Facility management is a broad field providing services such as the maintenance of a building, devices or organizational materials, security, health and overall work environment.

FM deals with offering an efficient environment and optimal functionality of a facility by using and integrating emerging technologies, people and processes. Outsourcing FM services offers benefits such as cost reduction, increased strategic focus, better accessibility to FM technology, improved operational flexibility and performance. However, several risks can be encountered in outsourcing, such as a lack of visibility on the services provided by the contractors, loss of project/workflow control or disputes with the contractors, that invalidate its benefits.

Outsourcing FM business

Outsourcing FM services provides a cost-efficient path to managing business activities. Enterprises can enable external parties to carry out certain processes or business activities for them. Outsourcing FM services results in lower costs as it allows an organization and its employees to concentrate on internal projects. It is an option that can optimize business costs and further enhance the organization’s quality of services. As outsourcing is a cost-effective solution, companies prefer to adopt outsourcing for soft and hard FM service.

An outsourcing life cycle includes strategic assessment and business case development comprising of cost analysis, selecting outsourcer, contract development, and service delivery and management. At each stage of the outsourcing process, risks are encountered by both the organization and outside parties.

Outsourcing FM risks

Risks associated with outsourcing in FM can include poor service quality, incorrect assumptions, lack of security, poor relationships between service provider and organization, lack of clarity in responsibility, conflict of interest, inadequate planning, poor contractual definition and scope and others. While some may argue that taking risks is essential for the growth of the company, it is understandable that if the risks are not managed appropriately, they may pose serious threats to business operations and profits.

The worldwide FM market is still in the infancy phase but is growing. The FM market is fragmented into several sectors such as real estate, construction, hospitality, shopping malls, and others. As FM is significantly growing in most countries, governments are developing FM business, tourism and manufacturing to reduce their country’s dependency on oil. However, the FM market encounters challenges including low awareness regarding outsourcing and high price sensitivity. The FM sector relies on individual solutions and high dependency on manpower. Technology’s role to overcome manpower issues is rising.

Technology’s role

Introducing the latest technology has significantly improved FM services. There are various applications and websites that can monitor, control and maintain FM services making assessments and maintenance priorities more reliable. Using drones to investigate building issues (especially high-rise buildings) has made the job safer and easier.

FM has been influenced by innovations such as Internet of Things (IoT), remote monitoring, advanced control systems, robotics and mobile applications to ensure smooth operations. Organizations that successfully adopt and master technology are more likely to develop efficiency and effectiveness. For businesses who choose not to implement modern technology, there could be risks of an increasingly unbridgeable gap leading to rapidly outdated business processes and the prospect of cavernous re-engineering tasks.

Innovations in information technology (IT) can enhance FM service delivery. Outsourced service providers can leverage modern technology to ensure efficient processing and delivery of services.

Outsourcing FM with IT support

Organizations opt for outsourcing business operations to acquire high quality services at a lower cost to the company. Several studies showed that outsourcing services led to higher business performance as it reduces operational and investment costs in technology, offers expertise in using current technology and provides better deliverance of services.

However, organizations can also have their innovation capacity reduced, and with differences in working culture and environment, employee productivity, performance, motivation and creativity can drop. Several researchers found that outsourcing primary activities including manufacturing, supply chains, and supporting activities including IT, have a positive effect on the performance and profitability of the companies. The companies invested in using FM technologies has resulted in cost effectiveness, safe working environment, better staff knowledge, robust information mandates, ease of communication with their clients, transparent relationships and an advanced work culture.

Organizations that do not make technology investments can face several challenges, such as data storage, slow services, poor communication with client, poor information accuracy, as well as a possible unsafe work environment and difficulty retrieving information.

Facilities in health care

Healthcare organizations increased the use of third-party FM, which resulted in focusing on improving health care strategies and services. Recent study found hospitals that outsource FM services such as cleaning and security, which however, receive low satisfaction, thereby signifying the low quality of service offered by the service providers because the service provider has limited usage of IT. In this case there are many applications and methods which can improve FM and can help obtain client feedback.

In Taiwan, a school’s FM department enhanced maintenance management performance using a 3D CAD-based environment. This allowed the FM team to handle maintenance easily and effectively. Furthermore, the FM department hopes to develop the 3D CAD-based FM system to support facility-related information sharing among the team and staff. Therefore, the contractor announced that all engineers would be encouraged to begin to use the building information management (BIM) FM system integrated to apply maintenance management to manage facility-related data and information effectively in the 3D visual environment

Considering the role and advent of FM technology, a 2017 study by Araszkiewicz revealed that digitalization and use of improved information and communication systems have enabled the FM sector to gain optimization in management of operations. Smart FM with innovative digital technology is a new means of supporting information modelling and decision-making that improvises the maintenance and delivery of services. In alignment with this, another 2016 study by Ebbesen, Bonke, Jensen, & Karlshøj observed that IT has proved to be efficient for an integrated facility management that is cost-efficient. Use of IoT, automation, analytics and augmented reality, where the devices can collect real-time data to be analyzed for identifying the faults and thereby assisting in maintenance of the facilities. The use of such technologies, their limitations, and strengths are however, not widely explored in literature.

Conclusion

The study reached this conclusion by adopting a survey design and collecting financial secondary data for evaluating company performance. It was also determined from this study that while outsourcing offers better cost saving strategy, and is more focus is required on effective monitoring and communication.

FM is an exciting profession that embraces many essential areas of the built environment. Over the last two decades, there has been significant growth in the profession to the extent that clarity is needed in its roles both in the industry and organization. The BIMFM system provides insight into factors impacting FM activities, which in turn assists FM teams in managing interface events to improve performance. The BIMFM system allows FM staff and managers to track and manage the most recent maintenance-related information, events, problem descriptions and solutions in the 3D CAD-based models. The 3D CAD-based models illustrate facility events, problem descriptions, and solutions in 3D representations. Notably, BIM is a highly promising means of enhancing FM and identifying facility information relevant to both basic information and maintenance.