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The literature propounds that facilities management (FM) differs from other building support services (BSS) because it features a significant strategic content. However, research indicates that this deep seated strategic and value-adding practice is mostly unavailable except in the most matured markets. The purpose of this paper is to compare the strategic content of the functions performed by FM practitioners with that of other BSS providers in Lagos, the commercial hub of Nigeria. This is to determine if the content of the FM functions is comparatively more strategic and invariably more value-adding than that of other BSS providers as indicated in literature and also to identify required areas of improvement, both for practice and training.

A survey was carried out through self-administered questionnaire directed to a sample of 123 BSS providers that work with office buildings in Lagos, Nigeria. The data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, means, χ² test and Wilcoxon signed rank test.

Rather than the strategic tasks, the FM group as with the non-FM group were more regularly involved with the less specialized facilities operations/maintenance and facilities support service tasks such as, security, fire, emergency management, cleaning and waste management. Specialized FM support service tasks such as mail services, reprographics, catering and travel services, were least often performed by both groups. The study found that facilities managers were slightly more involved than the non-facilities managers in performing the strategic group of tasks. This was indicated by the higher cumulative mean values and ranking of the level of involvement. The facilities managers also ranked higher in their involvement in the individual strategic tasks. The study also shows that FM practitioners use the more strategic ways to determine the needs of users. These findings imply that FM presents a slightly more strategic edge, which is, however, insufficient.

Although the FM practitioners may feature a slightly more strategic content of functions than their non-FM counterparts, the edge is insufficient to add significant value to clients’ business as postulated in literature. Lagos FM practitioners must become more involved in strategic functions in order to enhance FM’s value-adding edge and hence distinguish it better from other BSS practices.

The study positions the Nigerian FM practice in the light of expectations in literature and re-affirms the supposition that the practice is relatively strategically immature. It also identifies the contingent needs of local and multinational organizations that may require or intend to provide FM and other BSS in the Nigerian context, invariably allowing for international comparisons.

This article explores the community recovery and resilience element of “building back better” (BBB) through the perspectives and experiences of community influencers who provided psychosocial supports after the 2013 floods in southern Alberta, Canada.

The Alberta Resilient Communities (ARC) project adopted a community-based research methodology to examine the lived realities of children, youth, families and their communities postflood. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with 37 community influencer participants representing a range of organizations including not-for-profit agencies, community organizations, social service agencies and government departments.

The findings were drawn from the interviews held with community influencers in flood-affected communities. Major themes include disaster response challenges, insufficient funding for long-term disaster recovery, community partnerships and collaborations and building and strengthening social capital.

Findings demonstrate the need to build better psychosocial services, supports and resources in the long term to support community recovery and resilience postdisaster for children, youth and families to “build back better” on a psychosocial level.

Local social service agencies play a key role in the capacity of children, youth and families to “build back better” postdisaster. These organizations need to be resourced and prepared to respond to psychosocial needs in the long term in order to successfully contribute to postdisaster recovery.

The findings illustrate that adopting a psychosocial framework for disaster recovery can better inform social service disaster response and long-term recovery plans consistent with the BBB framework. Implications for social service agencies and policymakers interested in fostering postdisaster community recovery and resilience, particularly with children and youth, are presented.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the search for transitional services has been characterized as a challenging experience for autistic youth and their families. Transitional services are reported to be inconsistent and do not address the range of needs that autistic individuals have.

In this study, qualitative interviews were conducted with autistic individuals (n = 31), their parents/caregivers (n = 23) and transition-based service providers (n = 10).

Findings invite capacity building across sectors, including working with both the autistic individual and their caregiver, and ensuring targeted services commensurate with individual needs related to autism and ancillary challenges. Implications and recommendations for service and system advancement are offered.

Current services were reportedly insufficient in meeting the needs of autistic individuals as they transitioned into adulthood. Service areas needing to be bolstered include daily life, community engagement and employment. Capacity building and enhanced training are required. Information and communication strategies require advancement.

A more responsive system is required, which involves support from many societal sectors (e.g. health, mental health, advanced education, social services, industry, housing and justice) over the lifespan. Policy adjustments and organizational mandates need to be reviewed to better consider the needs of transitioning autistic youth and allocate resources accordingly. Partnerships across stakeholder groups are needed.

This study provides details on a known but not well understood issue of transition to adulthood for autistic adults. This study is unique in providing first-hand data from transitioning autistic adults, with corroborating data from families and service providers.

A case study at Senate Properties, a Finnish building owner organisation, for theory building was conducted to provide significant insights into strategic planning in partnership networks with a view to developing interaction in a triadic alliance. The purpose of this paper is to describe how a Finnish building owner organisation, Senate Properties, the focal firm of the studied network, manages multi‐level interaction in the alliance network of the case study.

In this paper, the building owner's role is studied by using two network analysis studies. The emergent phase of a “triadic alliance” of service providers, building owners as contract managers, and the end‐users of services is analysed by using two separate qualitative network analysis studies.

The case study indicates that the networks of building users, owners, facilities management parties and service providers can improve their interaction and cooperation by multilevel interaction building, mutual orientation building in groups and formation of boundary‐spanning roles. We therefore present a model or a framework for interaction building in triadic networks that is derived from a knowledge base that can better explain the requirements of core businesses, key real estate and facilities services attributes and options evaluation to meet dynamic changes.

The paper suggests that organisations involved in facilities management that enter into an alliance have to communicate and proactively exchange information to strengthen the interaction and cooperation between network members. For success, each network member should share information and each must learn from the others.

The interaction approach of network analysis takes place in a new building owner centred environment. The paper argues on a general level that to understand the complicated roles within the workplace environment, it is necessary to study the interaction needs of different functions.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

A study of 205 US commercial service providers, representing 31 two‐digit SIC codes, identified companies’ customer relationship‐building objectives and practices. Of 42 possible relationship‐building objectives, the four rated as top priorities were: encouraging customers to think of the firm first when considering a purchase; providing better service; encouraging customers to speak favorably about the firm; and encouraging customers to trust the firm. Answers to open‐ended, exploratory questions revealed 18 categories of relationship‐building initiatives. The findings suggest that “customer relationship‐building” means different things to different people and that practices to build such relationships vary considerably. By inventorying the range of relationship‐building objectives, quantifying their priority levels, and identifying specific practices used to build customer relationships, a greater understanding of current practices was achieved. Thus, the findings promise to benefit researchers, practitioners and consumers in terms of knowledge development, prescriptions for success, and enhanced value and satisfaction, respectively.

This study aims to establish the perspectives of community providers on challenges and enablers in developing child mental health capacity in disadvantaged communities in South Africa.

The authors involved 29 community providers operating in a large urban-deprived area in the Gauteng Province, east of Johannesburg. Community providers had educational, social and health care backgrounds. Their perspectives were captured through three focus groups, two participatory workshops and reflective diaries. Data were integrated and subjected to inductive thematic analysis.

Three interlinked themes were identified. Community mobilization was viewed as pre-requisite through mental health awareness and strategies to engage children, youth and parents. Service provision should take into consideration contextual factors, predominantly inequalities, lack of basic needs and gender-based issues (domestic violence, teenage pregnancy and single motherhood). Participants referred to severe mental health needs, and related to physical health conditions, disabilities and impairments, rather than to common mental health problems or wellbeing. They proposed that capacity building should tap into existing resources and integrate with support systems through collaborative working.

Child mental health policy and service design in Majority World Countries (MWCs), should involve all informal and structural support systems and stakeholders. Contextual factors require consideration, especially in disadvantaged communities and low-resource settings, and should be addressed through joined up working.

Children’s mental health needs are largely unmet in MWC-disadvantaged communities. These findings capture the experiences and perspectives of various community providers on how to enhance mental health provision by mobilizing communities and resources.

Context‐awareness is an essential property of any pervasive system perceiving its environment. Such a system captures and processes context, i.e. the features describing the relevant aspects of environment state and user behaviour. However, development of these systems still requires solving a number of research and engineering challenges. The purpose of this paper is to propose perception framework, a RESTful middleware which simplifies and accelerates the development of pervasive systems. Perception framework allows constructing services' application logic using rules and context. Moreover, it collects sensor data and produces the context information that is required for the rules. The authors present the architecture, design, complete implementation, and prototype‐based verification of perception framework.

Development of context‐aware services is achieved with a novel architecture supporting building of the logic of web services using rules which directly manipulate the available elementary context represented with the Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontology. These rules are described using the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) with support for different rule languages. The implementation of this framework is aligned with RESTful principles, providing a lightweight and flexible solution for large‐scale context‐aware systems.

The fully implemented prototype verifies the feasibility of constructing the logic of context‐aware web services with the rules supported by perception framework.

The contributions of this paper include: the requirement specification for a generic context‐aware pervasive middleware; and the design and implementation of the framework (i.e. perception framework) supporting the development of context‐aware web services. The perception framework includes a generic rule‐based reasoner allowing developers to use several RIF‐compliant rule description languages.

The purpose of this study was to explore 232 service providers’ and policymakers’ experiences of supporting children’s well-being during the pandemic, across sectors, in 22 countries – including Kenya, the Philippines, South Africa, India, Scotland, Sweden, Canada and the USA, in the last quarter of 2020.

A smartphone survey delivered via a custom-built app containing mostly open-ended questions was used. Respondents were recruited via professional networks, newsletters and social media. Qualitative content analysis was used.

The findings reveal numerous system-level challenges to supporting children’s well-being, particularly virus containment measures, resource deficiencies and inadequate governance and stakeholder coordination. Those challenges compounded preexisting inequalities and poorly affected the quality, effectiveness and reach of services. As a result, children’s rights to an adequate standard of living; protection from violence; education; play; and right to be heard were impinged upon. Concurrently, the findings illustrate a range of adaptive and innovative practices in humanitarian and subsistence support; child protection; capacity-building; advocacy; digitalisation; and psychosocial and educational support. Respondents identified several priority areas – increasing service capacity and equity; expanding technology use; mobilising cross-sectoral partnerships; involving children in decision-making; and ensuring more effective child protection mechanisms.

This study seeks to inform resilience-enabling policies and practices that foster equity, child and community empowerment and organisational resilience and innovation, particularly in anticipation of future crises.

Using a novel approach to gather in-the-moment insights remotely, this study offers a unique international and multi-sectoral perspective, particularly from low- and middle-income countries.