06
AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The facility management industry faces systemic change, constituting all layers of the built environment and considering its different constituents and interdependencies. For example, new technologies and digital practices allow architects to build seemingly gravity-defying buildings, enable users to express evermore personalized needs, and facilitate better responses from facility managers to emerging user needs. Changes at one level of the system, even seemingly minor ones, can lead to change in every corner of the system. In the following section, we categorize challenges and transformative trends impacting the facility management industry into five systemic areas of change. These areas represent multilayered, cross-disciplinary and interwoven change, influencing different layers of the built environment. Each area involves various fields of practice, research and education.
Change is a permanent factor in facility management; it has always been present, is here to stay and will continue to influence the business. However, recent developments have created disruptive change, led to a greater awareness of global interdependencies, and have awakened previously dormant possibilities for better performance.
The subsections below describe challenges for which the industry should prepare. For each section, we suggest research topics that could be explored by IFMA Research or by others to create a better understanding of changing dynamics.
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Research floods us with news daily about environmental challenges and impending risks to society and the built environment. Forty percent of U.S. residents lived in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021, and 80 percent lived in counties that experienced heat waves.[35] While the public, and many FM practitioners, often ignore these risks, experts advise us to act. Inaction to climate change and other natural disasters bear costs. According to insurers like Swiss Re and Aon, natural disasters caused economic losses of between US$283-343 billion globally in 2021.[36] According to Swiss Re, 50 severe flooding events caused combined losses of US$80 billion, whereas only US$20 billion was insured.[37]
Even the slightest change can have an enormous impact on the FM sector. Facility management can drive change through how FM practitioners choose to design, build, finance and operate buildings. Facility managers can develop interventions that mitigate climate effects and risks from natural disasters. Such interventions require construction or retrofitting for more energy-efficient buildings (e.g., better insulation), recommending different construction materials and utilizing sustainable energy. But it also requires that FM practitioners go beyond zero emission, self-sufficiency, and existing regulations, standards and certifications.
Facility managers must consider mitigating the impacts of climate change and natural disasters on operations. Mitigation efforts include on-site energy production and storage, alternative methods for water management, and different procurement and waste management strategies. For example, the possibilities to produce sustainable energy seem endless: wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, tidal power, geothermal energy and ground-coupled heat exchangers. This energy can be stored in batteries of vehicles, buildings or districts or in hydrogen to accommodate fluctuations in supply and demand. Facility managers could deploy wadis, plants, climate roofs and walls, and large water storage capacity in facilities to adapt to heavy rainfall and mitigate drought risks. Using dikes and terps — North European artificial dwelling mounds — we can protect ourselves from rising sea levels and flooding rivers. These new water conservation and management techniques in operations could smooth more wild fluctuations in water availability during wet and dry seasons (e.g., water tanks in buildings, campuses or business districts). Even guerrilla gardening and dry toilets can help to adapt to climate change.
Procurement and waste management strategies can reduce the use of virgin materials and secure zero waste with fully degradable, renewable, or reusable products and packaging, a transition from plastics to bioplastics. Production and service processes do not have to pollute: Buildings can be created that produce rather than consume energy, and processes can be designed to clean rather than pollute the air, water and soil. The FM industry, supported by smart technologies and dashboards in our buildings, can help management make the right decisions and users develop sustainable behaviors.
FM operations can combine nature-based solutions with the restoration of biodiversity and mitigating the impacts of climate shocks. Some of these solutions, at first glance, could appear to be a nice-to-have environmental gesture. But they could have direct bottom-line benefits. For example, a green roof can provide hard cash in facility operations as they often have better insulation and better water management, which offer longer roof lifespans. These benefits also need to be balanced with the costs of green roofs stemming from gardening/maintenance and replacement. However, this can be calculated and managed. The FM industry needs to develop and deliver interventions and provide evidence that these interventions are accurate, repeatable and reliable.
FM practitioners can source products and services for their buildings, products and services locally, reducing transportation footprints. Applying biomimicry and circularity to the built environment can provide nature-based solutions, contribute to preserving species, and stimulate awareness and fun among staff and the local community.
Facility management is no longer only about pest control, mowing lawns and trimming hedges. FMs should help restore biodiversity in their communities, paying special attention to inviting in other life forms with care. FM organizations can use sites for green-blue strategies to support endangered species with trees and flowers that attract birds and insects, and with beehives, nesting cabinets and wadis, combining methods to help endangered and non-hazardous species with climate adaptation. Rewilding is now a beautiful alternative to formal, high-maintenance gardens responding to the natural, local environment.
As the above suggests, the FM industry needs change agents and new methods to boost sustainable practices. These practices could attract the attention of new workers to the industry — young and old. Moreover, waste and pollution cost money, but finding new ways to fit more smartly into value networks can tap into new revenue streams. But is it true? Waste is said to be food for another part of the supply chain and can generate money, and new strategies contribute to new business models. Still, as with all investments, research needs to substantiate these claims with evidence on sustainable interventions’ return on investment and payback time. The following provides some suggestions for areas for future research.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have done more to transform organizations than any other change initiative. Organizations have adopted new technologies and work modes at unprecedented rates, and McKinsey & Co. estimates that organizations accelerated the adoption of technologies by a minimum of six to 10 years. For most people, the consequences of this transformation introduced the concept of hybrid working, transforming not only where but how they work. However, digitization and technological change have more fundamental impacts through automation and augmentation (enabling organizations and workers to do new things that were once too expensive, dangerous or impractical). Automation and augmentation will transform how we live, work, play and relate to one another. Digitization and technological change enable organizations to reinvent industries, substitute products and services, craft digital businesses, reconfigure delivery models and create new value propositions.
For workers and creatives, digitization and technological change transform the talent equation by requiring new skills and competencies and empowering them through cheap, powerful tools. These tools enable workers to offer their skills and services free from geographical constraints and compete against established companies.
Accelerated adoption of technology impacts how and where organizations create and add value; it affects buildings' role in value creation and how facility management companies organize operations and serve core organizations and end users. While digital transformation and the shift toward hybrid ways of working pose several significant challenges, they represent only a few of the many tests and transformative trends concurrently shaping the facility management industry.
Technology gives the industry incredible opportunities for better-built environment performance. Sensors provide a continuous flow of information about the state of the building, its use and performance. An intelligent built environment can help the industry predict maintenance, inform service providers where to intervene, and forecast the number of building users and related demand for catering services. It also reports where congestion emerges, where people like to work, and where potentially unsafe or dangerous situations occur.
Developments also include new platforms, the proliferation of networked devices, cybersecurity, distributed ledger technologies, new human-machine interfaces, robotics and information management systems. These changes can potentially support facility management and organizations with better-informed decision making, let alone the spin-offs from big data and artificial intelligence. The enrichment of data sources offers excellent promise for management and research.
Such technology allows facility managers to monitor processes and behaviors and intervene whenever necessary. However, many facility managers, as well as scholars, struggle with these abundant data streams. How to understand its relevance, how to order and select it, and how and where to use it? What structure, what dashboards, what interventions and what learning loops? While there is still a lot to discover, it is evident that building technology has the potential to create better buildings. However, new topics emerge from these abundant possibilities, such as: How ethical is it?
Linking the built environment to individuals' behaviors, perceptions and physiological responses can be a rich research strategy. It allows our community to learn and, by doing so, to design and build better buildings. The opportunities must be balanced through methods and processes guaranteeing individuals' anonymity and privacy. The FM industry should help with technology studies and advance understanding of how buildings can be better built and used while securing user privacy.
Upon designing, building and maintaining a built environment, digital worlds also provide a rich base to improve organizational performance. Building information modeling and digital twins can help with the (re)design, (re)construction and maintenance of the built environment. This information allows designers, constructors and decision makers to understand what bulb, brick or beam to produce, when to deliver, and when to repair or replace. It can also support increased sustainability, as with a materials passport informing management which building parts are where, what condition they are in, and how these can be reused and in what way.
Virtualization, simulation, virtual reality, augmented reality and gaming can help FMs understand and forecast the interrelatedness between the built environment, people and organization. It can support data collection and advance user involvement because visualization of a building design in advance of its actual use, preferably with agent-based modeling, can boost the imagination of future users. Studies show that when such models are coupled with an organization’s key performance indicators and research results, it allows design refinements, avoids failure, and creates a better fit between building and organization.
WORK & WORKFORCE CHANGE
The global workforce had markedly different experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers in critical jobs (e.g., health care, education, security, cleaning), or who lived under unfavorable socio-economic conditions (e.g., less developed countries, low income, unskilled) had to work. Moreover, idle workers (e.g., hospitality industries and performing arts) were simply for-bidden to practice their profession. The remaining healthy workforce worked remotely in an unparalleled worldwide experiment. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that in Australia, France and the U.K., 47 percent of employees teleworked during lockdowns in 2020.[38] Bloomberg recently reported that U.S. office occupancy rates are at about 43 percent of pre-COVID levels and that companies are struggling with workers who prefer to work from home at about 30 percent.[39] It is a potent reminder from our occupants that workplaces may not always be as good as we like to think.[40]
All daily work routines changed abruptly when the pandemic hit. Commuting and workplace routines dissolved, and new practices emerged in workers' homes. Remote work drastically changed physical, social and mental ratios.[41] The workforce became spatially grounded and socially digitalized, and the knowledge workforce became both mentally relaxed and strained. Vacant properties underlined a nearly physically empty but digitally vibrant world. Initially, many workers appreciated more time at home. When quarantine progressed, workers felt increasingly isolated and mentally exhausted. This blurring of online and offline worlds coincided with a new flow of atypical micro-mindset changes between work and home that emerged from hybrid working. It made place as a concept harder to grasp and introduced the conundrum of how to support a new world of work.
Facility management repeatedly faced abrupt, erratic challenges requiring quick thinking and reorganized priorities. They had to adapt new safety regulations, support home offices and home services, and find ways to mitigate mental stress. Facility managers had to reopen contract discussions concerning rent, maintenance and other services. Subsequent discussions concerned cleaning, ventilation, aerosols and returning workers. Even though many buildings were empty, the industry was tasked with developing new solutions in a high-pressure environment.
Facility managers supporting critical occupations faced even more stringent demands. On top of immediate response actions, facility managers had to introduce additional behavioral changes into the built environment. These interventions included new user logistics and work routines, cleaning and hygiene practices, food practices and seating arrangements. FM organizers had to ensure strict compliance with changing regulations and requirements at the risk of being fined or shut down.
These pressures created new insights into the industry’s capabilities. Facility managers can pivot quickly amid sudden dramatic events. Facility managers have many response scenarios to support the organization's operations and workers both on site and remote that can be deployed for another pandemic. Many organizations also discovered the benefits of digital tools, finding that a number of in-person activities such as job interviews, staff meetings and training could be accomplished online. For organizations that did not (or could not) shift to virtual work, digital tools did not lead to fundamental organizational or work changes.
While beneficial for many, remote work can come at a cost. According to studies by Gallup, remote workers experience more negative emotions than on-site workers. Remote workers are more likely to report being anxious, sad, worried, lonely, stressed, depressed and bored than on-site workers.[42] Simple structures and basic guidelines can help workers to stay well, wherever they work. The body benefits from good ergonomics, good food, physical activity, mental breaks, fresh air and natural light. As social beings, we also need contact with other members of our social ecosystem. Real-life encounters, taking walks, running errands — diversifying our interactions and surroundings help us feel more connected to our community and our world, which makes us feel better. It is important to note that women, minorities, and introverted and sensitive workers report being happy and more productive at home. Facility managers should recognize that one size does not fit all.
THE INTERWOVEN WORK & WORKFORCES IN AN ORGANIZATION
Facility management consists of two primary, interwoven workforces: one facilitating the other. The FM industry keeps the built environment accessible, safe and clean, and prepares, executes and manages contracts. Facility management is involved in construction and reconstruction projects and purchases of necessary and replacement equipment.
Margins in the industry are relatively low, and the business is under constant pressure for cost efficiency. Cost reductions, or the threats of them, are the order of the day. This pressure permeates how the industry is structured and managed, potentially threatening its effectiveness, social sustainability, inclusion and ethicality. The question is: How has the pandemic affected frontline workers in the FM industry? The International Labour Organization (ILO) reported that inequality deepened within and between countries during the pandemic, hitting a more vulnerable workforce — young people, women, migrants and lower-skilled workers — the hardest.[43]
If the industry can prove the financial and social impacts of its interventions on the organization, workers and society, the FM industry has the potential to reverse this trend. For instance, an extreme focus on cost reductions in air treatment could affect air quality in a building. What impacts could this intervention have on workers and the organization? Could it push ethical boundaries by negatively affecting workers through sick building syndrome or transmission of building-related illnesses? Other risks are related to an overreliance on cost-cutting, including adverse effects on productivity and sick leave, negatively impacting organizations' performance and putting worker relationships on edge.[44] Conversely, and more importantly, we need to ask ourselves: What investments improve workers’ and organizations' performances?
The built environment, related facility services and organizations should be viewed as one system. The interlinkages and how facility managers can use them to create positive change in organizations need further investigation — specifically how interventions in the built environment change people and organizations for the better. Facility managers need further research on the relationship between the built environment and related services on organization strategy, structure, culture, efficiency, profitability and competitiveness.
Practice should support academics with targeted funding. This support would allow scholars in facility management to take the lead with research and invite other disciplines to participate. Other research participants could include architecture, interior design, construction, engineering, art and spatial planning, as well as related areas in management and organization studies, service design, real estate, hospitality management, data science, neuroscience, anthropology, environmental sciences and psychology. Next to facility managers, we need users and other practice experts to support our research. Other practice experts could include environmentalists, visualization and gaming experts, technologists, sustainability experts, occupiers, service providers, owners, design professionals, builders, property developers and investors.
CHANGE IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
The global economy is strongly interconnected: Work is assigned to the producer that delivers the highest-quality resource, product or service at the best price. Such structures have promoted a flourishing global trade, and recent developments have also clearly exposed mutual dependencies and vulnerabilities in existing supply chains. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The Russia-Ukraine war is reversing the global recovery from the pandemic[45] and is leading to energy crises across Europe and food shortages in the Middle East and Africa. Multilateral efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis, prevent further economic fragmentation, maintain global liquidity, manage debt distress, tackle climate change and end the pandemic are essential. These interventions show how interconnected the global economy is. Such developments create a demand for increasing responsiveness through unstable and insecure supply chains with new types of partnerships. Moreover, geopolitical developments can cause severe damage to existing supply chain relations and a need to create different, more local-oriented supply chain partners and producers.
Conclusion — Facility Management’s Shot
In response to these trends and challenges, facility management organizations can develop new frameworks and models, products and solutions, and industry development pathways. The industry must collectively challenge assumptions about the future around which the industry has traditionally operated and team up with facility management academia to succeed on this metamorphic journey. As with most things, assumptions are fundamental to decision making. Assumptions provide quickly accessible representations of how things work, which can be very helpful in an increasingly complex world. They can also have adverse effects and limit change: Assumptions can prevent people from considering new ways of working and retrench biases that reinforce the status quo and hinder innovation and evolution, resulting in stasis. Research can give facility management a shot to provide a solid evidence base for these much-needed systemic changes. Scientific insights into these emerging areas should allow the industry to improve organizational performance and values, engage with different stakeholders, accelerate sustainability practices, increase emphasis on health and well-being, and create new methods for the evolving built environment inclusive of the flow of related new technologies while at the same time, making the world a better place.
Sources/References
[35] S. Kaplan and A. Ba Tran (2022) “More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021.” (Jan. 5). Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/05/climate-disasters-2021-fires/
[36] Aon. (2022). Weather, Climate and Catastrophe Insight. https://www.aon.com/weather-climate-catastrophe/index.aspx L. Bevere. F. Remondi (2022). Natural catastrophes in 2021: the floodgates are open (30 March). Swiss Re. https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sigma-research/sigma-2022-01.html
[37] L. Bevere. F. Remondi (2022). Natural catastrophes in 2021: the floodgates are open (30 March). Swiss Re. https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/sigma-research/sigma-2022-01.html
[38] OECD. (2021). Teleworking in the covid-19 pandemic: trends and prospects (Ser. OECD policy responses to coronavirus (COVID-19). OECD Publishing.
[39] A. Wooldridge. (2022). Workers Are Winning the Return-to-Office War Because They're Right. Bloomberg. April 25.
[40] L. Kaplan. (2018). Excess-the factory. (J. Carr & J. Pap, Trans.). Oakland, California, USA: Commune Editions.
[41] H. Lefèbvre & D. Nicholson-Smith. (1991). The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell
[42] Gallup (2022). Gallup’s Insights: the Gallup CHRO roundtable briefing.
[43] ILO, International Labour Organization. (2021). Work in the time of COVID. Report of the Director-General. ILC.109/Report I (B). Geneva: International Labour Office.
[44] EPA, Environmental Protection Agency. Office of Air and Radiation. (1991). Indoor air facts, no. 4 : sick building syndrome. United States, Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Air and Radiation.
[45] IMF (2022). World economic outlook - war sets back the global recovery. April. Washington, D.C., USA: International Monetary Fund