FM research: the leading edge

Citation

Price, I. (1999), "FM research: the leading edge", Facilities, Vol. 17 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.1999.06917gaa.001

FM research: the leading edge

The Guest Editor

Ilfryn (If) Price is co-director of Facilities Management Graduate Centre and a Professor of Innovation Management at Sheffield Hallam University. By training and early experience a geologist, he first became interested in management of trans-professional services in a managerial career with BP. After managing their exploration and production research division he led the BP Exploration Process Review Team in a search for global benchmarks of innovation in change management. That experience provided the foundation for his theories of organisations as creations of self-maintaining patterns and his ground breaking book Shifting the Patterns (with Ray Shaw); a volume which has been enthusiastically received by practising facilities managers. From 1993 If pursued a career as an independent researcher and consultant and guided the development of FMGC's research portfolio. Outside FM he is co-author of the RICS guidelines on professional practice management and is internationally known as a leading contributor to the new science of organisations as complex adaptive systems.

FM research: the leading edge

Since its inception FMGC, Sheffield Hallam's Facilities Management Graduate Centre, has emphasised the central role of people in FM. For us the discipline is insufficient if it is seen either as a pure business issue (the sourcing debate) or as merely the "hardware" and "software" issues of buildings and systems. Organisations of all kinds have a tendency to settle towards habitual ways of operating; equilibria grounded in their collective patterns of thinking (Price and Shaw, 1998). FM is no different. The successes come from organisations which recognise its strategic impact and find innovative patterns from which to work. Price and Akhlaghi (1999) recently summarised the results of five years' work with FMGC's various research forums illustrating the impact of pattern shifts across the spectrum of best practice in current FM, but what of the future?

At a time when one of the profession's early drivers, the previous government's blind faith in the automatic superiority of the private sector and compulsory competition, has been replaced by a more inclusive best value agenda, and when the "low hanging fruit" has been picked in the first wave of outsourcing, whither FM, as an industrial sector or a new profession? Our answer has always been innovation and our biennial conferences have, since 1997, attracted audiences of innovators drawn equally from both sides of the FM divide. For the event reported in this issue we decided to innovate ourselves. Instead of inviting speakers from the FM establishment, the ranks of senior practitioners, we invited the next generation, students who had achieved distinctions in postgraduate dissertations, our younger researchers, and the wider FM research community to submit papers. We expected, if anything, that a more academically oriented conference would prove less attractive to the practitioner community. How wrong can one be? We got the largest audience yet; a reminder of how easily expectations, born out of unquestioned assumptions, so easily limit innovation. So what of the future?

FM has, for a variety of reasons, penetrated more widely, and to higher levels of management (Rees, 1998), in the NHS than in other public sector organisations, and indeed many private sector ones have much to learn from the Health Service. As a scene-setter for the conference it was therefore apt to consider a vision for the further development of FM in the sector. Payne and Rees provide it by reminding us of the accelerating pace of change, the further dismantling of organisational boundaries and the increased emphasis on trans-professional delivery of services. Facilities managers who have dealt with such problems as multi-skilling of low level staff have much to contribute to the wider agenda of professional service management.

Garbett and Baldwin switch from the general to the specific with a case study of an actual innovation. Their case concerns a Local Authority property department putting in place the information systems to underpin the delivery of best value. Incidentally unpublished work in FMGC (Price et al., 1999) has indicated that authorities whose management structure embraces an integrated FM approach are achieving demonstrably better value for money than those with services delivered from a traditional structure. Hinks and McNay, whose work has already appeared (in Facilities, Vol. 17 No. 1/2, 1999) and is reproduced here in abstract, concluded the session on strategy and value by introducing their equivalent of a balanced FM score card, one which enables the facilities service provider, however sourced, and the user to jointly evaluate priorities and appreciate how separate patterns might otherwise lead to service breakdowns or mis-prioritised investment.

The theme of contradictory perceptions continued into the session on space. Fleming and Storr offer another example of the different perceptions space professionals and users may bring to the issue of space, performance and perceived value. Despite a wealth of literature on lecture theatres from the design and operations perspective, and a wealth of literature on student learning, theirs is the first study to cross the boundary and look at how students' reactions to the lecture theatre influence their perception of their learning experience. Ilozor and Oluwoye continue the theme, presenting some apparently surprising correlations between performance and environment. Would, for example, most readers expect that it was possible to provide too much of a view and distract the occupants? Perhaps their doing the work in Sydney indicates the special properties of the Australian view.

Finally back to people and their learning. Clark, E. and Hinxman remind us that the facilities manager is a manager, and needs not only technical competences but also the ability to lead and motivate people, to create the opportunity for them to perform. Bowers and Akhlaghi demonstrate that desire for modern, learning orientated, management does not stop at the organisational boundary. It should then come as no surprise that such management brings better results. Smith, reporting on staff motivation in the NHS, and Clark, L. on the learning approach to generic working, not only bring the theme of the issue back to people but also remind us that innovative best practice in FM can be found within the internal management of the service. The number one issue in FM in the future will continue to be management, not out-sourcing.

Ilfryn (If) PriceGuest Editor