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It is hard to find good news stories about disasters. Disasters seriously damage an organisation’s health. Of businesses that experience a disaster, 40 per cent never reopen and 30 per cent close within 2 years. Perhaps because of this, over 80 per cent of UK facility managers in a recent survey now report that they maintain a Business Continuity Plan which most of them review at least once a year. An increasing number, however, now find themselves responsible for a portfolio of international facilities spanning continents and time zones. This paper looks at some real life implications of global business recovery planning. In the wake of September 11th, one can hardly do less. This paper provides strategies and justifications for international emergency planning procedures and processes. Practitioners will gain valuable information from actual events and case studies to validate the concepts offered as a model. It may seem that some of the information and processes which are outlined in this paper are obvious; but that is the point. The obvious can be overlooked, and excuses can be made for the lack of implementation of emergency plans. But those excuses will not stand in the light of real disasters and cataclysmic events.

This paper discusses the Best Value programme, introduced in 1997, which is committed to providing high quality services that citizens value. The programme radically challenged the conventional organisation of public and voluntary services. Outlines the two major trends, which have emerged from the initiative. The first is the broadening and deepening of the engagement between the private and public sectors in the provision of community services. The second trend is more complex but also more radical – pulling together agencies responsible for social services, health services, voluntary services and community and media information services. States that the initiative has given new impetus to the debate on Urban FM – the idea that community management can be wholly externalised to professional service providers, responsible for investment and management of the public infrastructure and its associated services. Urban FM is simply a logical extension of the need to reinvest in community facilities and systems, and provide a flexible “platform” in which agencies and the private sector can come together in new and innovative settings for the benefit of the community.

Over the past ten years there has been a significant shift towards the outsourcing of facility and real estate services in both the public and private sectors. However, relatively little attention has been given to the corporate competencies needed to maximise the benefits of externalisation of this kind. A number of models have been proposed such as the intelligent client, the contract manager and the partnering champion. However, research has shown that the successful development and implementation of new facilities need the active participation and involvement of a wide range of well‐informed end users. This paper considers the range of management models currently proposed to deal with these problems, and proposes a framework for the development of corporate competence that emphasises the importance of a collaborative approach in which key facility management perspectives form part of the wider culture of the client organisation.

The inception of the process The process of sherardizing, or “dry galvanizing” dates from 1900 although the principles involved in sherardizing were not entirely unknown previous to this. In 1838 M. Berry, took out a British patent in which he coated iron and copper in a manner similar to the sherardizing process. In 1896 Roberts‐Austen showed that it was possible to alloy gold and lead at temperatures well below the melting point of lead.

This paper introduces the special issue, which includes some papers originally presented at the “Futures in Property and Facility Management II” conference in March 2004. Focuses on the themes of this and a previous conference, several years ago – “Futures in Property and Facility Management”, at University College London in June 1999. The conferences considered the strategic opportunities for property and facility management worldwide, bringing together senior facility professionals, service providers, property clients and academics to debate alternative futures. The first conference focused on four themes; new strategic directions, new performance imperatives, policy and investment and the promotion of knowledge exchange. The second “Futures” conference had four interrelated themes: possibilities for new alignments in the future, real estate dilemmas, work, time and place, and a reform debate.

During the latter part of the 19th century industrial processes were developed to produce adherent oxide films on steel as a means of protection against corrosion.