Facilities Operations and Management - Literature review Example

Running Head: Facilities Operations and Management Facilities Operations and Management Date of Submission Facilities Operations and Management Introduction From the point of view of senior level hospitality supervisory, the field of facilities management appears to be a middle level area of managerial science that caters to the changing needs of building maintenance and operational optimisation. The importance of facilities management lies in the fact that facilities in a building make it habitable and pleasurable. In the hospitality sector, buildings include hotels, resorts, housing complexes, etc. Also, in the context of event management, arranging meetings and conferences in a given premises is likely to be supplied with several commodities and services. Here, therefore, facilities management plays a key role once again. In this paper, the responsibilities of a facilities manager are reviewed so that his/her liabilities and required specialisation areas can be determined much before actual recruitment. While assessing that what a facilities manager must be capable of doing, the organisational and operational contexts have also been intricately explored. 1. Assessment of responsibilities In this section, the responsibilities of a facilities manager towards the staff engaged in facilities operations are discussed. Basically, one cannot deny the fact that staff management and handling is the duty of the human resources department. However, that is not accurately the case when it comes to facilities management, since it involves lots of operations and services. The multitude of operations and services coupled with specific requirements almost all the time call for differentiation between general human resources management and staff handling in the department of facilities management (Tompkins et al 2003). Contextually, a facilities manager must have the ability to understand that he/she will be working with a specialist crew of dedicated professionals. These professionals range from unskilled and semiskilled workers to managers and junior engineers. Maintenance managers are perhaps the most important skilled staff that a facilities manager may have to handle. Although most probably the maintenance manager would enter in a peer relationship with the facilities manager, hierarchic setting is also a must. Since a comprehensive facilities department will be running various maintenance departments, a maintenance manager (who might belong from the ranks of junior engineer) will be a subordinate to the facilities manager. In his/her specific department, the maintenance manager would be handling repair and/or rebuild schedules. According to Mobley (2011, p. 5): “The final decision, in preventive or run-to-failure programs, on repair or rebuild schedules must be made on the bases of intuition and the personal experience of the maintenance manager.” So the maintenance manager helps the facilities manager in critical predictive maintenance of the commercial facility in question. Therefore, the facilities manager is responsible for briefing, guiding, instructing, and communicating with the maintenance managers and their respective departments. Frequent meetings are necessary, and unambiguous guidelines must be issued from time to time. In the category of largely semiskilled workforce, there are the workers like electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc. These semiskilled labourers frequently interact with their unskilled peers such as the masons, peons, porters, etc. They are generally unionised and highly organised. The facilities manager must be well aware of a simple fact that these workers cannot do each other’s jobs or cannot replace labour shortage across departments. For example, a carpenter cannot do an electrician’s job and vice versa. So, the facilities manager should do proper planning before actually hiring these workers. If a maintenance manager is not available, the facilities manager should always be prepared and sufficiently knowledgeable to communicate with and guide the semiskilled workers (Tompkins et al 2003). Experience in handling industrial relationships can be helpful in this context. In the case these workers are hired on the basis of daily wages, the facilities manager should help them with their financial dues and demands lest a labour unrest can be avoided proactively. Last but not least, there is a special category of semiskilled/unskilled staff. In this category, the janitors, sweepers, and cleaners can be placed. Unlike engineering facilities like power plants and factories, this category of workers plays a crucial role in the hospitality sector. Be that event management or hotel industry, cleaners and their peers are continuously required for the jobs like house keeping, laundry, etc. A facilities manager should be sufficiently trained to directly communicate with this category of staff. The primary responsibility of the facilities manager in this context is to provide proper guidance and continuously monitor the laundry/cleaning activities (Jensen et al 2013; Mobley 2011). The manager should implement his/her soft skills and empathetically treat these workers so that the facility concerned can be maintained without any unwanted interruption. 2. Handling the operational aspects It is an imperative to have a discussion on the responsibilities of a facilities manager generally has towards handling the operational aspects of a building. There are various views regarding the handling of operational aspects of the facilities in a building (Man, Lai, and Francis 2013). Majority of the perspectives on handling operational aspects heavily emphasise the importance of performance monitoring. In general, experts think that operations at the optimum level are best helped by a balanced approach (Man, Lai and Francis 2013). Perhaps the most comprehensive and diverse perspective regarding facilities operations have been provided by the British Standards Institution (2007) or BSI. According to BSI, there are three main trajectories of facilities operations. These are the categories that define (1) economical aspects, (2) technical aspects, and (3) organisational aspects. (1) In the section of economical concerns, the main responsibility of a facilities manager is cost control. He/she must also be careful about handling all the financial concerns lest the workers become corrupt or deceive the management with fake bills. Expenditure of resources while providing the facilities is another big issue. Resources like water and electricity must always be spent with caution. However, spending to little money for managing the maintenance issues may pay off in the short run, but end users may be troubled and frustrated on a long term basis. Therefore, reasonable allocation of financial resources is a prime duty of a facilities manager. (Jensen et al 2013; British Standards Institution 2007) (2) Regarding technical aspects, the importance of standardising facilities operations should be prioritised. This means that the facilities manager should be able to enforce a uniform code of conduct, scheduling and work culture so that all the departments can work together without contradictions or clash of interests. For example, in hospitality industry, it is critical to manage housekeeping staff and room service operations side by side. Another example is the need to focus on the duties of an order taker in a hotel. The facilities manager must understand that personnel like the order takers and customer care executives should be able to communicate across the front-end and the back-end of a commercial hotel or resort. Apart from managerial technicalities, the facilities manager must also be well versed with the engineering systems such as water pipelines, electricity cables, etc. that are very common and crucial in every kind of buildings. (Mobley 2011; British Standards Institution 2007) (3) In managing organisational issues, uniform code of conduct becomes necessary once again. The facilities manager should be careful enough so as to the labour unions or individual workers may not feel that he/she is biased or prejudiced. In a multicultural environment, such concerns become even more prominent (van Meel 2012). If necessary, the facilities manager must be ready to develop human resource management or HRM skills. Furthermore, the facilities manager must not only be capable of enforcing discipline in the organisation but also he/she must go ahead to train his/her subordinates in soft skills and systematic interpersonal communication if necessary. 3. Responsibilities towards customers Assessment of the responsibilities towards customers using the building or a specific facility can help in determining what the basic duties of a facilities manager are. A facilities manager must essentially understand the fact that he/she has got a twofold responsibility in his job profile. At one side, he/she has to look after the interests of the workers and help in maintaining and improving the services to be discharged across the building premises. At the other side, he/she has to look after the interests of the customers and end users. Put simply, facilities management is aimed at improving the end user or the customer’s experience with the organisation in general and the building complex in particular. This is very true in hospitality industry because customers who have a good experience with the services of the hotel or event manager, etc. often tend to seek their services again. The technical intricacy of a facilities manager’s responsibility towards the customers has been explained by Man, Lai and Francis (2013, p. 2) in the following words: “They are means for delivering the services needed by users of buildings, which help maintain a safe, healthy, convenient and comfortable indoor environment suitable for the activities of the building users. Without them, buildings are but inhabitable cells that can hardly fulfil the purposes that they are intended to serve. In addition to the capital input for making available the facilities in the first place, further inputs of resources are needed in the delivery process of the services that the facilities provide, which include human resources, energy and spare parts and materials for their operation and maintenance (O&M) and for management of the O&M processes.” Therefore, the facilities manager must, at the first place, understand that his/her primary job is to make the building under consideration a habitable and pleasurable abode. In doing this, all the three primary levels of workers should be sufficiently committed and fully mobilised. First of all, the maintenance managers (who are generally the junior engineers or specialised hoteliers in the hospitality sector) must be instructed to communicate with the customers as and when required. For example, if a problem occurs regarding food supply, then the customer may ask for the food and beverages manager to come and solve or explain the issue. In such a scenario, the facilities manager must have had issued clear guidelines for the concerned maintenance manager to show up to the customer in proper manner and correct time. In the case there is a problem with water supply, not only a plumber must be sent but also the water supply engineer concerned must attempt to show up. In sum, the facilities manager must be both commanding and demanding so that the junior level management and the house staff in the organisation can be mobilised as and when required. Second, the facilities manager must be capable of and knowledgeable enough to personally oversee the activities of the semiskilled staff like plumbers, electricians, etc. Thirdly, the facilities manager must not hesitate to directly communicate with the sweepers, janitors, and porters as and when required. For example, the facilities manager must issue clear guidelines regarding the duties, expected behaviours and availability of porters when customers check in to the building premises concerned (say the lobby of a hotel or the gateway of a resort). However, it is not possible for the top management to hire a management level trainee or junior manager to serve each and every customer who arrives at the hotel, resort, housing complex, or as the case maybe. Hence, it is the prime responsibility for the facilities manager to properly guide, counsel, and train the semiskilled staff as well. The semiskilled staff, say an experienced plumber, can prove to be enough knowledgeable in handling an annoyed customer in times of acute staff shortage or absence of the junior manager concern. In this way, the facilities manager must set personal example to show the semiskilled and unskilled workers that how can they behave politely and handle complex customer service situation in the case an emergency arises. Also, the facilities manager must possess at least some minimum level of HRM competence so that he/she can swiftly groom or train inexperienced staff to handle customers during emergencies and system failures. Last but not least, the facilities manager must possess some general knowledge regarding engineering. This will enable him/her of understanding that what components of the engineering related services (for example, portable power generation) can prove to be crucial to satisfy the customer’s needs and make the organisation and/or the building premises an ideal one. 4. Impact of employers and funding agencies How do employers and funding agencies actually impact facilities operations? With regard to faculties operations and management, scholars like Sapeciay, Wilkinson and Costello (2013) are of the opinion that economic considerations and higher level decision making in this field affect not only the organisation concerned but also the society at large. Although the top level managers may look for maximising their profits from the commercial building, a facilities manager (who is generally functional at the middle level) must be sticking to the balanced approach. This balanced approach calls for an all round performance coupled with a sense of corporate social responsibility. According to Sapp (2011), a facilities manager must understand that he/she has the primary responsibility of cost control that culminates at minimising all kinds of maintenance overhead perceivable with regard to a given commercial building, say a hotel. The facilities manager must work towards reducing the capital repairs, the unscheduled repairs and outages, and the equipment life-cycle costs. In this way, the facilities manager can help the employers to strike a balance between customer services and cost savings. Not only that, the facilities manager can also provide guidance to the employer on how and when new recruits are to be hired. Furthermore, economic aptitude of the facilities manager can help the funding agencies to save money. If he/she is capable of finding out cost-effective solutions to service outages, then the funding agencies as well as the employers are benefited in the long run. Along with pleasant customer experience, the funding agencies can achieve profitable trade by the facilities manager’s economic understanding and money saving management style. For example, the manager can emphasise the importance of equipment life so that the service or facility concerned can be maintained without an interruption for as long as possible. In furtherance to such an approach, the facilities manager should also work hard for providing functional and safe systems (for example, insulated wirings) and cumulatively help in meeting the design goals. Furthermore, as the British Standards Institution (2007) states, the organisational culture is critical with respect to a commercial facility’s functionary. And proper personnel management, with intercultural issues in mind, must be implemented by the facilities manager as well as the employers and the funding agencies so that a healthy organisational culture and professional environment can be fostered across all maintenance departments in a given building of commercial nature (van Meel 2012; Tompkins et al 2003). So, the employers and funding agencies can partner with the facilities manager to play a critical and constructive role in managing industrial relationships and prevent incidents of labour unrest. In the long run, an HRM competent manager can thus provide more financial security, better organisational culture, and robust understanding between the employer and the employees across the various maintenance departments in a large-scale hospitality sector specific premise. 5. Analysis on facilities operations In this section, the impact of facilities operations on the hospitality industry are analysed with respect to the critical roles played by the employers and fund providers. The key relevant issues are mostly around quality of services, social impact, workforce management, and economic benefit. According to Sapp (2011), facilities management is not a coherent, rigid area of expertise. Facilities management is essentially flexible in its nature and scope, often calling for homogenisation between disparate processes and services. In a large building having complex commercial functions, facilities management consists of a number of constituent processes and systems. These processes and systems help the employers and the funding agencies to optimise all the necessary operations and minimise maintenance overhead. For example, the real property inventory or RPI can be regarded as a facilities management constituent process that helps the employers to calculate the prices of the assets in hold coupled with the depreciation rates as well as the maintenance overhead. Another example of a constituent process is that of preventive maintenance. In this context, engineering professionals are given high priority so that they can execute trial runs, predict possible outages, and arrange for timely solutions. Furthermore, induction of information systems in facilities management has refined the whole field of activity to a great extent. Information systems in facilities management are generally implemented as a dedicated computerised maintenances management system or CMMS. This kind of information system can effectively organise the facilities and services with the help of automation, database management, and interdepartmental networking. (Sapp 2011) Further analysing facilities management with reference to the organisational and financial systems, a case study from FM Guru Consultancy & Training (2010) can prove to be very helpful. This is an event management case study where the FM Guru Consultancy & Training (2010) arranged an annual conference on collaborative working. The conference had been organised by G4S Group plc and it became a great success. Among event management facilities, FM Guru Consultancy & Training (2010) had provided for various recreational games and collaborative activities for the conference invitees. The case study shows how diverse the scope of facilities management can be. Another illustration has been provided by Lockyer (2013). Being located in a mountainous region of Utah, the Grand America Hotel of Salt Lake City has a difficult facilities management system. The area experiences high range of variations in temperature and humidity. Consequently, the seasonal patterns of the tourists’ interests and behaviours vary greatly. In such circumstances, according to Lockyer (2013), experiential learning and customised housekeeping have become key features of facilities management in the Grand America Hotel. 6. Conclusion Without the modern form of facilities management as seen today, one can state that the maintenance overhead of major commercial buildings would have drastically shot up. Without organised efforts and full utility of available workforce, building complexes would not be ideally habitable. So, while updating the operational responsibilities of all future facilities managers to be employed by the organisation, it is very important to point out that modern facilities management itself may involve unexpected tasks at certain challenging times. Facilities and services, in today’s hospitality sector, may range from laundry and gas supply to entertainment and recreation. Therefore, a facilities manager must certainly be an expert in conventional systems and procedures; nevertheless he/she should also be sufficiently innovative and enterprising. Reference List British Standards Institution (BSI) (2007), Maintenance: Maintenance key performance indicators (BS EN 15341), London: BSI. FM Guru Consultancy & Training (2010), Case Study: Event Management for G4S Integrated Services. Available: http://www.fmguru.co.uk/why-us/case-studies/event-management-for-g4s-integrated-services.php. Last accessed on 18th July 2014 Jensen, P.A., Sarasoja, A.-L., van der Voordt, T. and Coenen, C. (2013), How can facilities management add value to organisations as well as to society? In: Facilities Management and Maintenance, Brisbane: CIB Publications, pp. 61-73 Lockyer, T. (2013), The International Hotel Industry, New York: Routledge Man, C.S., Lai, J.H., and Francis, W.H. (2013), Developing a Research Framework for Studying Performance Evaluation of Engineering Facilities in Commercial Buildings in Hong Kong. In: Facilities Management and Maintenance, Brisbane: CIB Publications, pp. 1-12 Mobley, R.K. (2011), Maintenance Fundamentals, London: Butterworth-Heinemann Sapeciay, Z., Wilkinson, S. and Costello, S. (2013), Usability: Managing facilities for social outcomes. In: Facilities Management and Maintenance, Brisbane: CIB Publications, pp. 124-135 Sapp, D. (2011), Facilities operations & maintenance, Whole Building Design Group. Available: http://www.wbdg.org/om/om.php. Last accessed on 18th July 2014 Tompkins, J., White, J., Bozer, Y., and Tanchoco, J.M. (2003), Facilities Planning, West Sussex: Wiley van Meel, J. (2012), Workplace design: Global or tribal? In: Reinventing the Workplace, New York: Routledge, pp. 50-63 Read More