What sort of value-added service do you provide? Don’t bother stating thermography, energy conservation measures, project consultancy, additional support team, and so on. This is a question raised during a meeting with a potential commercial client. This intriguing question set me to ponder and let my mind wander searching for a perfect answer. 

There was no perfect answer to this, rather the option was to change the way we see traditional facilities management contracts serving the customer. The solution is to drive value in the FM operations. Value-driven facilities management is the key to innovation and adding more to the mundane and regular jobs any maintenance firm would do.

Unlike the earlier days, the ever-evolving workplace is dictating more productivity from its employees. A few years back, the term facilities management was upgraded and re-coined with workplace management. These changes have come into effect as the regular workplaces had to be upgraded to drive more productivity, and employee wellness hence making it more employee-centric. Every industry is competing again each other like never before and as the world progresses the competition is going to get fiercer. Thus driving innovation into the workplace is key to maintaining employee productivity. 

This raises the bar on the expectation of employers and built environment owners towards the facilities management professionals. As mentioned, every industry is gritting its teeth at each other, this includes the facilities management firms too. Maintenance companies and cleaning companies are found everywhere, who shall provide the regular preventive maintenance and the corrective maintenance works required in a building or workplace. “What’s more” is always a question, hence pushing the FMs to work on detailed strategic objectives. 

These SMART strategic objectives shall be the guiding light for driving value proposition into the regular FM operations. It is a unanimously agreed statement that FM is there to help customers focus on their core objectives or activities so that the rest of the items can be handled by the facilities management team. As highlighted in the previous paragraph, workplace management is now recognized to be part FM, and hence driving the requirements for a more productive environment must be carved out as a strategic objective by the facilities management professional. 

Using the swiftly advancing the innovation, technology, and collation of data, the facilities management team needs to put in methods to improve the overall work environment. Understanding the growing needs and changes in the work environment is essential for the FM professional to drive value-based services. In other ways, it can be stated as forward-thinking. This is to strategically approach aspects such as workplace hygiene, sustainability initiatives including waste management, recycling initiatives, waste sorting at source, energy management, comfort management, lifecycle assessment, risk management, etc….Not all initiatives are tangible or can be directly measured to money but can have a long-term impact on the building user or the employees’ output or even retention. 

 This article intends to establish the fact that the FM professionals should start accepting and introducing more innovation to their business and how their client’s assets are looked after. It’s not just their operations and adhering to the contract, but rather helping the client to add value to their workplace or raise their property value. We FMs need to move on from cost center war towards ensuring the three fundamentals of sustainability such as economy, environment, and social aspects of the customer are protected in the services we provide as facilities managers. 

This article is written by Fahad Mohamed, Director for Dubai and Northern Emirates regions, Adeeb