Craig Langston - Strategic Management of Built Facilities

Wes McGregor

Only the future lies ahead. The strategic imperative of all enterprises that aspire to success is to view the future as an opportunity. An opportunity to develop and then implement plans leading to sustainable comparative advantage over their competitors.

Strategic management is the means of guiding an enterprise through its actions to its chosen future. It involves determining purpose and objectives; formulating plans of action to achieve these objectives, most probably in a climate of change; implementing the actions; then evaluating the outcome against the objectives and making changes where required. Strategic management has for long been an established component of business, yet its application in the management of key resources of business - its property and related facilities services - has often been conspicuous by its absence. Why?

Ranging as it does from maintenance to security, and from cleaning to workplace planning, facilities management is more often than not perceived as a low-grade activity of no real consequence to business. Concomitant with this, facilities managers are generally perceived as having a low level of contribution to the success of the organization. Nothing could be further from the reality. The built environment for work (workspace) is rarely, if ever, neutral in its influence upon the performance of the enterprise. It either helps or it hinders. It either supports or it inhibits. It either stimulates or it demotivates.

Workspace and its facilities infrastructure are the tools at the disposal of the people in the business to enable them to achieve the enterprise's goals. The key aim of their strategic management is to add value to the organization through the effective management of the built environment. Yet the perception of business leaders is all too often that facilities and their managers are resource consumers rather than value adders. Changing this view is a major challenge faced by all facilities managers.

The performance of facilities managers impacts upon the performance of their organizations' workspace, which itself has a direct impact upon the performance of workers and hence that of the enterprise as a whole. Through their actions, facilities managers have a vital part to play in enhancing corporate performance and thereby in delivering shareholder value. Some business leaders have responded by outsourcing facilities and their management, believing that this will lead to reduced operating costs which in turn will enhance shareholder value. However, strategic management should not, indeed some would say (and I would not disagree) cannot, be outsourced. By its very nature it is the strategic vision that makes each enterprise unique.

Changing the focus of facilities managers from cost reduction and operational to tactical and strategic - i.e. forward looking and not being guided by a 'rear view mirror' approach - is at the core of the required transition. With crystal clarity, the goal to which all facilities managers should aspire is to migrate their operations from being