Urban & Community-based FM

Looking beyond individual buildings to the urban neighborhood and community

Urban-based FM looks for ways to take the principles of FM, which are applied at the building (micro level) and use them at the macro level – urban precincts (neighborhoods) and cities. Community-based is different: It is about identifying and developing managerial frameworks that empower marginalized communities to take ownership of and manage and operate built assets. "The key difference is that facility managers work with communities through a grassroots bottom-up approach through community-based FM," said Michell. Both approaches are founded upon the belief that a building never sits in isolation in contrast to traditional methods utilized by "property owners, landlords, facility managers and asset managers who only see their buildings as a line-item on a spreadsheet," Michell argues.

Research in urban and community-based FM is upending traditional notions of value creation in the industry. A widely held belief in the FM industry posits that it is the management and maintenance of the building that creates the value. According to research from urban and community-based FM, the users generate the value of an asset. This realization, Michell said, "shifts the facility managers' focus from primarily leveraging the economic value of assets towards a greater emphasis on leveraging the social value assets … if you pay attention to the social aspects inherent in your building or the spaces around your building, the economic and the environmental value will follow."

To leverage the social value of office environments, buildings, or spaces surrounding buildings, FMs must look beyond the confines of the buildings and engage with the local community and understand human behavior and needs. "Facility managers need a greater focus on understanding human behavior and people management to predict what the users of buildings might need and want and thereby unlock greater value from their assets."

One way to do so is by employing a framework like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which covers three major categories: safety, belonging and self-development. FMs can leverage the value of their buildings and assets when they move up the hierarchy and stop thinking about their buildings in isolation. Understanding users' experiences in and around the buildings is as important as understanding their experiences inside buildings. For example, "a key concern for facility managers in Africa is ensuring that people can get to a building safely and securely," said Michell.

This is not only an African challenge; it is a challenge that should concern all FMs. A 2021 study by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics (ONS) asked people about feelings of personal safety when walking alone in different public settings in Great Britain. The ONS found that both men and women feel less safe after dark, but the extent to which women feel unsafe is significantly greater. Disabled people, too, are more likely to feel unsafe, even in the daytime in busy public places. Given that many companies want their workers to return to the workplace, are FMs doing enough to ensure that workers' – especially women and disabled workers – commutes are safe and free from harassment?

FMs: Advocates for end-users

While it is easy to say FMs should focus on human behaviors and end-users, many struggle with this opportunity. If FMs leverage user-centric approaches, they could become advocates for end-users to senior management.

Reviews of innovation trajectories within the FM industry show that the industry places greater emphasis on the economic and environmental aspects of innovation to the exclusion of social. This focus on FM's technological, economic, and ecological facets can reinforce top-down orientation among professionals. However, Michell contends FMs should avoid overly top-down approaches: "All professionals tend to assume that we have the solutions so that your life will be perfect when we walk away," she said.

Manifestations of top-down approaches are rampant in the industry and across urban contexts – especially in developing countries and neighborhoods in decline. When buildings open in socioeconomically marginalized areas using a centrally determined, professionally sourced idea of what a community desires or wants, the structures do not often align with community wants or needs. "When you speak to the community, it is not what they wanted or needed. … these buildings often have high asset value on asset managers' spreadsheets, but they quickly become vacant and derelict."

"Traditional designers argue that their design is what creates the value. And, yes, their design is often amazing,” she said. “Still, facility managers manage and operate that design element and space. They are the ones that will leverage the social value from it." This is of particular concern when dealing with marginalized users who have not traditionally had a voice.

"When designers come with traditional design approaches, there can be a disconnect. The philosophical position of what is designed may not suit the local community's or neighborhood's actual needs and designs. In many ways, you could argue the design becomes culturally inappropriate," Michell said.

To develop sustainable solutions (i.e., buildings and spaces that people want to use), professionals in the built environment need to understand a local community's needs, wants, desires, and contexts. These become critical in design. FMs need to acknowledge that professionals do not have all the solutions as they do not know everything about a community's needs or wants. FMs need to engage with communities, think in participation, and be willing to think out of the box to identify ways to leverage opportunities and build value.

"Facility managers should engage the community (internally and externally) with genuine empathy and listen to their desires and wants to develop solutions for which these communities genuinely attach value," said Michell. "The facility manager needs to embark on a genuine and participatory journey. This is not a box-ticking exercise. If facility managers understand the needs of their end-users and communities, they can become advocates for communities internal and external to the organization."

However, social value cannot always be captured directly in a spreadsheet. The inability to capture value in a spreadsheet does not mean that building owners and facility managers do not feel the economic value of these interventions. "If the community has a sense of cultural or social attachment to the building or development, it is less likely to be vandalized or destroyed. Research from South Africa and elsewhere shows that if a community attaches social value to an asset, they will go out of their way to protect it," she said

Fostering social and community value is particularly important when dealing with traditionally marginalized users and communities and urban areas experiencing decay. Managing community involvement will become more critical for FMs as some countries and their urban and rural regions decline due to economic transition or population aging. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Jose, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Sydney, Hong Kong and Tokyo have lost population over the past decade. Several local factors are at play, but aging will be a significant driving force in the decades to come: Demographers expect that countries like Italy, Portugal, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Greece, Romania, Japan and Croatia, will all decline in population between 10 and 22 percent by 2050.

Urban FM helping contend with environmental shocks

Environmental shocks related to climate change, the lack of investment in infrastructure, and surging demand mean that FM needs to develop innovative ways to be less reliant on municipal infrastructures – e.g., electrical grids and water systems.

In South Africa, the grid is volatile with a great deal of load shedding. Businesses and communities in South Africa typically have two hours without electricity for every 12-hour cycle, and businesses and communities can sometimes go up to four to six hours without power. As a result, property owners strive to be less reliant on electricity supply. Renewable energy solutions, energy storage, generators and local energy sharing systems are solutions for the lack of stable access to energy.

"Some of the FM practitioners I spoke to recently want to share renewable energies within urban precincts. They are developing a neighborhood view and discussing how to share energy across a neighborhood or collection of buildings," Michell said

Water security is another issue challenging FMs in South Africa and elsewhere. Drought, less predictable rains, and populations straining underinvested infrastructure almost caused Cape Town to run out of water. It is also posing challenges for cities and facility managers globally. In 2019, Cape Town was 90-days away from "day zero," when the city would close its taps to most residences and commercial properties to maintain supply for hospitals and other critical infrastructure. The government had to enact an entire city approach to reduce usage. This approach involved engaging citizens in limiting residential water use to 50 liters (just over 13 gallons) a day. For context, that is enough for a 90-second shower, two liters of drinking water, a sink full to hand-wash dishes or laundry, one cooked meal, two hand washings, two teeth brushings and one toilet flush."

Meeting such a challenge involved several FM solutions, such as installing reducers, which reduce the water flow out of taps to a mist, and switching to using paper cups and plates to avoid washing dishes. Other solutions involved installing meters that limited property water use, increasing the use of recycled or greywater, banning certain types of water usage, reducing water pressure throughout the city, and hunting for leaks.

Exploring alternative approaches to energy and water security is not only a challenge in middle- and low-income markets. It is also imperative in Europe and North America due to the ongoing war in Ukraine and concerns over European energy security and instability of energy and water systems due to climate change. For example, in 2021, 40 percent of US residents will live in counties struck by climate-related extreme weather, including fire, flood, hurricane, mud/landslide and severe storms. Harvard University predicts "around 50 years from now, many US regions may see water supplies reduced by a third of their current size, while demand continues to increase." This potential reduction in water supplies will increase pressure on the already strained US water supply system. 30 million people – or 9 percent of the US population – currently live in areas where water systems violate safety standards.

Research into community-based approaches to FM can provide methodologies and inspiration to become advocates for communities and end-users. Urban FM can help FMs leverage their locations and skillsets to deliver better services and mitigate emerging risks posed by service failures from urban networks.