What is Facility Management?
Facility Management is a tool and service that always support or help the safety, and sustainability of buildings, real estate, and infrastructure. The concept of sustainable buildings continues to attract international attention in the wake of growing environmental demands.
Introduction to Hospitality Facilities Management
In facility management, most of the focus has been on the accommodation of sustainable principles in building design and the incorporation of retrofit solutions in the subsequent building life cycle.
A fixation with technological remedies can, however, overlook the fundamental role of the facilities management team in ensuring the continued rectification and improvement of a building’s performance.
The idea of a sustainable building should not be one of a ‘Product’ but a ‘Process’ subject to continuous improvement throughout its life.
Much has been discussed about the failure of many ‘Sustainable’ buildings to realize their energy-saving potential. This failure in performance may arise at handover or may be evident over time as a general deterioration in performance.
In this chapter, we consider ‘Sustainable Buildings’ as just buildings that achieve high levels of performance, not just from day one, but throughout the building’s life. To achieve this, facilities management (FM) plays an indispensable part, in tackling the complexities of people, processes, and place.
In this chapter, we consider the type of sustainable technology that can be used to leverage energy savings. The chapter discusses the vital importance of decision-making cycles that reflect the life of the building and the systems within it.
The layered concept of building systems and the associated concepts of passive and active systems highlight the staged involvement of the facilities management team. The discipline of facilities management is a relatively new yet largely misunderstood profession. At the heart of this role is the capacity to integrate.
In the face of increasingly complex building systems, a greater diversity of user involvement, and an aversion to operational risk, facilities management must attempt to resolve conflicts and identify synergies. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Portuguese word ‘Facilidade’ or the Spanish word ‘Facilidad’ in the translation of ‘Facilities’ means ‘Ease’ or ‘Easiness’.
The idea of ‘Ease-of-use‘ is fundamental to the facilities management role. Yet, in the context of sustainability, with the headstrong desire to embrace new technology, the management challenge of making solutions accessible and appropriate is often overlooked.
The emergence of facilities management tells us something about its modern-day role in supporting sustainability issues. The unprecedented need for integration in facilities today can be traced to the advent of two developments in the 1970s.
The first of these was the introduction of computers and IT equipment in the office environment, which in turn presented challenges in relation to wiring, lighting, acoustics, and territoriality.
The second of these developments was the innovation of systems furniture or “Cubicles“. While attempting to provide a technological ‘Fix’ to the IT challenge, cubicles presented new questions of their own: not least of which was who would take responsibility for procuring and managing such environments.
The need for an integrating professional led to the development of the professional association ‘International Facility Management Association’ in 1981 which has since spawned other professional associations worldwide.
So, Facility Management (FM) represents a sector that is growing fast and is expanding its areas of interest within the Real Estate and Construction industry; several international FM standards have been developed in the last decade and FM marketplaces are increasing in most industrialized countries all over the world.
FM, as a new management discipline, requires studies and original experimentations in various areas: organizational models, relationships between key stakeholders, management of supply chains, shared references and procedures, new skills, and multidisciplinary training.
Facility Management, dealing with services variously integrated and delivered for prolonged periods, touches on several questions such as,
- How do define and manage models of effective medium and long-term partnerships between Clients and Providers?
- How do require performances? How do measure and assess the quality of the services over time?
- How do recognize the added value of FM according to different value perspectives?
- How do act proactively in order to prevent nonconformities and criticalities?
- How do pursue continuous improvement?
Besides, FM is typically based on information management: the management of people, spaces, and infrastructures implies huge amounts of data and documents — sometimes the beginning redundant, partially lacking, not updated, or not reliable that must be selected, collected, classified, and organized in order to generate useful information.
The management of information over time is the premise for the development of knowledge, which represents the actual added value of service and the condition for continuous improvement.
Within this very dynamic and complex scenario, FM is rapidly evolving: Basic fundamentals and references are not yet completely consolidated and shared among all the engaged stakeholders, and meanwhile, innovative technologies, new regulations, and increasing customers’ expectations are already reshaping its characteristics.
Importance of Facilities Management in Hotels
Hospitality facilities management is the most important and very powerful process. This process makes the work efficient and correct. It helps to manage proper facility exponential growth of the business.
If the facilities are managed, then the workload should be minimum and it always helps to smoothly run the hotel business and also helps from timewasting. So it’s very beneficial for our hospitality business growth.
Functions of Hotel Facilities Management
The right plan properly coordinates and estimates the budget for facilities and hiring professionals and business growth also. Establish and administer policies and the right formula to apply to events.
Different Types of Facility Management
1. Real estate management.
2. Emergency management and business continuity.
3. Employee and Occupant.
4. Occupancy and space management.
5. Energy management.
6. Maintenance and Operations.
7. Capital project planning.
8. Lease management.
9. Lease administration management.
10. Lease accounting management.
11. Asset management and life cycle planning.
12. Satisfaction of Employees, health, and wellness.
13. Workplace leadership and strategy.
What is the Process of Hospitality Facilities Management
Facility managers often are called on to create new space, in addition to carrying out their ongoing roles in managing and operating existing space.
In this novel process, the facility manager is asked to shepherd an idea that originated elsewhere in the organization, give it substance, and negotiate its passage through issues of cost, revenue, and politics. And then lead the delivery of the project with a team that may include dozens of outside vendors.
This chapter helps the facility manager succeed in that task by offering:
- A context in which to approach the project.
- An organizing structure for identifying risks and roles.
- Elements of basic theory around key delivery issues.
The intent is to equip the facility manager to work intelligently with both his or her own internal constituency and with outside vendors who come and go on an as-needed basis.
These are the standard process of hotel facility management:
1. Skills
When the organization considers building new space, the facility manager is called upon to show a completely different set of skills than those which are used in day-to-day management.
These skills range from the technical to the financial, and they touch on the aesthetic. Of course, the hotel facility manager must show throughout the process a continuously high degree of political skills.
2. Circumstances
Understanding the particular circumstances of the project at hand comes even before marshaling the resources, assembling the team, and making decisions about the space.
A pharmaceutical company likely requires new construction for new products, but a financial services company could well reuse existing space, rent space somewhere else, or even stay where they are.
3. Considerations
The most obvious considerations around a project are, first, whether it is all new construction, a major renovation, or simply interior fit-out. Second, is the job large or small?
Third, are there overarching design criteria including adjacencies, the performance of the space, and aesthetics; or is it a simple utilitarian buildout?
Finally, and of critical import, who are the internal clients?
Is there a small and tightly led user group, or a large, diverse, and powerful collection of important users from throughout the company?
Following these particular characteristics, each project is different, so there can be no one menu. The intent of this chapter is to lay out key elements in the process, the product, and the team, so as to help the facility manager accomplish successful projects of all varieties.
4. Assembling Resources
The facility manager must assemble resources of many kinds in order to carry out a new project. The most obvious resources are land and funding.
For many facility managers, new project development consists almost entirely of finding the site or the space and finding the money.
For others, the land and the money are straightforward, but getting a commitment for time and attention of user groups, as well as collecting the resources to staff and monitor a large project which is outside of the organization’s normal breadth of work, is the key challenge. Often finding the whole package of in-house resources is harder, and more visible, than finding the design and construction team.
5. Phases of Work
The task of the facility manager changes with each phase of the project. There are four principal phases in any project: formulation, design, construction, and ongoing operations.
In order to both control the project and use his or her own time to the most advantage, the facility manager must play quite different roles in each phase. indicates the key goals that the facility manager needs to achieve in each phase.
6. Formulation
The formulation is the very first phase, during which time all of the basic decisions are made. Some of these are highly strategic with regard to the organization’s plans.
7. Design
During the design phase, a new level of granularity enters the process. The team is no longer deciding who’ll be in the building or whether to build at all rather, issues of structural systems, department adjacencies, and of course aesthetic appeal are decided.
During this phase, the core skill of the facility manager evolves into making the right trade-offs. At this stage, resources are becoming constrained, and the facility manager often is balancing between different constituencies of users. With respect to physical choices in the project, a course needs to be set, balancing the tripartite closed system of time vs. cost vs. scope.
The facility manager has to be a facilitator and discussion leader; the facility manager has to make major trade-off decisions, and the facility manager probably needs to be an enforcer. The facility manager is in the middle, as discussed in the section in the design phase, this middle comes under pressure more than at any other time.
8. Construction
The construction period involves the third set of facility manager skills. Now, instead of marshaling resources or facilitating cost and design trade-offs in the abstract setting of conference rooms and drawings, the facility manager turns into a monitor making sure that everything has been ordered.
9. Operations
Finally, in the operations phase, the facility manager re-enters familiar territory. Most buildings are in operation for decades. The design and construction process can be as short as 12 months.
10. The Players: Facility Manager in the Middle
The facility manager is the person in the middle of a design and construction project. Not only must the facility manager manage “down” as he selects, directs, and controls a large array of vendors, including architects, contractors, engineers, consultants, and subcontractors; but the facility manager also must manage up.
All of the organization’s end-users must be managed by the facility planner too. These can include very influential executives, fund-raisers, researchers, or manufacturing people.
11. Implementation and Management
The facility manager is in the middle, Managing Up and Managing Down.
12. Internal Clients
The architects and contractors understand the facility’s design and construction process deeply since they do it every day. Most of the internal users do not.
Doctors Physicists or Fund managers don’t build much, but they are used to getting their way in most areas of life. This can lead to tremendous complexity for the facilities manager in serving these users. Typically, communication skills, clarity, clear expectations, and the loan of a big stick from upstairs are critical in leading the project.
13. Foundation and Structure
The foundation, structural, and mechanical systems have the strange characteristic of never being seen again once the building is complete. The foundation and structure will likely never be maintenance issues for the facility manager ever again. Yet the decisions made in the foundation and the structure have two major impacts on the project.
14. Schedule and Flexibility
First, choices of foundation methods and structural systems can influence the schedule of the project. A deep foundation with an open hole takes quite a bit longer than a shallow foundation with no retaining walls, but the shallow foundation might forever give up valuable space that could have been saved for parking, storage, research, mechanical systems, or other important future building program elements.
Similarly, a building with a concrete frame can likely be erected faster since a steel frame has to be fabricated first, and concrete will likely have shorter floor-to-floor heights.
However, a concrete frame is not nearly as flexible for cutting holes and moving mechanical systems for future unanticipated uses.
With respect to the structural system, a consulting engineer will have a good handle on costs. During construction, the cost of the structure can typically be part of the general contract.
15. Envelope
The building envelope is an area where facility managers need to exert their strongest skills at understanding and making trade-offs during the design phase.
Typically, the most aesthetically interesting skin treatments also are those with the most life-cycle problems relating to the sun, water, wind, and freezing. Sometimes the most appealing treatments are also the most expensive. Yet, the image of the building, and often the image of the institution, depends to a very large extent on the appearance of the skin.
Attractive buildings tend to have tangible positive results, including attracting higher caliber students to a university, attracting and satisfying high-quality employees to a corporation, or attracting high-paying tenants for a landlord.
Often, the exact pricing of the building envelope is very hard to determine in advance, since there are so many interrelated systems, including the structure, the curtainwall, the windows, the waterproofing and sealants, the roof, and many items of decoration.
There can also be physical problems in installing complex systems involving many skilled craftsmen from different trades who need to coordinate work that is many stories above the ground. For this reason, typically projects with more complex façades are likely to be projects where a contractor is selected earlier in the process.
16. Mechanical
As indicated mechanical systems are a different class to consider. None of these systems will ever be seen again once the building is finished, but they are certain to be the major cost driver in the building life cycle.
Replacements of worn-out parts and the energy costs for day-to-day operations are highly dependent on choices made by the facility manager in the design stage.
Most good engineers have a good handle on both first cost and life cycle costs, although sometimes a check engineer can be considered. Mechanical systems will also be a major source of complaints in the building, from users who are too hot, too cold, too humid, are getting water dripped on them, are subject to too much noise, or who get stuck in elevators.
The facility planner is well advised to consider the facility operator when most of the choices are being made in the mechanical area.
17. Finishes
The building finishes the partitions, carpets, doors, plumbing fixtures, and the like representing only a small portion of the building cost. Yet these are the major contributors to the effectiveness of the space for the occupants.
Effectiveness ranges from how well the floor plan layout works, to the feel and longevity of doorknobs. The finishing element typically is well understood by designers, so there’s relatively little value compared to the other elements in engaging a contractor early on.
Similarly, the scope of work in these tangible components is understandable, and problems are easily remedied. Accordingly, some facilities managers retain this work for themselves and their staff even in new construction and take a still greater role in renovations.
18. Furniture, Fixtures, Equipment
If the choice of foundation systems is large scale and limited, managing the design, procurement, and installation of furniture, fittings, and equipment is the opposite: small scale and wide open.
Hotel Facilities Management Jobs
Facility management is most important and it’s responsible for the security purposes, maintenance, and services of work to help the needs of the organization as well as its employees. Facility management also guides all of the services that help the exponential growth of the business.
Facilities Management Upkeep and Improvements:
- Find the correct vendor and maintain the contract.
- Workplace clean.
- All sites are totally managed.
- Repair, maintenance, and improvements.
Duties and Responsibilities of a Hotel Facility Manager
1. Facility managers, in cooperation with all occupants of the building, are responsible for the care, management, and protection of assigned real property and are required to safeguard the property from damage or loss.
2. Maintain fire-safe conditions inside and outside the facility. All facility managers are required to have a working knowledge of local Fire Prevention and Protection requirements.
3. Establish rules for opening and closing the building during normal duty hours and ensure all occupants comply with the rules. These rules, including after-hours admittance and security measures, will be posted inside the building by the facility manager.
4. Maintain aggressive energy and water conservation program.
5. Serve as the central point of contact for building occupants requesting Civil Engineer services.
6. Maintenance of the area surrounding their assigned buildings as specified in local guidance.
7. Establish the key control program and procedures for the security of all basic and master keys that service their facility.
8. Ensure service requests are submitted either verbally or written in accordance with AFI 32 1001, Operations Management, and supporting playbooks. Requests for minor construction and planned work must be approved using an AF Form 332.
9. Ensure proper surveillance and customer complaint procedures are adhered to in accordance with the requirements in the contracts for refuse collection, grounds maintenance, and custodial services.
10. Ensure reserved parking is requested and maintained in accordance with CED approval and guidance.
11. Maintain a facility folder for a chronological history of the building (electronic file suggested to minimize resource consumption). This file will be kept current at all times.
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