Facility Management: What’s the big

deal?
The recent Saudi FM Summit 2011 has somehow enlightened me about the current awareness and
understanding about Facility Management in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Though there were
indications of some basic knowledge in FM, I found that there are still ambiguities in understanding
what FM is all about. In Malaysia about ten years ago, I have no Idea what FM was. The more I learnt
about FM, the more I became confused. As a ‘latecomer’ of FM, I had a huge trouble to draw a clear
demarcation between the different definitions and roles relating to the built environment. In the
recent years, I have now seen the light. I hope this sharing would assist anybody out there who are
searching for ‘the truth’ about FM.

So, there are Maintenance Management and Facility Management – are these two of a kind? Ten
years ago, I would have said yes. What’s the big deal? It’s just about maintaining i.e. servicing and
repairing the mechanical, electrical, plumbing and architectural installations of a building, ensuring
reliability of the machines and prevent unplanned breakdown. What I need to do is just to follow the
Operation & Maintenance instructions given by the manufacturers (or the industry standards) to
execute my maintenance activities. With this understanding, I previously regarded FM as merely
‘doing the same old things with a new uniform’.

But it was not quite true though. I have had a very though time in making the management
‘understand’ the importance of my maintenance improvement proposals. Likewise, the
management had a very though time to make me shut my mouth. Eventually, I found that I was
frustrated – especially when the things I have ‘predicted’ happens to the building installations,
before I was made accountable for it. I blamed the finance manager, the CEO and all other people
who previously shut me up. What I didn’t realize was I failed to bridge maintenance management
and the organisation’s business goals. I failed to communicate effectively with the ‘core business
people’. The most important thing was that I failed to understand the business of my organisation.
This is where FM comes into place.

So what is Facility Management then? Forget all the different definitions for now. Suppose you are
selling pizzas. Your business goal should be of course, profit. For this, you need to sell pizzas that are
tasty enough to get more customers. You would need good recipes, quality ingredients, efficient
cooking procedures and so on. Those are actually you core business concerns. However, even with
all those things you could not make a single pizza – if you don’t have the facilities. You would need a
kitchen, dining hall, tables and chairs, storage (normal/cold) and perhaps attractive signage. For a
small restaurant, you may be able to manage all of the core items and the facilities altogether.
However, when your business grows significantly (such as having a network of restaurants
throughout the country) you would want to consider focusing only on your core concerns. This is
when Facility Managers come in handy. Apart from ensuring the quality and taste of your pizzas to
be the same across all branches of restaurants, you would also want all of the premises to be
operational, comfortable, clean and safe to a certain standard. It is wiser then to focus your efforts
on improving the recipes, getting the right cooks and so on, and leave the management of all the
facilities to ones whose expertise are in managing them.

Should you then outsource all the non-core functions to different contractors, or to a single service
provider? Does a ‘one-stop’ service provider imply that it is an FM provider? I would answer yes for
most cases. It is when you leave all non-core functions to an FM provider; you would then give the
opportunity to them to demonstrate its innovation in integrating all different disciplines (technical
and non-technical) to support your core business.

However, a good FM provider would first ask you: “What are your business goals and core activities?
What is the purpose of this facility for your organisation? ” rather than “How many chillers do you
have?” – those would differentiate between an FM provider and a maintenance contractor.

Bio
Mohd Mazhar Mohd Marzuki is an FM Consultant from Global Facilities Management (Malaysia). He
moved to Saudi Arabia in 2010 to explore and educate the FM market in the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia.