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The gap between the expected and actual performance of newly built facilities has been widely described in the literature as “the performance gap”. Mostly, the performance gap appears to be synonymous with the energy performance gap. Little attention has been given to other performance aspects that facilities managers recognise as deficient in newly built or renovated buildings like for instance difficulties in operation and maintenance. This study contributes with a typology of performance gaps, with the aim to offer a more nuanced understanding of the term, where the interests of facilities management are in focus.

The empirical data consist of four in-depth interviews, two focus group interviews and three workshops. Except for one workshop, the data collection took place in Denmark.

The study identifies 12 types of performance gaps of which “higher energy consumption” is one. The gaps are interdependent and initiatives to reduce one type of gap can potentially lead to an increase in another. Furthermore, the study finds that the fatal (the most critical) gap is context-specific.

The findings of this study imply a need to change the way we previously have discussed the early involvement of the facilities management in design. The study shows that more involvement of FM is not necessarily better.

This paper is the first attempt to cover performance gaps of buildings from a holistic viewpoint and from the perspective of FM.

This paper aims to focus on deliberate actions by the building client to integrate knowledge of facilities management, in particular building operation, in design and construction of sustainable facilities. Examples of current practices are studied to answer the following questions: Which initiatives to enable operational friendly and sustainable buildings are currently used by building clients in Denmark? Which initiatives could be appropriate to use in the future, and which parties are in the best position to implement the various initiatives?

The study is a hermeneutic multi-method study, which consists of a review of former research, a case study and a survey. It starts with theoretical background based on earlier research with the aim to identify initiatives to ensure the use of operational knowledge in building design. Hereafter, the paper presents, analyses and discusses two studies: a case study of current practices at a university campus organisation and a survey of five swimming facilities. All cases are from Denmark.

In all, 31 initiatives to enable use of operational knowledge in building design were initially identified. In the case study, 11 additional initiatives were found. The case study and the survey of swimming facilities show different degrees of implementation, varying from 18 to 31 initiatives implemented. However, the studies show that introducing the initiatives is not sufficient; it takes deliberate actions to get the initiatives well implemented. Within the building client organisation, three main actors should care for implementing the initiatives: Top management, building client division and operation division.

Research-based literature on practices in relation to knowledge transfer from operation to design is limited. This paper provides insights into deliberate efforts on transferring knowledge from operation to design among Danish building clients.

For optimising long-term building operations, building clients need to enable integration of operational knowledge in the design process of new buildings. This study aims to investigate and compare how operational knowledge is integrated into the design of buildings and large ships, focussing on the roles affiliation and the competences of the client’s project manager play.

A cross-sectional qualitative methodology with multiple case studies (five cases) was used. In addition, ten expert interviews and two validation focus group interviews were conducted. Case studies included in-depth interviews, document analysis and observations.

The study showed that organisational affiliation, focus and competences of the client’s project management play an important role in how much effort and resources go into ensuring integration of operational knowledge in the design process. In the ship cases, projects managers’ highest concerns were operations. Yet, the fewest procedures and tools to integrate operational knowledge in design were found implemented in these cases. Contrastingly, in the building cases, where operations were not the main matter of concern of project management, a large number of procedures and tools to integrate operational knowledge in design were implemented.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is the first to compare how integration of operational knowledge is taking place in the design process of buildings and large ships and identifying what these industries can learn from each other. Furthermore, it adds to the limited research on operations in large ship design.

This paper aims to investigate how knowledge concerning operation and maintenance of buildings can be stored and transferred between the parties responsible for building operation and new building projects.

The paper is theoretically based on knowledge management with a particular focus on interdepartmental knowledge transfer between departments responsible for operation and maintenance and departments responsible for building projects in organisations with large and fast changing building portfolios. The paper includes a case study of the facilities management organisation of the Technical University of Denmark with data collection mainly by interviews with managers and staff in the relevant departments in this organisation.

The case organisation seems to be aware of the importance of sharing and transferring their organisational knowledge. Over the past five years, the organisation has developed different tools and adopted several processes, aiming at integration of the knowledge they possess from many years of operation and maintenance of the existing buildings. However, there are many situations, where the tools and processes do not work efficiently, and therefore the knowledge transfer is not sufficiently effective. It is apparent that the best results can be achieved only if the different actors involved in a construction project collaborate aiming towards the same objectives.

The paper presents and evaluates a case of interdepartmental knowledge transfer in an organisation, which has a strong focus on improving the interconnections between building operations and planning new building projects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the collaboration between researchers and practitioners on developing standards and guidelines for Facilities Management (FM).

This paper is based on a longitudinal case study on research on FM value adding and its impact on FM standardization and development of a FM Value Guide. The sources used are literature and documents on FM value adding and standardization, published and planned FM standards, the FM Value Guide, internal documents and participant observations and experiences. All authors of this paper have both research and practical background. Two of them have been – and one still is – actively involved in developing European and international FM standards, and all three have been involved in developing the FM Value Guide. The research methodology can be characterized as retrospective action research.

The literature review shows that even though there are many references to standards in research papers, particularly in relation to definitions of concepts, there are only few studies on how research influences standardization and how researchers collaborate with practitioners on developing standards and guidelines. This paper presents a case study showing how research can contribute to standardization and development of guidelines in collaboration with practitioners and makes suggestions on how such collaboration can be improved.

The results of this paper provide understanding and inspiration for how researchers and practitioners can collaborate in the development of standards and guidelines.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first study on collaboration between researchers and practitioners on developing FM standards and guidelines.