Dive Brief:
- Facilities management practices must become adaptive as work habits and occupiers’ demands and expectations change, and facilities managers must operate at a more strategic level in their businesses, Colliers says in a report.
- Shifting patterns of office attendance, as well as rising costs and environmental concerns, have led occupiers to reassess their real estate footprints and office utilization, providing facilities managers an opportunity to capture cost efficiencies and sustainability gains while contributing to “organizational cohesion and purpose,” Colliers says.
- Commercial real estate leaders “are focused on redefining the sustainable baseline for future success,” Craig O’Brien, Colliers’ senior vice president and Americas head of FM advisory for occupier services, says in the report. Clients want to “reduce costs, improve third party performance, lower risk profiles and ensure a successful hybrid work mode.”
Dive Insight:
Remote and hybrid work models have driven a large increase in the variability of weekday attendance, the report states, and facilities managers are tasked with enticing people back to the office with programs and initiatives that accommodate hybrid work. As some occupiers work to “replicate the comforts of remote working,” others are taking the opposite approach by providing services that foster collaboration and productivity and can not be experienced at home, such as concierge programs and other amenities.
In lieu of radical changes to the workplace, the report says that new approaches are needed for facilities management to fulfill its broader mission of enhancing productivity and quality of workplace experience. This entails a shift from traditional to adaptive facilities management approaches that include moving from a fixed, single global provider to flexible, value-based vendor partnerships; using technology to monitor usage patterns and adjust services to match; integrating data into a platform that can act as a single source of truth; and orienting services around higher outcomes, such as employee engagement, environmental and social impact and key performance indicators more closely tied to business priorities, the report says.
In addition, facilities management must combat the perception that it’s a self-contained cost center, with minimal exchange of information between other business functions, and instead be viewed as a strategic contributor to businesses, with collaboration across functions and senior leadership, Colliers says.
Sam Addison, Colliers’ head of project management for occupier services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, highlights the need for right-sizing office setups in the post-pandemic environment. “That means making sure you’re not wasting resources like space or energy for air conditioning, but also introducing flexibility so that these resources can be ramped up or down depending on occupancy levels,” Addison says in the report.
Sourcing this flexibility can be difficult, however, due to contracts that can be highly specific around resource levels and gross maximum prices, the report says. To combat this issue, more agile, “cost plus” contracts are gaining steam, providing some degree of flexibility, while also putting in place guardrails, service level agreements, key performance indicators and savings drivers to ensure that both sides are aligned on costs and profitability, Colliers says.
This resizing can challenge relationships with service providers, however, because, “just as you’re potentially looking for expertise and strategic advice from FM suppliers, you may actually be reducing their overall scope. We need to find partnership-based compensation models that reflect successful outcomes,” Addison says.
An adaptive facilities management approach means striking the right balance between outsourced and internal capabilities and adopting a “best in breed” approach with a portfolio of service providers selected according to their suitability for a particular role or market, the report notes.
“You have to define what’s core and valuable to delivering that in the business, how much of that you need to hold on to internally, and then figure out when you outsource, who are the vendors providing best-in-class services and how to create the environment that draws them in to partner with you,” Chris Zlocki, global head of client experience and executive vice president of occupier services at Colliers, says in the report.
To achieve meaningful efficiency gains, operators must also apply connected technologies and systems that can provide a more granular picture of how buildings are being used, Colliers says. Sensor technologies are growing more sophisticated, and new possibilities are emerging from AI’s ability to translate data into actionable intelligence, the report says, but capturing these opportunities is possible only if the right data is collected and integrated on a platform that makes it “accessible and analysis-ready.”
