Blog on Value-Based Facilities Management
Think like owners, and to make decision that will ultimately benefit the owners.
The overall goal of Value-Based Facilities Management (VBFM) is to maximise the value contribution to the organisations that FMs serve. This would mean that the decisions FMs make are not simply driven by short-term gain. Rather, FMs should consider the long-term effects that the decisions will have on the organisational bottom-line.
Transforming Minds, Inspiring Passion
In today’s constant change and development in the practice of facilities management affect the widening and variety of scope that the facilities management practitioners need to take on. To take on these dynamic challenges and achieving the goals requires leadership.
There are as many ideas about leadership as there are writers, such as the Situational Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership, Task-Oriented Leadership, Servant Leadership, People-Oriented Leadership, so on and so forth. Each of the leadership approach works well, there is no one ideal leadership approach that will result well in the different situations. Likewise, the field of facilities management has its unique situation different from the others. In my opinion, in adopting the most effective facilities management leadership approach, you have to consider these four essential aspects of needs:
Needs of the Individual:
Good leaders develop the people they work with and bring out their leadership qualities. They pay attention to and respect their values.
Needs of the Team:
A leader continually aware of the needs of his people, to work together more productively. The leader should invest in relationship.
Needs of the Task:
The leader’s responsibility is to ensure that the task assigned is completed successfully. In doing do, the leader need to clearly defines the task.
Needs of Self:
The first person to lead is yourself. He first needs to cater his own needs, in order to support others’ need. An unresourceful leader is no good to anyone.
The facilities management leadership approach needs to be congruent to the four aspects of needs, and be flexible to adopt the appropriate techniques from the other leadership approaches to apply in the field of facilities management. I tend to subscribe to the quote, by Nelson Mandela, about what makes a leader.
“A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, where upon others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.” – Nelson Mandela.
To your success in FM !
Steven Ee
Value-Based Facilities Management (VBFM) is a practice that focuses on delivering facilities management (FM) services, that matters to an organisation business success. It is developed with the intention to move the practice of FM forward, keeping in pace with the organisational change, in a dynamic and competitive business environment, to serve as a strategic relevance and resource to an organisation.
VBFM aims to develop a strong foundation for responsible facilities practitioners, and challenges the dated perceptions of the profession with solid reasoning. With VBFM in place, facilities practitioners will be more aware of the facilities services’ value, better able to prioritise assigned resources, making better decisions, enhance users’ experience, and be motivated to take pride in the FM profession. If FM is not able to add value to its organisation, credibility is unlikely to be established, and FM is unlikely to be recognised as a business advantage in its organisation.
The key objectives of developing the practice of VBFM are to:
The two key influence on the practice of VBFM are the establishment of FM’s Unique Value Proposition statement and the I-S-C FM Value model.
A Unique Value Proposition is a promise for value to be delivered. The purpose for establishing a Unique Value Proposition statement is to explain how the FM services can support the organisation’s business operations, deliver specific benefits and tells the management why they can entrust the non-core business activities to FM and free themselves to focus on their core business. FM functions are encouraged to display their Unique Value Proposition in a prominent place so as to create an awareness to their stakeholders and users about the value that FM contributes to the organisations.
The purpose for the I-S-C FM Value model is to provide a roadmap towards implementing and sustaining continual value contribution to an organisation. The I-S-C Facilities Management Value model guides FM to focus on delivering services that matters to an organisation. There are three phases to achieving the practice of VBFM:
Identify Value – Establishing Facilities Essentials
To identify what critical facilities services matters to an organisation. FM needs to know the organisation’s business and it operations, then have in-place the essential activities needed to support the achievement of the organisation’s needs and objectives.
Sustain Value – Overseeing Facilities Operations
To sustain contributions to organisation’s bottom line, the facilities services need to be maintained to ensure that they operate at their optimum performance and compliance with legal requirements. Also, the FM team needs to be prepared for emergencies, to be equipped for disaster recovery, restoring the workplace to business as usual at the soonest time possible.
Contribute Value – Initiating Facilities Improvement
Contribution of value should be intentional, through continual improvement, in increasing productivity, implementing innovation and improving quality.
The practice of Value-Based Facilities Management looks into the future of facilities management and examined how practitioners in the field can stay ahead of trends and increase their value to organisations.
About the Author:
Based in Singapore, Steven Ee is a Certified Facility Manager (CFM) awarded by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), an IFMA Approved Instructor and and IFMA Subject Matter Expert for its Facility Management Professional (FMP) program.
Steven is regularly invited to speak at seminars and conferences attended by over thousands of facilities practitioners in Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and China. He runs FMS Associates Asia, a facilities management training and consultancy company that provides accelerated learning in facilities management. He is author of the book “Value-Based Facilities Management” (www.value-based-fm.com) and he conducts facilities management on-line courses (FM-Online-Courses.com).