Facility management services ensure that facilities are safe, efficient and comfortable. Without these services, buildings can’t properly support employees and customers.
What Are Facility Management Services?
Facility management services refers to a wide range of services that companies and organizations use to manage their operations, and those services vary according to the type of company or organization.
A facility is any structure that supports an organization including buildings, laboratories, factories, hospitals and any external grounds surrounding them. Facility management is a discipline that ensures services are managed effectively and efficiently.
Those working in facility management are concerned with providing the services and tools that organizations and companies need to ensure the safety, functionality and sustainability of infrastructure, grounds and property.
8 Important Facility Management Services
Facility management can include any or all of the following services:
Management of real estate and property: This involves the management of real estate transactions like sales, rentals and purchases.
Management and administration of property leases: Facility managers oversee all rental transactions, whether as the lessor or lessee.
Maintenance and operations: This includes physical management and maintenance of the property, such as cleaning and equipment maintenance.
Emergency management, security and business continuity: This covers installation, evaluation and maintenance of all building or facility security systems — such as cameras and alarms — and the performance of risk assessments to evaluate security threats or weaknesses. This can extend to information technology and cybersecurity.
Management of energy systems: This includes managing heating, cooling and power systems within the facility such as heating, air conditioning and electricity.
Space and occupancy management: This involves managing the physical space and promoting and managing occupancy, such as finding office space tenants.
Employee experience: This involves evaluating the comfort and efficiency of the building or facility for workers.
Capital project planning: This covers allocating capital (money) toward future projects as well as planning and implementing strategies that involve construction or modifications of the facility, both acutely and over time.
Hard & Soft Facility Management Services
Here are two general types of facility management services:
Hard facilities management: This is concerned with physical property such as the plumbing, electricity and elevator systems.
Soft facilities management: This is concerned with tasks performed by people who work in the facility such as groundskeepers, security professionals and caterers.
Why Are Facility Management Services Important?
Here are some of the most common (and not so common) reasons that companies and organizations must ensure facilities management services are run well:
Safety and protection of employees: The key reason that facilities management services are important is that they ensure employees — and others in the facility — are safe from environmental hazards and risks.
Safety and protection of assets: Facilities management also ensures that a company’s or organization’s physical assets are secure and protected from risks, such as environmental damage.
Cost-effectiveness: Employing a facilities management team, while it is an upfront cost, is ultimately more cost-effective for companies than not doing so because it can prevent more costly long-term damage.
Efficiency: A key aspect of facilities management is promoting worker comfort by maintaining proper lighting and temperature levels. Comfortable workers are more satisfied in the workplace and perform more effectively, which translates to greater sustainability and company profitability.
Continuity and coordination across a business: A facilities management team ensures that services and activities are coordinated across various departments and areas of the facility, preventing communication barriers and ensuring that any risks or issues are properly relayed to the correct professionals.
The Importance of Safety
All facility management services are ultimately important, but the most essential service that a facility management team provides to a company or organization involves health and safety. Employee and customer health and safety are the core focus of any facility management team, and services are all implemented with the priority of ensuring that people are safe and protected from any threats, risks or hazards.
Other facility management services are secondary to health and safety, but security, maintenance and operations are also important to the general safety of a facility.
Beyond those services, ensuring that energy systems function properly is essential for a properly managed and safe facility. Longitudinally, real estate and lease management are essential for the sustainability of a facility.
How Alsco Can Help
Alsco offers a wide range of facility services products that fall under the facility management services umbrella. Discover how we can simplify your facility management today.
References
The Future of Facilities Management. (2022). FacilityManagement.com.
What Is Facilities Management? (2022). IFMA.
Facilities Management Safety Handbook. Creighton University.