Future FMs: Are the signs already there?

One of the most hotly debated topics in the Facilities industry at the moment is the question of how we get young people to choose a career in FM. Well we could try answering that question about the future, by taking a closer look at the past. Specifically: our own pasts.

Here's another interesting question: what sort of young person would choose to work in FM?  It sounds tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a serious question. Whilst most FMs will freely admit they fell into the industry, as result of chance, luck, bad-karma, etc, at some point or another they all made the choice to stay. The first question: Why?  The second: With the benefit of hindsight, could we have predicted that they would? Were the signs there all along?

Should I stay or should I go (now)

I am an FM who chose to stay. In this blog I'm going to take you on a jouney into my deepest, darkest, past. Think of this as either as a journey of self-discovery, or if you prefer, an accident investigation.  Cue the wobbly screen effects.........

I'm turning back the clock to the early 1990’s.  Thatcher is still running the country, Rave music is on the rise and we are all about to discover that Robin Hood was actually an American.  Oh, and a scrawny fellow called Jason is starting his teens: the beard (and glasses) are a decade away. Ever safety conscious (even then), he uses enough hair product to make his head  impact-resistant.

As a kid I think I was (relatively) normal.  Well, I wasn’t (exceptionally) weird. I mean, I wasn't still hanging out with my imaginary friends at secondary school and I didn't sit around quietly pulling the wings off of butterflies. Outwardly at least, there seemed no sign that I was destined for a career in FM.  Actually, there was no real sign that I was heading in any particular direction at all.....  Maybe that was the first sign.

Lacks direction.......

If you’d asked the pre-beard Jason what he wants to do when he’s older, he’ll confidently tell you that he wants to work in an office.  He’s going to spend the rest of the decade figuring out that an office is a location, not a career. 

Looking back, I don’t think I wanted to work in an office, I just didn’t want to do manual work, education, healthcare, the forces, or any of the other options that seemed available.  Mind you, none of the traditional office careers appealed either. I didn’t mind accounting, sales, marketing, etc, I just don’t think I wanted to commit to one thing the rest of my life.  I guess somehow, I just had the feeling that, in the meritocracy of the commercial world, I’d figure it out somehow.  In a sense I did.

When he sets his mind to it........

Lack of direction probably wasn’t the only sign. I do know some people who describe me using the words “academic” and “intellectual” but scoot forward a handful of years to my GCSEs and I have the exam results to prove that I'm neither.

I took my GCSEs in 94 and my grades were straight across the middle of the spectrum (predominantly B's).  For years, my school reports had read “could try harder” and my exam results were no exception. But still, they were probably better than I deserved and many teachers expressed surprise at just how well I’d done, considering the effort I’d been putting in. These days I think of it as an early example of my possessing one of the most useful skills in an FM’s toolkit: the ability to pull a rabbit from a hat when it really matters. 

You see, when it came to exam time, I figured out that the things I would be tested on were actually all in the syllabus. I took the view that I wouldn’t worry too much about  the stuff I knew reasonably well, I’d focus on my areas of weakness and I’d pretty much disregard all non-syllabus stuff, so that it didn’t take up valuable short-term memory space.  I might not have worked hard in the run up to the exams, but my revision plan was actually pretty tightly focussed for rapid up-skilling in a short space of time.  It meant that, although I didn’t get the top results, in most cases I got at least one grade higher than predicted. Knowing how to prioritise limited resources in order to achieve a result is essential for an FM. 

Asks a lot of questions.....

Those who’ve only ever known me as an adult, where I’m renowned as a voracious seeker of knowledge, skills and qualifications, are often amazed to learn that I mostly found school boring.

At school, I couldn’t see how the things I learned would be of use to me. With hindsight, I think some of my teachers struggled to convey those practical uses to me.  It wasn’t because they didn’t understand it, it was just that they had never actually used their skills in anger, and lacking practical experience to fall back on, their teaching just seemed to lack depth. So when my teachers tried to impart their knowledge, I tended to probe and challenge it, to see how much they really knew.  I’m sure it was very irritating for some of them, although those who really knew their onions, never seemed to mind. 

This willingness to challenge an expert about their subject matter and put their knowledge to the test can be irritating in a teenager, but it can make adults extremely effective and I think schools should do more to encourage it.  As FMs we deal with experts all the time and we need to level the field, making sure that what they say actually makes sense and is not just an attempt to blind us with science is incredibly important.

Should focus on academic subjects.......

Another reason I found school a little boring, was the pressure applied on me to take academic subjects:  yes I could do them, but I would have probably found practical subjects far more engaging. 

As a boy growing up at a time when there were only three TV channels, I spent a great deal of time playing with Lego, putting together Airfix kits,  making tree-houses and generally doing practical things.  But a few years later, all my teachers saw was a child capable of achieving academic results. It was implied to me that if I could achieve academic results, practical subjects were in some way inferior.  It’s not a view I subscribe to at all.  I think my life might have turned out very differently indeed with a couple of decent results in Design & Technology related subjects.

That said, I never lost was my ability to use tools and generally do things of a practical nature as the staff at my local DIY store will attest.  I can safely say that, a willingness to get one’s hands dirty and an ability to handle a screwdriver the right way round, are also very useful FM skills to have.

What’s the story?

So what has this trip down memory lane taught me? It’s taught me that if we want to attract young people into FM, we could do worse than starting with those young people who might end up getting into it later in life anyway: Good all-rounders who know how to work smarter, rather than harder. The kind of young people who aren’t sure what they want to do, but who enjoy doing practical things and have the cionfidence to challenge their experts. Some of these young people, might well be the FMs of the future.

So........  Having given my story; my challenge to my FM colleagues out there, is to share theirs.  There’s a comment section below, please use it to tell me your story and let’s see if between us we can identify some of the FMs of tomorrow.

Women In FM - An Inspiration to us all

It was a day that will stay with me for a very long time.  The message I posted on twitter that afternoon was short and simple, but I think it managed to capture exactly what everyone in the room was thinking. It was re-tweeted a number of times within minutes. It read simply this;  “I have a lot of new heroes today. Feel very humble and very inspired”.

On Wednesday 14th November 2012, I attended the “Lets Inspire” conference hosted by the Women In FM (WIFM) special Interest Group.   It was a day which promised much and delivered more.  This blog is not a report about the conference as such – that is something which others have already done far better than I ever could (I’ve included some links at the end of the post), but the conference did inspire me and this blog post is my way of sharing some of that experience with those who were unable to get a place. I like to think of it as paying it forward.

At least I didn’t have to shave my legs to get in

So let me address the obvious question first - how did I, a man, get to be at the WIFM conference?

Understandably, it was something I got asked quite a lot on the day.  The somewhat casual anecdote “by the time the message came through that skirts were optional, I’d already finished shaving one leg.........”  did get a few laughs, but the truth is much simpler: Whilst the members of WIFM are predominantly women, the group is really about promoting the FM industry and supporting diversity and inclusion within it; the fact that I’m a white male is not actually held against me........ that said, there is something of a running joke about the early days of FM which seem to have been populated almost entirely by hairy engineers called Geoff......... but I digress.

A far more interesting question is why did I, a man, want to be at the WIFM conference?  Well I’ll admit that the fantastic line-up was part of the draw.  It was great opportunity to hear from some wonderful speakers and to learn some fantastic new skills, but actually, it’s those WIFMs themselves that really draw me in.

It’s a fact that the FM industry is predominantly male, but ask anyone who the most influential people in the industry are and they’ll probably reel off the names of more women than men.  Some people might say it’s because they stand out more, but I personally believe it’s because they do more to promote and support the industry than many of their male counterparts. In an industry where promoting your cause and championing what you do is an essential skill, they’ve had to be best in the face of adversity, discrimination and sometimes outright hostility.  Throughout the morning and early afternoon, speaker after speaker got up on stage and reminded me why, when I go looking for FM role models, I so often find women.

The speakers on the day provided plenty of the inspiration that was promised.  A whole host of personal stories as well ideas and discussions on motivation, engagement, communication, inclusivity, confidence, coaching, etc, etc, left me feeling like the owner of a brand new toolkit and a bunch of fresh ideas.  I was inspired, but the best was still to come.

  What makes a hero?

As the afternoon wore on, two particular women took to the stage and made a roomful of people re-evaluate their lives. 

The first of these women was Diana Man, who lost both legs and the fingers of her right hand to meningococcal septicaemia five years ago.  I won’t describe her story in detail as there is really no way I can do it justice.

The second woman was Ismena Clout, who having been treated for breast cancer in 2004 was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in 2010.  Again, Ismena’s story is best told by her.

What I do want to share is that both of these women received a standing ovation.  It was partly for their courage, partly for their strength and partly for their amazing positivity in the face of adversity, but it wasn't just that. The thing that really inspired me was the amazing way both women took their experiences and made a conscious decision that it wasn’t going to stop them from following their dreams, aiming higher, and achieving more.  Their incredible success is testament to just how well they’ve done that, with Diana becoming a presenter at the Paralympics (and currently training for the Paralympics dressage in 2016) and Ismena becoming the Chairman of the BIFM .

The word hero can be used a little too freely sometimes, but for both these women it’s entirely appropriate. Their outright refusal to settle with simply staying positive, when they could be aiming higher had me looking in the metaphorical mirror and asking myself “so what’s your excuse?”

More about the conference

For more info about the Women In FM “Let’s Inspire” conference, I recommend you take a look at the Cathy Hayward's and Martin Read’s blog posts below.

Inspired thought at the WIFM conference Cathy Hayward - Magenta Associates

Inspiration Stations Martin Read - FM World

People ARE Facilities Management

Facilities are workplaces, buildings, installations........ premises. As Facilities Managers it can be tempting to think that our job is to look after these facilities. But is it? Some would say that our real job is to manage the people that look after them.

Over the past few weeks, it’s seemed like almost everything I’ve been involved in has served to remind me about the importance of people in FM.  Finally I felt so inspired, I decided to post a blog on the subject.  As a colleague of mine recently put it; this is a people business.  They were right of course, but when I sent this statement out on Twitter, I got an even better response which I couldn’t help but steal for my blog post title: People ARE Facilities Management. 

Everybody’s human

So, what started me thinking about the role of people in FM? Well I’ll get to that in a minute. First I want to share an anecdote. 

We recently had a visit at work from one of our top VIPs.  It’s a pretty rare event – the last being about three years back.  I’m talking about someone so far removed from a mere FM that I’d stand a better chance of getting an audience with God. 

Naturally, we wanted to put on a good show, so I assembled the whole team for a hotel-style walkthrough of the schedule and locations that might be visited to ensure readiness.  They really enjoyed the process and went at the task with relish. I thought it was a great success.
Afterwards, my cleaning supervisor took me to one side; concerned that I might be worried about the impending VIP visit.  “Don’t worry”, she told me, “she’s actually a lovely person and is always really nice to me”.  Being somewhat taken aback I enquired further.  It turns out, that this god-like executive often chatted to her from across the globe whilst she popped in to clear the video conference room between meetings.  And in fact, she made a point of talking to her during the visit too.  I think it’s a wonderful story and one I absolutely love to share, because it shows that whoever or whatever we are in work, at the end of the day we are all still human beings.

Back to basics

So where did my recent interest start? Well it started with a contract renewal.  We felt that there was some room for improvement with the existing service and decided to speak to some alternative providers.  We got an interesting spread of responses.  Some talked about cost, some about management, some impressed us with gadgets, but the ones that really fired our imaginations were those who talked about people.  The arguments were compelling; they would guarantee a better delivery of service by using the tried-and-tested  technique of working with their people and treating them well. They would encourage them, train them, share the vision with them, respect them and above all, ensure that they understood that their roles were pivotal to achieving success. It got us thinking; could it really be that easy? And we realised yes, it could.

The smallest cog in the wheel is usually the most important

What these suppliers were hinting at, was that it’s those who actually provide the service who are fundamental to its successful delivery, not those of us who sit behind desks making decisions or attending meetings.  In fact, whilst we attend meetings to make decisions about how things get done – other people are out there getting on with getting them done.  An important step in becoming a manager is the realisation that, regardless of how it might appear on the org-chart, you are generally much less vital to the day-to-day running of the organisation than anyone further down the heirarchy than you.  If your receptionist phones in sick, it disrupts your entire business; visitors don’t get the right instructions, vital calls are missed or badly handled and someone gets dragged from what they should be doing to provide cover.  On the other hand, if you phone in sick, the meetings just get postponed.

The role of the manager

I don’t think of myself as a great manager of people;  I only have a couple of years experience at it, so this post is not a "how-to" guide to management, as much as it is my thoughts on how good management is about recognising the role of people. I would say that I do recognise the importance of great management and I try my best to provide this to my team. I'm fortunate enough to have had some excellent managers in my time and have some first hand experience of great managers at work. Also thanks to my employers and the BIFM, I've been exposed to some great training and met a number of inspirational management guru’s and thought-leaders, whose experiences I've tried to draw on as much as possible. 

I see the role of the manager as being to get the very best out of those who work for them: to motivate and inspire and to provide them with the tools and resources they need to do the job in the best way possible.  In short, it’s our job to do what our people need, not the other way around.

It‘s also the role of the manager, to help their staff understand why we do the job and what we are trying to achieve. It was only a year or so ago, that I first heard the phrase “Management By Walking Around”, but it’s a technique that I’ve grown to love.  Talking the time to regularly connect and talk with your staff and contractors even for very short durations, gives you the opportunity not only to let them know that your time is not more valuable to you than they are and that you respect them as people, but it also gives you the opportunity to share and reinforce your vision – reminding people why it is important that we do things a certain way and getting their buy-in is fundamental to getting them done successfully.

The full circle

So going back to where this blog started.  Our VIP visit came and went and it was a roaring success.  Afterwards people said to me that I’d done a good job, but the truth is: I didn’t really do much at all.  Having cleared my diary to be on hand to support any emergencies or disasters, I spent much of the day twiddling my thumbs (metaphorically).  The reason for the success was the way the team came together. They all worked extremely hard on the day and in the run-up to it, to be in the right place at the right time, to ensure preparations were made and details were taken care of. In fact, if I’d have phoned in sick, I’m positive it would have still gone well. 

And what was my role in this? Quite simply to bring them together in the first place. To share my vision and help them do what they needed to do. And finally at the end of the day, to let them know just how well they’d done it and how proud of them I felt. And now, I’m letting the world know too.

SLAve to convention

Conventional FM wisdom tells us that we should manage our client/supplier relationships with SLAs, but maybe some of us would be better off ditching them altogether.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs for short) are an agreement between the customer and supplier about the extent, the quality or the speed with which a service is provided; 90% callout within 4-hours is a commonly used example.

In theory, SLAs are a way for the customer to make it clear to the supplier what standards they expect (that’s the Service Level part) and for the supplier to confirm that those standards can be delivered (that’s the Agreement part).  Measuring how well the SLA is achieved enables both parties to be clear about whether the service being provided is meeting expectations; this in turn helps the supplier to prioritise resources and actions to help ensure the customer gets what they wanted. That’s the theory anyway.

The trouble is; I don’t really buy into it. 

Stick to carrots

One of the big issues I have with SLAs is that they are often written into service agreements; effectively they become glorified “get out” clauses, to enable customers to terminate suppliers who fail to meet the mark.

Of course I’m not saying that having the flexibility to break of relations with a supplier who is seriously underperforming is a bad thing, but I wonder if the approach is a little short-sighted: human nature dictates that if you are going to give someone a stick to beat you with, you make that stick as small as possible. 

Does the use of SLAs actually encourage us to strive for mediocrity rather than success?  Remember that agreement part of the SLA?  Well it often seems to me that suppliers are reluctant to agree to SLAs that they couldn’t easily meet. For example, let’s go back to the 90% callout within 4-hours example cited at the beginning of this blog.  I work in Berkshire. I’d happily place a wager on the fact that in 4 hours, I could be in Swansea, Manchester, or maybe even France, but the SLA would have me believe that just getting to my office from their's (which probably isn't in Manchester by the way) in the same timeframe is some kind of indicator of successful service provision.........  So does that really drive performance in the way I’d like it to?

Not that suppliers get all the blame here.  Realistically, the service provider could probably manage 90% callout in 2-hours, but if the price of failure is losing the contract, you can’t really be suprised if they choose to play it safe. Perhaps the better approach is to prefer the carrot to the stick.  I suspect we prefered incentives to penalties, then service providers would be more willing to accept  challenging targets and this would drive better service.   

Sample size

One of the other concerns I have with SLAs is sample size.  SLA achievement data is supposed to be representative of the service performance, but for statistical data to be useful, it needs to come from a decent sized sample.

My career to date has always been in client-side (in-house) FM; I’m generally a buyer, rather than provider, of services. The supplier relationships I’ve had have been small in comparison to say, for example, large TFM relationships. The truth is, that in my area of operations, many of the standard issue SLAs fall down as a result of scale.

Let’s say, for example, my vending contractor offers me that 90% callout in 4-hours SLA.  Each month they report 100% success and everyone is happy because they get here so quickly?  Well not quite.

You see the reality is that the machines are quite new. The 100% success rate is actually telling me that they rarely break down, not that the supplier responds quickly. If the machines only break down once a month or so and the SLA is reported every month, there’s really only two ways it can go: 0% success or 100% success. Simply put, the volume of transactions is just too low for the SLA to be a useful indicator of success. Perhaps reporting it over a longer period (say a year) might be better, but I suspect that it would only really work over a much larger contract.

The other thing I really need to ask myself is, if they always get here in 4-hours anyway, should I really be focussing my energies on an element of the service that has room for improvement?

Choose wisely

Despite my opening statement, I’m not actually suggesting we all dispense with our SLAs, but I do think that both customers and suppliers need to give much more careful consideration to what their SLAs are doing for them if they want them to be effective.  Measure what is important to the relationship: use SLAs to drive positive success by measure the areas you want to improve. Don’t just measure what everyone else is measuring; don’t just be a SLAve to convention.

Worth a thousand words?

Being good at communicating information to other people is an important skill for Facilities Managers. But when that information is actually quite complicated, communicating it isn’t always easy and a range of techniques needs to be used to ensure the message is delivered effectively.  At times like this I’m reminded of the old adage that one picture, is worth a thousand words.

Processing visual information

I always attend meetings with a notepad and four different, coloured pens. Whilst making notes, I tend to switch pens at random. The strange thing is, although I make notes, I almost never need to refer to them – which is quite fortunate really because my handwriting would put a doctor to shame. People often comment upon this (the coloured pens, not the handwriting) and ask me why. The explanation is quite simple: it’s a similar effect to the memory trick magicians use to remember the relative positions of cards in a deck. They’ll associate each card with a room in a house or different tube station, etc. In the same vein, I’m not so much remembering the information I write, as remembering what colour I wrote it in and where on the page it is written.  That’s because I, like most people, respond more readily to visual stimulation than other forms of communication.

As human beings, we have evolved to process visual information very quickly; Three million years ago it usually made the difference between getting lunch and being lunch. It’s a skill that has stayed with us and as a result the modern world is rich with visual content. From posters to television, from the internet to the apps on our mobile phones, we are very comfortable in getting our information in bright, shiny, primary colours and an effective communicator can take advantage of this principle to help them get their point across.

Understanding relationships

I first discovered the power of communicating information visually a couple of years ago. I was looking after an old building where the air-conditioning was in fairly poor order with a number of faults that needed to be addressed. The problem was exasperated by the fact that, what had been intended as an open plan space, had been subsequently partitioned without much consideration to the environmental systems. This had left Fan Coil Units spanning rooms and wall mounted controls serving units in other rooms.  It was a bit of a mess.To resolve the issue, we commissioned our maintenance company to do a full survey of several floors and come up with a cost for putting it right. The trouble was that even I hadn’t appreciated how much work needed doing. I ended up with a 90 page report (one for each fan coil) and a quote that made the director’s jaws hit the floor.
I was told I’d have to prioritise; do the greatest good first, and programme the rest for the following year. 

This left me with a bit of a dilemma – how to work out where money spent would deliver the greatest value? Fortunately, I had two sets of data I could draw upon to help me: I had quote (which I had asked the supplier to break down for me) and I also had some customer complaint data on a room-by-room basis that I could use as my justification. 

One slight complication though, was the whole open-plan/partitioning issue. Fixing a problem might involve working on more than one room at a time, so it wouldn’t be quite as simple as listing the rooms and listing the cost to fix them. Instead I decided to present the information visually. It looked something like this.

One of the ways using visual methods of communications excels over other forms, is the way in which it allows you to efficiently describe relationships. I colour coded the rooms on a simple traffic light system to show the complaint level and overlaid this with each of the pieces of work showing which areas they would impact and what the costs of that work would be. It took me two whole days to pick through the detail of half-a-dozen floors, but one meeting and ten minutes later, I’d managed to secure a lot more funding than I’d been led to believe was available. You see, seeing it in a visual format, allowed my stakeholders to relate to the data and to understand both the scale of the problem and what they would get for their money.

Visually interesting

Since that first success, I’ve experimented with a lot of different visual communications techniques. I’ll admit they can take a little time to prepare, but if they help get your message across and help you achieve the results you need, then that can be time well spent.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that visual communication can be extremely effective when you present your information in an unusual way. Especially if the way you communicate it helps people relate to what it is. If you can capture someone’s interest, the battle is already half-won. 

The graphic above is a recent favourite of mine.  At heart, it’s actually just a basic bar-graph of an FM budget, but to make it more interesting I’ve cut and pasted it together so that it looks like a building. To reinforce the message I’ve added a couple of trees and cars.  I really like the message that this gives, the fact that everything up to the first floor is the rent is something people can easily relate to without having to know the actual percentages or figures and if you can make it the same shape as your building, people will find it very easy to relate too.

The power of metaphor

I often find myself having to communicate information in stand-up presentations. I used to create very content-heavy PowerPoint slides to accompany my words when I did this, but that all changed when I saw what was probably, the best presentation of my life: It had no words, just three different pictures of dogs.  The speaker pulled up each picture in turn and explained why they were a metaphor for what his department was doing. It was something I’d never seen before and I was immediately sold.

Recently, I used this image in a similar fashion.  I told my assembled industry colleagues that I thought it was the perfect metaphor for Facilities Management: lonely at times, challenging, exhausting, but ultimately, incredibly satisfying and personally rewarding. The whole room nodded in unison.

Don’t tell me, show me.

So next time you need to communicate something complicated to a customer or stakeholder, spare some consideration for using a visual communications method: Remember, one picture really can be worth a thousand words. 

The Sophisticated Customer

One of the most frustrating challenges for anyone in a service industry is the customer who doesn’t really say what they want. How can you be expected to exceed their expectations, when they haven’t clearly articulated what those expectations are? Facilities people face this challenge all the time, but when the shoe is on the other foot, are we any better?

Facilities people are customers too. 

Procurement is a major function of Facilities Management. In small organisations a Facilities Manager might do all their purchasing by themselves. In larger organisation they may be able to draw upon the support of various experts; procurement managers, legal teams, etc.  These experts are a useful resource to the savvy FM, but at the end of the day, their expertise only extends to their subject matter: they can help you write a watertight contract, but they probably have no idea if it delivers the right level of service or not. Making sure that the service meets the requirements of the business is the FM’s job.

So how do we as Facilities professionals ensure that the deal we are being offered is going to deliver exactly what we want it to?  Well personally, I’ve always thought the best way to get exactly what you want, is to start by telling people exactly what you want.

Buying Smart

I first heard the phrase "Sophisticated Customer" from a supplier and I immediately took a liking to it. I think it's the perfect way to describe someone who approaches procurement in a precise and detailed way: someone who buys smart.  Let me explain.

Imagine you want to buy a car.

If you just stroll into the nearest car dealership and announce that you want to buy a car, you could be driving home in anything from a clapped-out ford Fiesta to a shiny new Porsche.  If you don’t have some idea what you’re looking for, the range of options could be confusing to say the least. 

Of course if you’re smart, you’ll think it through before hand; you’ll work out what you need this car to do, what sort of mileage you plan to do, etc, and the friendly salesman will be able to show you some options that don’t leave you having to stick one of the kids in the boot when you're doing the school run. 

However, the sophisticated customer will work out exactly what they want before they step out of the door.  If you’re buying smart, you’ll know what make and model of car you are looking for. You’ll have decided already if it’s got to have alloy wheels and a sunroof and you’ve probably picked out a fetching shade of metallic green.  Basically, you’ve got a specification.
The reason for using a specification is that it enables you to give the details of your dream car to a number of garages and then buy it from the one offering the best deal.  You get exactly what you want and you get it at the best price.

Getting Specific

Many Facilities professionals use specifications as part of the formal tender process, but there's nothing to stop them being used anytime you buy something and they can be used when buying almost anything. I’m surprised they don't get used more often.

So we've established you can use a specification for virtually anything, the question now is what you put in it. The answer quite simply is: as much as you can. In my time I've occasionally come across people trying to procure services using a generic specification. Maybe they've missed the point, but the clue should be in the name; the idea is to be specific.

As a customer, the more detailed your specification is, the more chance you’ll stand of getting what you want. There’s an old saying about what happens when you assume – I won’t repeat it here, but let me say instead: assume nothing. When I look to bring in a service or product, my specifications tend to cover anything and everything I can think of that might be relevant.

The most important aspect of course, is to include details about what you are looking to buy; what it is, how many, how big, what colour, etc.  But you don’t have to stop there.
You can choose to specify the process for proposal submission; you can include contact information, dates for submissions and procedures for preliminary visits and queries. You may wish to define terms about ownership of equipment (like keys, phones, IT equipment), security, intellectual property, qualifications of personnel, environmental standards, Service Level Agreements, etc, etc. The list is virtually endless.

If you’ve ever struggled to get the right paperwork after the job has been completed, you might think it’s worth stating up front, exactly what you expect to be delivered before the invoice gets paid. Talking of payment; maybe you don’t want to pay invoices on the supplier’s standard 14 day terms, maybe 30 day terms suit you better. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re very specific about what want, you can usually get it, albeit, at a premium.

Finding The Right People

A detailed specification can help you to identify good suppliers.

The extent to which a supplier takes the time to read and understand your brief (and it’s easy to spot those who haven’t) and is prepared to tailor their service to meet your requirements, demonstrates the value they place on your business. 

You might think that many suppliers would react quite negatively to such a dictatorial approach, but if you’ve never tried it before, you might just be surprised. In my experience, good suppliers like doing business with sophisticated customers. It’s fair; they know that they will be quoting like-for-like against other suppliers. If they don’t win your business, it’s either because they weren’t right for it or they weren’t competitive, not because they were undercut by someone offering a substandard service at a reduced rate. 

Any supplier signing up to a detailed specification starts out with a clear and detailed understanding of what the service expectations are. This knowledge can be used by them to meet and exceed those expectations, to develop a successful partnership and ultimately retain the business on a long-term basis.

If this sounds like the kind of supplier relationships you want to have, my advice to you, is be sophisticated and start asking for what you want.

BIFM: Being In Facilities Management

Being responsible for managing facilities, is not the same as being a Facilities Management professional.   Most of us stumble into FM by accident: we display a little practical capability at a time when something practical needs doing.  And then we discover that actually, FM offers variation, challenge and lots of opportunities for job satisfaction.  Some of us think that these things would make a good basis for a career and we choose to develop our knowledge, skills and experience and become Facilities Management professionals. The BIFM (British Institute of Facilities Management) is here to help.

Recently, I've been extremely proud to have been invited to join the BIFM Home Counties Region Committee.  It's prompted me to write this blog about my experiences with the BIFM and why I jumped at the chance to get formally involved.

British Institute of Facilities Management

For those who don't know, the BIFM is the professional body for the Facilities Management Industry in the UK. It’s run by industry members, for the benefit of fellow professionals.
Whilst professional bodies are commonplace in many industries, there are few which I believe, can benefit their members as much as the BIFM. In this blog, I explain some of the thinking for this rather bold statement.

One is such a lonely number

FM can be a lonely business: often under-resourced and usually over-stretched.

As a general rule, FM teams are small, at least at the management level. In fact, many FMs work alone. Sometimes they'll have reporting staff, but when it comes to management, they stand by themselves. Organisationally, they report to Operations Managers, HR Managers, Finance Managers, etc, but it can be quite rare event to come across an FM who reports to someone who has served their time in the trenches too and intimately understands the challenges.

For FMs this can be a source of great frustration. We all need someone to "sound off" to once in a while: someone who understands that you can't make machines work by shouting at them and that you can’t buy a new AHU off-the-shelf at your local Argos store. This is where the BIFM comes in.

The BIFM holds regular events where you can meet other professionals, swap anecdotes, nod-knowingly at the tales of others and get a fresh perspective. Sometimes we need to know that it's not just us - that others are in the same boat.

Together we are greater than the sum of our parts

"FM offers such wonderful variation", I once told a colleague. That was the day I spent half the day talking about building a new office and the other half sniffing my way around the building to try and locate the source of a mysterious odour .  An extreme example perhaps (and no, I never did find it), but the point stands.  Facilities Management is a catch-all job, but what it entails can vary considerably from one organisation to the next. FMs constantly find themselves facing new situations and unforeseen challenges. In many jobs, if you don't know the answer or come across something new, the first person you ask is the boss, but if your boss is the Operations Director, it's probably no good asking them what the requirements for Legionella risk assessments are, or how frequently the AHU filters should be changed - you just have to find out. Again, the BIFM can help.

The Institute was set up to facilitate the sharing of knowledge. Members are actively encouraged to network and share information, knowledge and experiences with one another. As well as its own user forums, the BIFM has very active communities on Twitter (search #BIFM) and LinkedIn. These communities can help you answer questions, find suppliers and resources and give you advice or techniques on how to deal with challenges.

The BIFM also publishes lots of information on its web-site including news, articles and Good Practice Guides, and will keep you well informed with all that is happening in the world of FM with magazine and newsletter subscriptions.

Monkey see - Monkey do

The main way we learn is by seeing others doing. I'm a great believer that FM Professionals can learn all sorts of useful skills and techniques from others in their organisations, but ultimately the question is this: if your organisation doesn't have many (or any) other Facilities Managers, who does it have who can teach you what you need to know?  Facilities Mangers need role models and mentors outside of their organisation more than most people.  Whilst you can learn many useful communications and management skills in-house, you may have to look further afield to learn about space planning or lifecycle management.

One of the greatest benefits of the BIFM, is the regular CPD (Continued Professional Development) events. These events are usually local and take place during the week, after work. They are an opportunity not only to meet other professionals, but also to learn more about a particular topic. 

Over the past year I have attended events featuring presentations and workshops on a whole range of topics; from catering to alternative power generation, from interactive building systems to facilities strategy planning.  These events have expanded my personal network, taught me new skills and techniques and increased my industry knowledge. In many ways I would say they have quite literally, changed my life.
Get involved

So my advice to anyone looking to make the transition from managing facilities, to Facilities Management is to join the BIFM and get involved.

It may seem a daunting experience to go to your first event. You may imagine a room full of seasoned professionals with encyclopaedic knowledge and decades of experience.  Well some of those people will be there, but the vast majority of delegates will be people like you; people with a passion for FM, who want to share, learn, understand and teach.