant shift from the norm. Already, there are apparent trends that different companies are adopting to achieve their goals and objectives. This is evident in how workers go about their work remotely and the change implementation for better results. 

Valuable Insights and Trends Shaping Facilities Management

Companies are constantly looking for ways to not only increase productivity and work efficiencies but also to attract workers back to the office, their workspace. As a result of the reduction in the use of facilities, companies are also looking for ways to reduce ongoing operational costs. Knowing the new dynamic, here are some insights helpful in achieving these objectives and reshaping the facility management industry.

1. Facility Management Integration

Integrating facilities management between the facilities themselves and the teams that use it has become a fundamental way of thinking. This includes catering for the coordination and comprehensive care of the workplace. With integration in facility management, these integrations can help companies consolidate costs, increase service specifications and streamline vendor offerings. 

Integration of facility management also caters for agile guidance directly compared to the strict standards previously in operation. The realisation that implementing strict guidelines over a broad portfolio is complex. However, this can set the agile guidance ball in motion. Agile guidance caters for the needs of each of the tenants or company's needs, and in the way, teams operate with their silos - which breads a strong culture.

Cost control will always be central to a facilities operation; therefore, a simplification of facility management will provide competitive rates amongst vendors without stripping out value. These integrations help to strip off areas that are not useful to the organisation while managing the needs of a workplace.

2. Use of Technology

Technology is globalising and providing several benefits to the workplace. In general, technology is an excellent tool for analysing and drawing out helpful information for making important decisions. In choosing and managing the facility, the tenant or company needs to understand their own needs and how their facility can meet those needs. 

Using technology advancement to measure and determine what the company needs is a critical component of Facility Management. Using technology tools like a Building Management System (BMS), smart sensors and IoT solutions, these popular technology initiatives are increasingly required in Facilities Management. Companies working with the Facility Manager can glean data to improve the workplace while cutting off unnecessary space and optimise the use of facilities. 

Furthermore, companies are more open to automation processes of everyday tasks. When it comes to Facility Management, automation and digitalisation is a broad topic. Linking the different digital elements like support ticketing, motion-sensor lightening, and others simplifies the facilities operations and make cost-cutting easier. 

Similarly, decentralisation the workplace continues evolving by providing workers with the opportunity to work from anywhere - at any time. With technology solutions like cloud solutions, the uptake of online meetings, workers can now collaborate from all over the world. 

To accommodate these new changes in Facilities Management, we also have to jump into the bandwagon to keep up with the digitalisation ride. With these integrations, companies can better make decisions with the cloud insight solutions to determine which facility it needs and let go of redundancies in real-time.

3. Work Experience

The future of workplaces plays a significant on the culture and workers experience. Through technology advancement and globalisation of the workplace, companies are now working better in connected spaces against isolated spaces. The experience for workers focuses more on space fusion in the corporate environment against working in silos. This is to foster a better way of sharing information and data across teams. 

To optimise resources, the option of trading owned and controlled spaces for a co-working decentralisation solution is now available. This aims to optimise the use of facility space and lease (or co-lease) out those not in active use to cut down costs and possibly generate revenue for the organisation.

This repositioning aims to cater for the worker's experience in direct comparison to general facility design. It places user experience over the location of the facility. This worker-tailored solution focuses on the worker's individual experience over the universal offerings. This redefines the workplace to focus more on how the workers perform their tasks and achieve their work goals.

4. Reliance on Workplace Data

Moving away from the strict standards to agile guidance provides a change in governance. Using Facility Management software, also known as a Building Management Systems (BMS), makes it easier to make the best decision for tactical and strategic purposes.

Using any of the various available BMS's enables a deep dive into the space utilisation data, assets management, compliance alerts, reporting, and communications will help to shape the commercial space decisions of the company. Using this, companies can now interpret valuable data via AI and machine learning that collect, analyse and help comfort without the high cost in the workplace. 

This also sees the rise of appropriate technological investment for data collecting infrastructure, operational assets, lifecycles and new use cases for space. This futuristic view of Facilities Management enables a confident decision-making opportunity for organisations and the Facility Manager.

5. Work Flexibility and Team Distribution

An obvious catalyst for the continuous change is the shift towards working remotely. Companies are now either working as a distributed team or fully remote. Others prefer to joggle schedules while being a part of the broader team.

The future of facility management is digital. This growing in-house need for an Internet of Things (IoT) provides a much-needed solution for managing flexible spaces and schedules, hot desks, and other agile office elements. This helps to accommodate the increasing complexity that comes with juggling the different work schedules of workers. 

Conclusion

Companies are experiencing a significant shift in the workplace and in their office facilities. The key objective is to enable the continuous blending of technology and valuable insights to create a greater experience for the worker and a holistic feeling of the workspace where they feel a sense of belonging.