FM World 9.10.14

THE MAGAZINE FOR THE BRITISH INSTITUTE OF FACILITIES MANAGEMENT | 9 OCTOBER 2014

W FM MWorld www.fm-world.co.uk

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VOL 11 ISSUE 18 9 OCTOBER 2014

CONTENTS

07 | Academe means business

16 | Sitting comfortably

20| The team works

NEWS

OPINION

FEATURES

06 Richard Branson offers staff ‘unlimited holiday’ 07 Universities the ‘building blocks’ of the UK’s future 08 Project of the Fortnight: Northumbria Police’s new station in Newcastle city centre 09 Think Tank: Is senior management already using data managed

by FMs to make improvements within the workplace?

10 News analysis: 1) Wellbeing, productivity and green buildings 2) BIFM to clear the career path with Plotr 12 Business news: Graeme Davies: Labour’s minimum wage promise poses a challenge to FM 14 In Focus: David Mason, senior sustainability manager at Skanska

18 John Bowen says meetings must matter 19 Five minutes with Andy Sneyd, president of the Building & Engineering Services Association 50 No Two Days

MONITOR 32 Technical: Getting the most out of BIM 35 Insight: Market intelligence 37 How to: Using live-in security to manage vacant property 38 How to: Disability access and fire safety 39 Court report: Break clauses: Renewal of a business lease at the expiry of a contract term 41 How to: Protecting against bacterial infection outbreaks

REGULARS 42 45 46 47 48

BIFM news Diary of events Products Behind the job Appointments

26 | Farrell looks to the future

16

The workspace in our heads: The message from this year’s 100% Design trade event is that we’re blurring our distinctions between home and work

20

Military precision: Ex-service personnel have learned to ‘be the best’, can execute orders and know how to take over in a crisis – hallmarks of a good FM

26

Less noise & more dialogue: Will Sir Terry Farrell’s review of architecture and the built environment make a difference?

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Cover illustration: PATRICK GEORGE

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Redactive Publishing Ltd 17 Britton Street, London EC1M 5TP 020 7880 6200 www.fm-world.co.uk EDITORIAL Tel: 020 7880 6229 email: editorial@fm-world.co.uk editor: Martin Read ⁄ news editor: Herpreet Kaur Grewal ⁄ reporter: James Harris ⁄ sub editor: Deborah Shrewsbury ⁄ digital content executive: Hannah Whittaker ⁄ consultant art director: Mark Parry ⁄ art editor: Daniel Swainsbury

MARTIN READ EDITOR COMMENT

LEADER

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING email: sales@fm-world.co.uk senior display sales executive: Norbert Camenzuli (020 7880 7551) ⁄ display sales executive: Jack Shuard (020 7880 8543) / recruitment sales: Call 020 7324 2755

PRODUCTION production manager: Jane Easterman senior production executive: Aysha Miah PUBLISHING publishing director: Joanna Marsh Forward features lists and media pack available at www.fm-world.co.uk/about-us

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Simon Ball, business development director, Mitie ⁄ Martin Bell, independent consultant / Lucy Jeynes, Larch Consulting / Nick Cook, managing director, Avison Young ⁄ Rob Greenfield, group SHEQ director, GSH ⁄ Liz Kentish, managing director, Kentish and Co. ⁄ Anne Lennox Martin, FM consultant ⁄ Peter McLennan, joint course director, MSc Facility Environment and Management, University College London ⁄ Geoff Prudence, chair, CIBSE FM Group ⁄ Jeremy Waud, chairman, Incentive FM group⁄ Jane Wiggins, FM tutor and author ⁄ Chris Wood, FM consultant

Average net circulation 12,744 (Jul 13 – Jun 14) FM World magazine is produced using paper derived from sustainable sources; the ink used is vegetable based; 85 per cent of other solvents used in the production process are recycled © FM World is published on behalf of the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM)

by Redactive Publishing Ltd (RPL), 17 Britton St, London EC1M 5TP. This magazine aims to include a broad range of opinion about FM business and professional issues and articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the BIFM nor should such opinions be relied upon as statements of fact. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any print or electronic format, including but not limited to any online service, any database or any part of the internet, or in any other format in whole or in part in any media whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher. While all due care is taken in writing and producing this magazine, neither BIFM nor RPL accept any liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein. Printed by Polestar Stones ISSN 1743 8845

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e brought us Tubular Bells, the Sex Pistols, the concept of a ’megastore’ (RIP) and cheaper transatlantic travel. But today, with his own eyes fixed on outer space, Richard Branson may just have introduced some inner torment to those managing the workplace.

Branson’s latest wheeze is to offer his Virgin employees unlimited freedom to manage their holiday time. His logic is that if the fixed office hours of 9 to 5 have been rendered meaningless by flexible working, why shouldn’t the same apply to holiday time? Each employee works out when and whether they should take their holiday, and plans it accordingly.

This is an interesting experiment in the further liberation of knowledge work staff, the dilution of corporate hierarchy and the relentless forward march of management by output. Indeed, it surely forces people to constantly assess their performance in order to justify their own decisions on when they should and shouldn’t be working.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with devolving this level of responsibility to the individual (“Empowering employees to take more responsibility can never be wrong,” says the man himself) but there are ramifications for facilities management, not least the muddying of the already very muddied waters surrounding the planning of work space requirements. Because Branson’s high-profile announcement will add to the growing impetus surrounding flexible working as the norm; giving employees power to decide their own holidays is something that could easily trigger far greater levels of third space and home-based work. It thus has the potential to cause havoc for capacity planning, even further clouding the ability to measure dependable levels of office use. Assessing and reassessing an organisation’s office portfolio is becoming increasingly difficult, and this further element of uncertainty is not going to help.

Could it work? Many knowledge workers talk of struggles to take existing holiday allocation around their workload as it is. And that, for some, is the problem. Reacting to the Virgin announcement, many took to social media to offer experiences of similar policies (for many, the upshot has been people taking less, not more time off).

Let’s not forget, although he’s had a lot of No.1s in the entrepreneurial hit parade, Branson has also released a few duffers. He’s a habit of going all-in on a bold new business idea, only to pull out rather sheepishly later; Virgin Cola and Virgin Mobile, each based on new business models and launched to much fanfare – only to be exposed later as fatally flawed. He was even in F1 for a brief time. Remember that?

Although this is an issue primarily for office/knowledge work and salaried employees (this kind of personal work planning is already practised by freelancers and interims), there remain generational and hierarchical barriers to overcome. Cynics also look to the darker side, suggesting that those who take most advantage of their new freedom to take as much holiday time as they want risk being easily identified by management as the least valuable employees. And the very structure of team groups could be fatally undermined. It all adds to the soup of influencing factors making the planning of future office requirements ever trickier.

H

“Branson’s high-profile announcement will add to the growing impetus surrounding flexible working as the norm”

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EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

Branson: “Just as we don’t have a nine-tofive policy, we don’t need a vacation policy”

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Richard Branson offers his staff ‘unlimited holiday’ Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group, is offering his personal staff unlimited annual leave.

The news comes after an excerpt from Branson’s book, The Virgin Way, appeared on his blog.

Branson claimed that ‘nine-to-five working no longer applies’ after the way “flexible working has revolutionised how, where and when we all do our jobs”.

Having being informed by his daughter of a similar plan at the online video streaming business Netflix, Branson decided that his staff could take “as much holiday as they want”.

Explaining the policy in its Reference Guide On Our Freedom And Responsibility Culture, Netflix said that “we should focus on what people get done, not on how many hours or days worked. Just as we don’t have a nine-to-five policy, we don’t need a vacation policy”.

For Branson’s personal staff, there is no longer any need to ask for prior approval to take time off. Explained Branson: “Neither employees themselves nor their managers are asked or expected to keep track of their days away from the office.

“It is left to the employee alone to decide if and when he or she feels like taking a few hours, a day, a week or a month off, the assumption being that they are only going to do it when they feel a hundred per cent comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business – or, for that matter, their careers.”

Branson said that if the

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policy was a success, he would encourage all of Virgin’s subsidiary companies to follow suit, “which will be incredibly exciting to watch.”

Simon Aspinall, director at FM recruiter Catch 22 and chair of the BIFM’s people management special interest group, told FM World: “The emphasis should be based around trust and on output rather than time spent working.

“I do wonder if [Branson’s] staff will ever be ‘100 per cent comfortable that they and their

team are up to date on every project and that their absence will not in any way damage the business’ and potentially will have the reverse effect with people not taking any time off.

“As part of the People Management SIG event planning for 2015 we have identified the shift away from place to performance as a key topic.”

Other organisations which currently offer this policy include Eventbrite, Zynga, Groupon, SurveyMonkey, Evernote and Ask.com.

FM World is welcoming further comment from facilities managers – is an unlimited holiday policy viable?

Email newsdesk@fm-world.co.uk

WORKPLACE RESEARCH

Study sounds out insights on workplace noise Resolving noise issues in the workplace must take employee mood, personality and behaviour much more into account than it previously has, says research to be launched this month.

Researchers from consultancy Workplace Unlimited and acoustic ceiling and wall panel systems manufacturer Ecophon have carried out a review of more that 70 academic studies about the psychology of sound.

So far their findings show that the physiological effects of sound are “biological changes in a person such as elevation of blood pressure, increased heart rate, hearing loss, or stress”.

The psychological effects are related to a person’s mental state and “can bring about annoyance, heightened stress levels or reduced performance”.

One of the researchers, Paige Hodsman, concept development manager of Office Environments

Noise can marr workers’ moods

at Saint-Gobain Ecophon, said solutions to noise complaints within a workplace were not often a “one-size-fits-all” solution and the personalities of those in the building/office should also be considered.

Solutions could centre on activity spaces specially designed for quieter working and also particular zones tailored more for collaborative working.

She added that FMs were often best placed to deal with noise complaints as they were the first port of call for workers if there was a problem.

Hodsman told FM World: “We know noise affects us in many different ways. It can be our health and wellbeing, our mental state and our performance.

Sound level can have a physical, physiological and psychological effect.

“This report, due out later this month, offers a fresh outlook to resolving noise distraction in the workplace. The perspective is more along the lines of psychoacoustic, and takes a “people-centred” approach focusing on psychology – perception, attitudes, mood, personality and behaviour. The report is predominantly based on a literature review, with more emphasis on psychophysical research papers than pure acoustic ones.” www.fm-world.co.uk

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NEWS

BRIEFS BCO launches guide

Universities the ‘building blocks’ of the UK’s future The university sector has a turnover of £27.3 billion, spends £2 billion a year on its estates and occupies 26 million square metres.

The Higher Education Estates Statistics Report 2014 by the Association of University Directors of Estate (AUDE) says that in comparison with FTSE-listed firms higher education follows Tesco (£63 billion), Vodafone (£38.3 billion), SSE (£30.6 billion) into fourth spot with Sainsbury’s just behind with a turnover of £23.9 billion.

Excluding residential, the spend on estates was £2 billion between 2012 and 2013 – more than the average annual Crossrail budget

(£14.8 billion spread across nine years between 2009-18). UK universities occupy an area just shy of the NHS estate (30 million sq m) but more than two-and-ahalf times the government’s estate (10 million sq m).

Over the past five years tuition fees have trebled in England, income has declined in real terms, competition has grown and any surplus income or space is under big pressure, adds the report.

Up to 2010 the sector saw year-on-year increases in income – greater than inflation, but now copes with the fact that its income has not been so fast to grow and

has ever-increasing costs. The report also shows the substantial investment made into estates – £2billion in 2012/13 – with such funding increasingly coming from internal university sources.

The report was contributed to by every UK institution and was written, for the second year

by CBRE, the global expert in commercial real estate services.

Sir Ian Diamond, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, said: “The university estate is, quite literally, the building blocks of our nation’s academia and future and should be supported and celebrated.”

BUSINESS STRATEGY

JOHNSON CONTROLS/ALAMY

Johnson Controls to sell its workplace business Johnson Controls has announced that it is to divest itself of its Global Workplace Solutions (GWS) business.

The action reflects the company’s stated intention to invest in businesses that are core to its long-term growth strategy and multi-industrial portfolio.

Alex Molinaroli, chairman and CEO of Johnson Controls, said: “The global facilities management outsourcing market is very healthy and continues to grow. GWS is a strong business and a leader in its market with tremendous potential to grow. As we’ve focused on it this past year to understand what is needed to win long-term, it is clear that GWS is really an exclusively service-based business and not core to our manufacturing, engineering and product-based portfolio.”

The GWS business is a leading provider of facilities, corporate real www.fm-world.co.uk

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Johnson Controls Building Efficiency HQ, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

estate and energy management. It has been part of Johnson Controls’ portfolio for more than 20 years, and currently manages more than 1.8 billion square feet of corporate real estate. It will continue to be a close partner to Johnson Controls as both a supplier and a customer.

John Murphy, vice-president and president of Johnson Controls Global Workplace Solutions, said: “We have a strong reputation in

the market, an incredibly talented team of employees, and a portfolio of long-standing, high-quality clients.

“Our business has only just begun to realise its full potential.

With a new owner we will have access to the capital and resources required to continue to strengthen our business and be a formidable force in the market.”

Johnson Controls has retained Bank of America Merrill Lynch as exclusive financial adviser to assist in the initiative. Johnson Controls will know more about timing after it identifies potential buyers. In the meantime it is committed to working through the process as quickly as possible to ensure minimal disruption to the business.

Johnson Controls GWS provides FM services for businesses such as the BBC, at Television Centre, Shell, and BP, where it has managed facilities since 1993.

The British Council for Offices (BCO) has launched a guide on workplace industry standards across the UK. The BCO says its Guide To Specification gives information on issues such as legislation in office development, specification of cycling provisions for employees and analysis of occupier densities.

Richard Kauntze, BCO chief executive, said that the industry’s focus must shift more towards the ‘diverse and ranging needs’ of the end users of workspaces.

“There isn’t a one-size-fitsall approach, and [the guide] includes invaluable advice for occupiers and the latest thinking on how to make the most of offices,” said Kauntze.

Design helps workers An office’s design significantly affects the health, wellbeing and productivity of its staff, according to a major report from the World Green Building Council.

Health, Wellbeing And Productivity In Offices: The Next Chapter For Green Building, finds that a range of building design features from air quality and day-lighting to views of nature and interior layout, can affect the health, satisfaction and job performance of office workers.

The report was sponsored by JLL, Lend Lease and Skanska.See News Analysis, page 11 and Thinktank, page 9.

NBS awarded BIM deal The National Building Specification (NBS) has secured a £1 million contract with the government to build its digital toolkit for building information modelling (BIM).

The NBS team includes BIM Academy, BDP, Laing O’Rourke, Microsoft and Newcastle University.

This team conducted a research programme to test proposals for the toolkit. The toolkit will define and test BIM data required at each stage of a build project.

Dr Stephen Hamil, director of design and innovation at NBS, said: “Delivery of a best-in-class digital toolkit that completes level 2 BIM is a vital component of the government’s strategy for the construction industry.”

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PROJECT OF THE

FORTNIGHT NEWS BULLETIN

Government to launch FM tenders notice

NEWCASTLE CITY CENTRE POLICE STATION, NORTH BANKS CONTRACTOR: Willmott Dixon

Law and order restored Northumbria Police’s new station in Newcastle city centre has opened.

The station, at the top of Forth Banks, involved a complex use of two existing buildings that were refurbished and connected together by a new building.

Willmott Dixon delivered the technically intricate project under the Scape national framework used by local authorities.

Under the process the six-storey Kings House, an office building formerly used by Network Rail, was converted to become the main office space, while an adjacent Grade II-listed warehouse was updated and now provides a custody suite with 50 cells, the largest in the force, which will begin to take detainees later this year.

Connecting the refurbished facilities together is a new three-storey operations centre housing high-tech facilities for forensics and other detective work.

The station is a short distance from the Central Railway Station and at one stage Willmott Dixon’s team was working just a metre from the East Coast mainline, one of the country’s busiest rail lines.

The station has been five years in the making from initial planning and will now be a base for more than 600 officers and police support staff.

Vera Baird, Northumbria’s Police and Crime Commissioner, said: ‘It is great that Forth Banks is now open to the public, helping officers provide our policing service to the public in Newcastle. This station will provide vital support to the officers and staff who deliver the frontline service to our communities in both Newcastle and Gateshead, as well as the wider community of both regional and national visitors to this area.”

Anthony Dillon, managing director for Willmott Dixon in the NorthEast said: “It’s great to see these new buildings being brought back to life as Newcastle’s new police station. Equally important was our focus on investing in the local pound to sustain jobs and companies; in this case 100 per cent of people employed on the new station lived within a 30-mile radius of the site.”

Chief Constable Sue Sim said: “This building will provide an excellent base for our modern policing requirements to deliver first-class policing to our communities. The new station replaces Pilgrim Street, which will close when officers have become established in Forth Banks.”

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The Crown Commercial Service has announced that it will bring out an Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) tender notice for FM assurance services in November this year.

FM Assurance services form a part of the Facilities Management Services Framework Agreement for the sector – the OJEU for which was published last month. The awards for FM assurance services will begin in February 2015, according to the government.

The FM Assurance Service will provide an independent helpdesk, Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) and assurance oversight for customers who may have multiple FM suppliers providing services.

The new OJEU for FM Assurance services and the agreement is for Central government departments – their arms-length bodies and the wider public sector will be able to use the agreement for the provision of FM services.

The government will mandate that UK Central Government departments (except the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Defence), executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies should buy services from the sector using the framework agreement.

Dates for another element of the FM framework agreement regarding the FM marketplace are to be announced in due course.

Chances to improve catering at work ‘missed’ Organisations are failing to meet employees’ catering needs, according to research.

Convini Food Solutions found that a fifth of workers think that food and drink provided in the workplace are ‘extremely poor’. More than one in four workers (27 per cent) say they have no catering in place.

Nearly half (47 per cent) of workers said they skip lunch at least once a week. Of those who believe provisions were extremely poor, 56 per cent say they skip lunch. However, 69 per cent of organisations say they have ‘no plans’ to improve their offerings.

According to Convini’s survey, organisations believe that budget, time and space restraints are barriers to change.

Christopher Pedersen, managing director at Convini, said: “This research clearly underlines the integral role that food and drink plays in improving wellbeing in the workplace.

“By failing to address catering provisions adequately, organisations are missing an opportunity not only to improve employee wellbeing, but also energise staff, boost productivity and reduce sick leave.

“However, if organisations fail to address employee concerns adequately, they are likely to disengage their workforce, reduce morale and ultimately lose staff altogether.”

Energy foundation lists literacy ideas The National Energy Foundation, an independent charity set up to improve the use of energy in buildings, has published a list of 10 ‘big ideas’ that it hopes will “improve the nation’s energy literacy”.

Under the banner ‘Working together towards an energy-literate UK’, the programme of 10 ideas follows on from a survey, published last month, which sought to how much the British public really knows about energy.

Launched in a presentation by the foundation’s chief executive, Dr Kerry Mashford, the ideas have been costed at around £1.3 million in partnership with ‘other organisations and funders’.

Although some of the ideas are exclusively domestic in nature, businessfocused ideas include 25 one-day courses for school governors, community building managers and charities, looking to reduce their energy bills and improve building performance in the third sector.

Kerry Mashford said: “We’re looking for support and feedback from potential partners to take forward a number of high-impact projects to improve the energy performance of new and existing buildings, and inspire others to do the same.” www.fm-world.co.uk

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THINK TANK

WE ASKED 100 FMS… We asked 100 FMs if senior management is already using data managed by FMs to make improvements within the workplace

The design of an office can significantly affect the health, wellbeing and productivity of its staff – a common argument, and one addressed again in the World Green Building Council report.

Backed by JLL, Lend Lease and Skanska, the report concludes that many companies are sitting on “a treasure trove” of data that, with a little sifting, could yield vital immediate improvement in people’s experiences in buildings.

Researchers point out that FMs have a wealth of data at their fingertips about the building, its physical features and even outcome metrics such as physical complaints. We wondered to what extent FMs are recognised as the

gatekeepers of this data within their organisations?

Have issues such as BIM made this a discussion topic? Is senior management using data managed

by FMs to make improvements within the workplace?

Thirty-two per cent of you agreed that senior management was already using data managed

by FMs to make improvements at work. One respondent said: “As the client FM and heading up H&S, I am empowered to work towards a work environment that improves the health, wellbeing and productivity of staff and for that I will use whatever information is available to me.”

But 26 per cent of respondents

Yes 32%

It’s starting to happen more often - 42%

No 26%

to our poll said that top managers were not already using FM’s data to make such improvements.

Most commonly though, 42 per cent of you said that senior management was starting to use this data more often to make changes for the better.

What may make it challenging for senior management to collate this intelligence could be the difficulty of reconciling its disparity. One respondent said: “In worlds like energy, railways, aviation and pharmaceuticals there is a wealth of engineering information, which is there to enable critical safety and health

matters to be managed. Railways and aviation operate fleets of train sets or aircraft, which makes standardisation of data easier.

“In FM, with idiosyncratic buildings, you seldom have standard fleets of buildings, unless you’re looking at estates like Premier Inn or Tesco. So the data is far more disparate and, comparing it with my aviation experience, it is much harder in FM to find relevant data and compile the information to answer questions that have arisen.”

Join the FM World Think Tank: www.tinyurl.com/fmwthinktank

ISTOCK

Employers ‘not supporting’ workers with chronic MSD pain Employers are failing to provide the necessary support for people in the workplace with chronic musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).

A study by Lancaster University’s Work Foundation and the Fit for Work UK Coalition also says the government and the NHS are failing to provide support for people with chronic MSDs. As a consequence, those workers affected are putting their health at risk to hold on to their jobs.

Britain currently loses 30.5 million working days a year to MSDs, which according to the Office for National Statistics are the leading cause of sickness absence.

But report author Professor Stephen Bevan, said: “For many employees the risk of back pain or neck/shoulder strain which is associated with their work www.fm-world.co.uk

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can be mitigated by employers thinking more proactively about preventative action.

“The design of the physical work environment can play a big part in this. Ergonomic design of workstations, display screen equipment and machinery, for example, helps to avoid employees

needing to stretch, twist or perform repetitive movements or adopt postures that can cause injury or strain.

“This goes somewhat beyond the need to comply with health and safety regulations and, according to recent research by The Work Foundation almost always works better with the involvement of employees themselves,” added Bevan.

The report also states that employers and in particular small organisations, have little knowledge about government schemes such as “Access to Work” and are insufficiently prepared to manage chronic conditions in the workplace.

Many workers admit they are reluctant to ask for help from their line managers for fear of stigma,

negative judgement and job loss, says the report. Others say they had to involve their union to get the necessary support, or move into self-employment.

It is recommended in the report that employers should consider ‘all necessary workplace adjustments’, as well as offering career development opportunities for people with chronic MSDs. The report concludes that unless action is taken, workers’ health and quality of life will “continue to be damaged by work, with some leaving the labour market prematurely”.

This could lead to an increase in productivity loss, sickness absence and, ultimately, the welfare bill.

MSDs cover around 200 disorders that affeect joints, bones, muscles and connective tissues.

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 09

02/10/2014 16:38

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OFFICE ERGONOMICS

Wellbeing, productivity and green buildings HERPREET GREWAL newsdesk@fm-world.co.uk

A key report published this month by international coalition organisation the World Green Building Council assesses how the design of the workplace significantly affects the health, wellbeing and productivity of its staff.

Health, Wellbeing And Productivity In Offices: The Next Chapter For Green Building, sponsored by large support services and construction companies such as JLL, Lend Lease and Skanska, finds that a range of building design features from air quality and day-lighting to views of nature and interior layout, can affect the health, satisfaction and job performance of office workers.

Jane Henley, CEO of the World Green Building Council, said: “The evidence linking good office design and improved health, 10 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

10-11_News analysis.indd 010

wellbeing and productivity of staff is now overwhelming. There is unquestionably a clear business case for investing in, developing and occupying healthier, greener buildings.”

The report suggests that design features commonly associated with green buildings can enable healthy and productive environments for their occupants, but acknowledges that low-carbon buildings are not automatically healthier and more productive for occupants.

Integrating green features Understanding the link between workers and their workplace helps to drive the business case for “higher quality, healthier and greener buildings that are valued by investors, developers and tenants alike,” argues the report.

For example, salaries and benefits typically account for 90 per cent

of an organisation’s expenditure, points out the report and “any higher construction or occupation costs are far outweighed by even small improvements in staff performance”.

Despite this statistic, it “has so far failed to engender a lot of action” from businesses, the report’s authors say, “because people see the numbers but do not know what to do”.

Although the findings may not be groundbreaking and are fairly familiar to those in the facilities management industry, the report says the savings that can be made by integrating green features into their buildings would be a helpful step towards ensuring more buoyant businesses. Claudia Hamm, head of workplace strategy (EMEA) at JLL, said the report “reinforces the view that a building’s impact on its occupants must be included within financial considerations”.

Another solution the report presents is a toolkit that businesses can use to measure the health, wellbeing and productivity of their staff and relate this back to the physical features of buildings.

Measures in the toolkit include absenteeism, staff turnover, medical complaints and revenue – data that is already collected, but not typically available on a buildingby-building basis. If absenteeism largely relates to health, and staff turnover to wellbeing, then the third metric – revenue – “most certainly falls under productivity”, says the report.

Although this is the one measure that all companies collect it is also one that companies are least likely to consider from a building point of view, concludes the report.

The intersection of FM, human resources and finance is another overlooked area for companies when it comes to the potential to collate information and translate it into action.

The report states that the overlap of these three roles

is very important “yet so few businesses take advantage of this rich space, which is a huge missed opportunity”.

As Henley says: “Many organisations are sitting on a treasure trove of information that, with a little sifting, could yield important immediate improvement strategies for their two biggest expenses – people and places.”

Comparing the metrics By comparing the financial metrics against physical conditions (including location and amenities) and worker perceptions, organisations can begin to understand how physical factors influence the business case for better-quality buildings, adds the report.

According to Richard Francis of The Monomoy Company, who contributed to the report, the often-underused FM is “critical” in learning about how a building works and in helping businesses access information. (See Thinktank, p.9).

Francis told FM World: “No one is going to know that more than an FM and they will know about the history of the building. They will be able to provide a base layer of information about the building, providing the connection between metrics, perception and the actual building.”

As for how all this evidence will be turned in to actual practice, John Alker, director of policy and communications at the UK Green Building Council, says: “We have provided evidence on the business case and suggested some simple tools that can be used to make it real for individual organisations.

“Ultimately, it will be end-users that drive demand for healthier buildings, and it will be up to them how they choose to engage with this agenda, but we certainly plan further activities to encourage use of the toolkit and continued sharing of information and best practice.” www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 17:07

CAREERS

BIFM seeking to highlight the FM career path with Plotr

and outlines what roles entail, the type of personality and skills best suited to them, and the qualifications required.

Linda Hausmanis, BIFM’s head of professional standards and education, said that showcasing opportunities in FM, through career paths and qualifications, will aid decision making.

“We’re looking to provide a flash of inspiration to young people, whether they’re currently studying at school, college or university or looking to take that all-important first step into employment.

“We want to show young people how they can grow a rewarding career within the industry. That’s absolutely vital if the UK is going to remain at the forefront of service innovation and delivery.”

All in the game

JAMIE HARRIS jamie.harris@fm-world.co.uk

Informing school leavers about the career opportunities in facilities management is a continuing challenge for the profession. The younger generations are unlikely to be well-versed in the intricacies of the profession, although a new initiative could change all that.

Last month, the BIFM announced that it had been working with the careers advisory website Plotr to develop a careers guidance ‘world’. (Visit tinyurl.com/plotrFM.) The site is aimed at young people to help them discover new career paths and opportunities to enter those careers.

Other ‘worlds’ include sports, marketing, the armed forces and the charity sector. The site also provides advice for employers, schools and parents. www.fm-world.co.uk

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Comms failure Jim Carrick-Birtwell, chief executive at Plotr, feels that the communications and links between school careers advice and the working world are still disjointed.

“Schools have been passed an incredibly difficult task. They’ve been given a complex, constantly shifting field to engage and help their students navigate in.”

“We want to solve the problem of the gap between education and employment. There are employers out there with roles that they can’t fill – they can’t find candidates with the right skills. There are young people desperate to work who haven’t been told what employers actually want, and which skills and qualifications they need for careers that are out there.

The ‘facilities management world’ joins existing career pages

Plotr aims to attract the next generation of FMs through its gamification platform, ‘The Game’. This, said CarrickBirtwell, acts as a character test, mapping individuals’ personality to determine your suitability to a particular role.

“One of the key issues young people face when considering career options – and even not so young people – is that it is overwhelming,” he said.

“The sheer amount of career possibilities and volume of career related information can leave many feeling as if they are just bobbing about rudderless and might be missing options that could be great for them.

“The careers are surfaced [through ‘The Game’], relating to your personality, skills and interests.”

Work experience The site also includes video interviews and links to employers, which include service providers Vinci Facilities,

Interserve, ISS Facility Services and Compass Group.

Tony Raikes, managing director of Vinci Facilities, said: “It is all our responsibility to ensure the enduring success of our industry; highlighting to future generations, the opportunities for exciting challenges and developing careers in facilities management is key to this. Our work with Plotr in developing ‘Facilities Management World’ will let us reach the next generation: a demographic we are seeking to employ to ensure we deliver customers’ future needs.”

Welcoming the participation of both Interserve and Vinci Facilities, BIFM CEO Gareth Tancred said: “I’d like to take this opportunity to invite other FM employers from across the sector to join us by creating their own profiles on Plotr and promoting their work experience, apprenticeships and entrylevel job opportunities on the platform. We all have a duty as ambassadors for this sector, and the many roles and opportunities within it, to engage the next generation.”

Bridging the gap Carrick-Birtwell hopes that Plotr will address the visibility issue of certain professions, as well as acting as a platform for employers to clarify exactly what jobs entail, and what they require.

“There’s a real problem with communication and connection.

We want Plotr to become a national utility that brings efficiency in communication, connection, insight and inspiration for young people and careers,” he said.

“Our aim is to bridge the gap between the world of education and the world of work.”

More information on career development will be available in the 2015 FM World Careers Guide, to be published next month.

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 11

02/10/2014 17:07

FM BUSINESS SIGN UP FOR FM WORLD DAILY AT FM-WORLD.CO.UK

ANALYSIS

Minimum wage promise poses a challenge to FM GRAEME DAVIES newsdesk@fm-world.co.uk

Party conference season is always marked by set-piece pledges from politicians, some of which never see the light of day, but some of which could have significant ramifications for business if they are carried out.

One such pledge made by the leader of the opposition Ed Miliband, to increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2020, could

have far-reaching effects on the FM sector.

Given the nature of the FM sector’s work, a significant number of workers delivering contracts are paid the minimum wage and any significant hike could have serious ramifications for contractors, especially where margins are wafer-thin anyway.

The minimum wage shifted from £6.31 an hour to £6.50 on 1 October and the move to £8

within five years could hardly be said to be excessive, given that it represents a mere 3.5 per cent compound annual increase a year, especially when the next five years are likely to see interest rates rise, exacerbating what Labour calls a cost of living crisis.

But Mr Miliband wants to go further. In the run-up to the Labour conference he suggested that those companies providing government contracts could be required to pay the ‘living wage’ as a minimum to their employees.

This is currently calculated as £7.65 an hour for most of the UK and £8.80 for London.

Although this may turn out to be rhetoric that any future Labour government will struggle to deliver on, it does sound a warning that the opposition will fight the next election on a platform of improving the lot of the lowest paid, something that

Contract wins

NEW BUSINESS OCS has taken on a contract to cater at the Bar & Bistro in The Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre in Armagh, Northern Ireland. The Bar & Bistro reopened on 4 July under OCS management, with new menus using fresh ingredients and local produce for lunches, bistro meals, and pre-theatre dinners.

Kudos has won a restaurant and eventcatering contract with Winchester Cathedral. The three-year deal, starting this month, sees Kudos introducing a “modern and sustainable” approach to catering. The cathedral has more than 300,000 visitors each year.

Kudos has also extended its contract with the Harrogate International 12 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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Leicestershire-based caterer Wilson Vale has won a three-year contract worth £1.6 million with financial services card issuer NewDay. The caterer started the service in August at the company’s operations centre in Leeds. A team of 11 catering staff provides breakfast and lunch to 750 NewDay staff on site.

Centre (HIC) Yorkshire with a new market-style service worth £500,000.

Its contractual term at HIC Yorkshire began in January and is expected to generate £10 million within five years.

The retail idea is a new investment at the centre that forms part of the existing contract awarded in November.

Compass Group has landed a £60 million extension to its catering contract with retailer The Range. Under a three-year deal, Compass’s Instore business will provide restaurant and café food to 68 coffee shops across The Range stores in the UK. This expands Instore’s initial contract, which began in 2005 and covered 25 stores.

Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust has awarded a five-year contract to OCS for security and parking management at its two large acute hospital sites. The contract, begun last month, includes security control, guarding, traffic and car park management. Security and parking were previously operated by two separate firms and OCS will now work under one management structure.

Nviro has been retained by Brighton & Hove City Council to clean more than 100 buildings including schools, offices, libraries, nurseries, sheltered housing schemes, entertainment venues, industrial units, civic centres and town halls in a deal that could be worth more than £10 million. Nviro has worked with the council since 2004, through several extension periods. The four-year contract begins in November.

will chime with the millions of UK workers who occupy the lower wage brackets. Business bodies such as the Confederation for British Industry have already criticised such plans, saying they will simply mean companies will cut jobs to be able to afford higher wages for fewer staff and that the government should concentrate on supporting training for workers to occupy roles that pay more.

Concerns have also been raised that smaller companies will find it more difficult to compete should the minimum wage rise. In the FM sector this could be a particular problem.

Larger operators who can spread costs over a wider base should be better able to absorb higher wage costs and thus still be able to fulfil contracts with enough profit margin to make them worthwhile. It remains to be seen what would become of contracts that are already running and whether big wage reforms could be applied to such contracts.

Indeed, such a move could also backfire on the government if firms are collectively unable to compete for fixed-price contracts because of spiralling wage costs. But what it has done is thrown down a challenge to the government to speak up on the cost of living and the minimum wage and reveal its own plans for future increases. Companies such as FM operators that rely on significant numbers of minimum wage workers have to begin preparing for a potential period of wage inflation running ahead of inflation, something which has not happened over the past five years despite the recent recovery in the economy, and that presents challenges to margins that are already uncomfortably thin in some cases.

Graeme Davies writes for Investors Chronicle

www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 16:38

BUSINESS Johnson Fellows’ growth strategy BRIEFS includes in-house FM division Birmingham-based national chartered surveyors Johnson Fellows has created a facilities management division as part of its expansion plans.

Facilities manager Chris Monteith has been appointed to head the new division and will oversee FM work across the entire Johnson Fellows portfolio.

Monteith, who previously worked at DTZ and began his career at Midcounties Co-op in the support services and property department, is a 29-year old University of Birmingham philosophy and sociology graduate. Commenting on his appointment, he said: “Facilities management is a vital role that goes beyond health and safety compliance – it’s about ensuring that the building environment works to maximum efficiency and that management contracts offer value for money.”

Angela Sheen, partner at Johnson Fellows, explained

TCFM buys CMS Group

Chris Monteith heads the new FM division at Johnson Fellows

that this was the first time that the company had appointed a dedicated FM manager.

The aim is for the new FM division to offer a ‘more concrete’ service to clients.

Sheen said: “Although we have always undertaken a high standard of facilities management work, appointing a dedicated manager for this very specialised field means we can provide an even better service to all our clients.

“Chris will be a real asset for us and we will be developing our FM service over the coming months,” she added.

Johnson Fellows specialises in property management, professional services, building consultancy and, more recently, valuation, rating and industrial agency. Earlier this year, the firm acquired another chartered surveying company, Salway Bradbury, which is based in Solihull, West Midlands.

ALAMY

Robertson Group reports ‘strongest order book’ The Robertson Group says it is continuing to experience growth in all of its companies including in its FM businesses. The private group says its audited accounts, to be published soon, will “highlight its strongest and most visible order book”.

The group has seen growth right across all sectors during the recession, notably in its construction and FM businesses.

The group has also expanded into building services and civil engineering and says both of these units have made profits in their first full year of trading.

Robertson has won a range www.fm-world.co.uk

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Robertson Group’s contracts include refurb work on Glasgow Caledonian University

of contracts in Scotland and England including the £17 million refurbishment of Glasgow Caledonian University and it has expanded operations in Liverpool by securing an FM contract for

Everton Free School.

The groups’s major project team also has preferred bidder status for the construction of a new distillery and visitor centre for The Macallan at Speyside, Scotland, which has a total project budget of £100 million.

Robertson FM now has a UK long-term order book of £1.25 billion. Together with its secured construction and homes contracts, the group enjoys a total secured order book of £1.67 billion for the next 20 years.

The group has 1,300 staff, and expects this figure to grow by 5 per cent over the year ahead.

TC facilities management (TCFM) has bought the trade and assets of the CMS Group, a national FM company based in Yorkshire.

The CMS Group has been trading nationally for 10 years, offering specialist window cleaning and contract cleaning services in various industry sectors.

Peter Moss, CMS managing director and owner, will join TC Facilities, along with 400 other CMS staff. The deal will also see a transfer of CMS’s assets to enable TC facilities management to extend its services across the country.

Lewisham reviews FM The London Borough of Lewisham has appointed Gardiner & Theobald to undertake a strategic review of FM services.

It involves all properties in the council’s corporate estate receiving services such as maintenance, cleaning, reception/security, caretaking, helpdesk, and moves.

Lewisham, one of the largest inner London boroughs, covers 13.4 square miles and has more than 286,000 residents.

HPF snaps up Andrew Reid Mechanical and engineering consultant Hurley Palmer Flatt (HPF) has bought a majority share of engineering consultant Andrew Reid & Partners (AR&P).

AR&P provides consultancy services in the design and commissioning of mechanical and electrical building service works.

The company has 30 staff and an annual turnover of £4 million. It will continue as an independent consultant, operating as a subsidiary of HPF. HPF Group chairman Paul Flatt will head AR&P’s board.

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 13

02/10/2014 16:38

FM BUSINESS IN FOCUS

awareness before it breaks down.

You can get your services to deal with it before it goes horribly wrong.”

How quickly will all this start to happen?

“Well, you can put new build and existing buildings on two different timelines. It’s much easier to put it into the new build when you are starting from sctratch and over the next five years that will be quite commonplace. Retrofitting into existing buildings is much harder and that might be a longer term depending upon when parts of the building are refurbished.”

The interviewee: David Mason, senior sustainability manager at Skanska The issue: FM’s role in embedding green measures into buildings

BIM – a perfect lifecycle tool David Mason’s job is to make sure that sustainability principles are adhered to when construction projects are carried out.

But he says that Skanska also works with facilities managers to make sure green options are present within tenders and “anything in between that is supporting the business”.

“We have a large team of people to do to that too, including 35 to 40 environmental specialists within Skanska UK,” he adds.

Skanska’s support services division has been “historically” known for its hard FM provision, but now does more soft service work, which, the company claims, shows how wide it can spread any green influences.

Missing link Mason says he is keen to point out the “potential that energy management has for FMs”.

Earlier this year at ThinkFM, Lord Rupert Redesdale, chief executive of the Energy Managers Association, suggested that forthcoming legislation – some of which will stop landlords letting out buildings with F and G-ratings – will force organisations to engage more with FM. “I think there’s an opportunity for FM to be more proactive on what their clients could be 14 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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saving,” agrees Mason.

However, Mason also expresses some doubt as to just how driven FMs actually are in taking this agenda forward.

“The other day I was speaking to a client, a large portfolio manager, who said, ‘I am running this project where I am resetting all my building management systems and making sure they calibrate’. I was thinking “why isn’t that done for you?’

“I don’t quite understand yet where the missing link is between the people managing those buildings for them not doing that and them then saying to the client that they could be saving money here. This is what I find interesting.”

But Mason is also ready to see how that may not be the case for every FM provider. “Maybe those in the FM world would say ‘no, we’ve done that but we’ve had the door slammed in our faces’”.

Mason is glad to know that the new government FM contracting model includes

building information modelling (BIM) as one of the requirements for organisations bidding for contracts. He believes it will encourage everyone in an organisation to take the facilities manager’s role more seriously.

“I think BIM will really shake up how a building is delivered, right from first conception to the end use. It will ultimately give the client all of the information [about the building] at their fingertips and I see things opening up for FM input much sooner… it will be a great way to bring in more feedback from the maintenance operation lifecycle; BIM is a perfect tool for that.”

As a result of BIM, Mason thinks there will be more “conditional-based monitoring of equipment and a better understanding of the lifecycle of a building.

“Service models will probably change, too. If a chiller started to use too much energy, started to vibrate or use too much heat, we’d be able to get that data and

“I think BIM will really shake up how a building is delivered right from first conception to the end use”

Provider incentives He thinks FM contracts with energy clauses are increasing.

Indeed, a new report by the World Green Building Council released last month seeks to raise awareness within companies of just how important FMs are “likely to have a wealth of data about the building”.

Mason says: “I don’t think FM providers are necessarily incentivised to highlight energy savings in most standard contracts. I wonder if there have been many years of having doors slammed in their faces from people saying they don’t want to spend any money.”

Nevertheless, he has a clear vision of how things should look in future with the use of BIMrelated tools. Mason thinks the result of being able to gather and manipulate information more quickly, therefore identifying where problems lie and where savings can be made, will be “hugely powerful”.

“I am sure that the more enlightened FM providers are working on that already.”

David Mason will be talking at the CIBSE conference that takes place on the 28th and 29th October 2014 in London www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 12:06

Legally, you need to be licensed to play music at work.

You probably haven’t thought much about it. You’ve just got music on for your staff or customers. But did you know you legally need permission from the music’s copyright owners if you play music, TV or radio aloud at work? But don’t worry, to get that permission you simply need a licence from PRS for Music* (and in most cases, one from PPL** too). PRS for Music is a membership organisation that acts on behalf of songwriters and composers to ensure they’re paid for the use of their work. So if you have music playing, ask PRS for Music how you become licensed to listen today.

Contact PRS for Music on 0800 694 7344 or at prsformusic.com/musicatwork *PRS for Music licences cover the vast majority of music originating from the UK and all over the world. However, if you play music that is outside of PRS for Music’s control, you may need an additional licence from the relevant copyright owner(s). You will require a TV licence as well if you are using a TV in your premises. You do not need a licence from PRS for Music in the unlikely event that all the music you play is out of copyright or is not controlled by PRS for Music. **PPL collects and distributes royalties on behalf of record companies and performers. Further info at ppluk.com. All music licences are required under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 which stipulates you must gain the permission of the copyright owner if you play music in public (anywhere outside the home environment).

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29/09/2014 15:28

FM EVENT

100% DESIGN REPORT

MARK ELTRINGHAM

THE WORKSPACE IN OUR HEADS The clear message from last month’s 100% Design, the UK’s largest design trade event, is that people are distinguishing less and less between the places they live and work, says Mark Eltringham

T

wo or three years ago, the organisers of 100% Design decided to segment the show according to whether the products on show were relevant for the workplace, hotels, homes or public spaces.

They did this, presumably chastened by criticisms of the mélange of office, home and public that characterised the show, in spite of the fact that the world was moving in their direction. The boundaries between the zones of our lives are now so blurred that when occupiers are surveyed to establish what they consider an ideal working environment, what they describe sounds suspiciously like Starbucks or their living room.

Meanwhile, drop-in offices are springing up across the UK’s rail network and a recent report from the Fraunhofer Institute found that hotels are significantly increasing the space they offer as a workplace for guests.

All of this matters to facilities managers because of the challenges and opportunities it offers them to cut costs, increase productivity and serve the needs of a shifting, mobile and demanding workforce. Whereas once office buildings were planned with arithmetic – based on the numbers of people and the

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sizes of desk they were allocated (a tradition upheld to this day in the recently published 2014 edition of the BCO Specification Guide), we now increasingly plan space using geometry, based on usage rather than occupancy.

Desks out Now that we’ve reached the lower limits of what is acceptable to humans in terms of their personal space and desk size – just check out the continuing debate about the wisdom of open plan – we are into the realms of providing space that offers people a place to go in the same way they expect of a coffee shop, campus, train, serviced office or hotel foyer.

This shift is evident in the representation of workplace design at 100% Design. Just a little over 10 years ago, desks were still largely all-important.

Now they don’t really turn up

Desk or kitchendiner table?

You decide

www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 15:06

Home or office?

Design 100% at the Olympia Conference Centre in London

Break-out furniture is increasingly looking much more lifestyle than utilitarian

at all in the Workplace Hall or in any of the world’s other big office shows, except to accessorise the real stars – chairs, screens and servicing – and sit alongside crossover products – soft seating, acoustic booths, meeting tables and soft furnishings.

One of the youngest companies here is also one that has helped to define this changing workplace.

Buzzispace shifted perceptions of the perennial issues of acoustics and personal privacy from a solution dependent on the specification of upholstered rectangular panels between desks into something far more interesting. The next phase of its evolution is no less intriguing, with the creation of a non-specific bench and seating product alongside the reinterpretation of Ernest Race’s classic BA3 chair from the 1940s as a product for the office (or wherever). www.fm-world.co.uk

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Iconic products seem particularly adept at this crossover. Other classics inhabiting the intersections between different types of place included Robin Day’s 1952 675 chair for Case and perennial favourite the Eames Aluminium chair by Vitra. Newer products were also to be found in this grey space including the unmistakeably domestic aesthetic of Maya by Lyndon Design, which nonetheless is aimed to a large extent at the office market.

Pod burst The main theme as far as the more mainstream office furnituremakers were concerned remains acoustics and privacy. Boss Design launched a new family of acoustic seated pods called Peek & Boo for reception/break-out spaces.

EFG – debuting here but a longestablished name in the market –

showcased a number of products including an acoustic booth called Box. Vitra also reflected the privacy meme with its Workbay product designed by Erwin and Ronan Bourroullec. On a related theme, Euroworkspace launched its simplicity range, a more architectural solution to the same problem that also incorporates personal lockers.

One other thing that was noticeable in the workplace hall was an element of the practicality more commonly associated with an event like the Facilities Show, albeit in a slightly glossed-up form. So we saw coffee vending machines – but sexy ones, of course – not one of those offering plastic cups and the dread that the person who visited before you had had the soup. Here we had Scanomat bringing ‘coffee to the forefront of design with the stylish TopBrewer smartphone

controlled bean-to-cup coffee machine’, which (of course) its makers claim is suitable for both home and office.

Similarly, the once-worthy issue of cable management and servicing was given a new twist for our peripatetic age with the launch of Aircharge from Ergo, a wireless charging plate for phones and other devices that can be integrated into other elements, including furniture and lighting. And OE Electrics presented a range of products looking to meet the same needs of mobile workers in a visually arresting way, but with the familiar use of sockets and USB ports.

Beneath all of these products – even the coffee machines – is a tacit admission that we can no longer rely on clear demarcations between the various places we work. The real workplace is now in our bags, pockets and heads and people are less able or willing to distinguish between the physical places we use to access and share their contents.

The organisers of 100% Design may have segmented the places in which we work and live our lives within the halls of Earls Court, but the outside world thinks these old distinctions are of diminishing relevance.

Mark Eltringham is founder of Insight Publishing

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 17

02/10/2014 15:06

FM OPINION THE DIARY COLUMN JOHN BOWEN

“MEETINGS ARE AN IMPORTANT TOOL AND THE PERSON RUNNING THE MEETING IS THERE TO ACHIEVE AN OBJECTIVE... IT MUST HAVE A PURPOSE”

Local Authority

From the early 1980s I have regularly had to travel three to four hours to get to a meeting that will last most of the day and then be faced with a longer drive home. Longer because I would set off between 4am and 5am to get there and enjoy fairly quiet motorways, but coming home would inevitably result in catching the rush-hour somewhere and over the years I have found places to drop off the motorway and spend a quiet hour

over a meal while I wait for the traffic to thin out. It was a lesson learned the hard way because some of my early journeys home were marathons – eight-and-ahalf hours from Manchester to Swindon being the worst.

The snag with a lot of meetings was that people seemed to feel the need to speak and often instead of just saying “I agree with what John has said”, they‘d repeat my argument. Plato said: “Wise men speak when they have something

University Estates

John Bowen is an FM consultant

M EETIN G S: W H AT A WA ST E O F T I M E

n an age of instant communication we I still make cross-country trips for summit conferences that take 20 minutes

NHS Trust

to say; fools because they have to say something”, and he gets my vote every time.

Part of the problem is that too many people prefer the one about “Do I keep quiet and have them think I’m a fool or do I open my mouth and prove it”, so they listen to someone speak and see that it gets approving nods, think that it must be good and rush in to show that they knew it too.

Meetings are an important tool and the person running the meeting is there to achieve an objective because even if it is just a routine periodical one it must have a purpose. It is their job to get to that objective with the most economical use of the organisation’s resources and they

should not allow waffle.

Emails can be exchanged in less time than many meetings take; mobile phones make people more accessible and we have video-conferencing if we have to see each other.

Earlier this year I attended two meetings in the North-West and was asked – in accordance with the host’s green credentials – to use the train.

With five trains on the first trip and four on the second, I was away from home for nine hours on each day. The first meeting took 25 minutes and the second 20; both were scheduled for two hours.

Have a meeting if you must, but consider Plato’s words.

BEST OF THE WEB Views and comments from across the web From Kym Armston Dyer, via the BIFM LinkedIn group: “The company I work for is having a new building designed and built; it is due to be handed over next April. I will be the FM following the handover, and as such I have been invited to the handover meetings that will start next month. This is an entirely new area for me, and I’m keen to make the most of the handover meetings, are there any tips that you can give me 18 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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to help me get the most out of these meetings, or any key questions that I should raise?”

Jonathan Elms: It may pay you to investigate what these may have been either through the main contractor or through the nominated suppliers themselves. I recommend this as it is here that you might find the most challenging aspects surrounding the future maintenance.

Bill McKim: Firstly, understand what has been

designed and why! Ensure that as FM you are in a position to recognise what technologies have been used and their purposes.

Adam Stacey: I would recommend having a number of trusted contractors with you before the handover such as HVAC, refridge and building engineers. Ask them to snag the building and fully go over the contractors’ work before handover.

What design/operational

features are critical to a best practice office design? (FM group) Jasmin Parsloe: It’s basic, but windows, windows, windows! Thankfully there are now screens to stop spaces heating up too quickly but I have worked in offices where there are barely any windows.

Ilana Ettinger: Office design should focus on the mobile millennial generation. Allowing flexible 24/7 access to accommodate different work schedules and more

spaces for collaboration and relaxation will result in a better workplace environment.

Steve Lammert: I’d also recommend something under the rolling chairs to protect the floor properly.

I currently clean a private book keeping office with real hardwood floors.

You would not believe the damage to the floors from the wheels on the office chairs. I have seen VCT damaged badly from this practice and also carpeting. www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 09:59

You can follow us at twitter.com/FM_World facebook.com/FMWorldMagazine

BEST OF THE

FMWORLD BLOGS New workspaces that are killing the corporate campus Greg Lindsay, HBR Blog Network To hear Samuel Pepys tell it, the 17th century diarist and Royal Navy clerk was the world’s first mobile worker. As architect Frank Duffy notes in his book Work And The City, Pepys traversed London giving and taking orders and trading gossip at the docks, at court, or in one of city’s fashionable new coffee houses. His greatest annoyance?

Having “lost my labour” when one lord or another failed to appear for a meeting.

Pepys’ peripatetic routine underscores just how recent, and how artificial, the modern office is. The notion that a single organisation would monopolise a space, often for a single function, is a distinctly 20th century one. The demands of the vertically integrated corporation required tight co-ordination in space and time, what Duffy calls “synchrony” and “co-location”. The solution was the skyscraper, and later the suburban campus.

But as workflows and processes moved first into software and then into the cloud, the questions of how, where, and with whom we should work are now asked anew. It’s the subject of the HBR feature “Workspaces that Move People” , which I co-authored.

In it, we show how those 20th-century ideas of office space are giving way to new ideas of where, and how, we should work. Crucially, we have data that shows how companies and people have increased sales, productivity, even creativity, by taking advantage of these new models.

Read the article in full at www.tinyurl.com/olodkd7

6 secrets to millennials’ workplace happiness Matt Straz, Mashable.com By 2020, millennials will make up half the workforce. Rumours say they’re entitled, lazy and always looking for a pat on the head. It’s impossible to paint an entire generation with one single swipe of the paintbrush. As boomers retire and millennials flood the workforce, you can’t ignore the secrets to keeping these tech-savvy workers happy.

Engagement and happiness lead to greater productivity. Yet employee engagement is at an all-time low, says Gallup, which found 70 per cent of workers just punch the clock. You need a way to engage with your workforce, and increasingly, this means finding a way to connect with millennial staff.

My company, an HR and payroll platform, was interested in the question of employee retention as it relates to compensation. We surveyed 13,000 workers in tech, ecommerce and digital media. Most were millennials; 70 per cent of those surveyed were under 35. If the generation is invading the job market, it makes sense to tailor cultures and compensation to keep them happy. Staff turnover costs 21 per cent of a worker’s salary on average; you can’t afford a big exodus.

Pay for performance: The paycheck has a huge impact on morale and staff retention.

Offer mentorship: In a survey by Millennial Branding and American Express 53 per cent of millennials said a mentorship relationship would help them be more productive.

Make structures transparent: They don’t just want to be a cog in the machine.

Get flexible: Most workers would like more flexibility in their schedules.

Give back: As a generation, millennials want to help and make a difference. According to a study by Achieve, 39 per cent of millennials say a company’s volunteer policy affects their decision to apply; 55 per cent say it affects their decision to take the job.

Have fun: You can develop a fun atmosphere with perks like free lunches and foosball tables, or you can simply plan activities your employees enjoy.

Read the article in full at www.tinyurl.com/psttblb

www.fm-world.co.uk

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FIVE MINUTES WITH NAME: Andy Sneyd JOB TITLE: President, Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES)

Construction and building engineering services are living through an era of unprecedented change. Many people believe that the industry, and the part we play in it, will remain pretty much the same as in decades past – but this is a mistake. We can no longer depend on the old certainties or on established working practices.

The truth is that change is here to stay. If we are to survive and prosper, as a sector and as individual businesses, we must not only embrace that change.

We must actively lead it.

Today, we have an increasingly crucial role to play in supporting, educating and encouraging our members as they face the challenges posed by new technologies, the ever-growing demand for energy efficiency, and the quest for smarter working practices – perhaps best exemplified by the BIM revolution, in which the contracting sector has a pivotal role to play.

In my “day job” as head of design for Crown House Technologies, part of the Laing O’Rourke group, I learned that progress was seldom, if ever, the result of a single party to the construction process “going it alone”. True progress derives from co-operation, from collaboration and from partnerships formed by those who share a real commitment to continuous improvement, and a genuine desire to work better, smarter and more productively – to the benefit of all concerned.

Many of today’s key issues – fair payment, early involvement in the construction process, skills shortages and raising awareness of the added value specialist contractors can deliver to their clients – are by no means new. But having been around for so long doesn’t make them any less serious, or finding solutions to them any less urgent – and they will remain high on the agenda during my term of office.

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 19

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FM FEATURE

MILITARY TO FM

KEVIN STANLEY

U

pon retirement from the military many personnel who have performed FM roles (although often without a fancy job title) move into civilian FM roles that match their project management and strong organisational skills.

Military personnel tend to retire at quite a young age, generally around 45, so they have a lot of working life left. They’ve developed a bank of experience performing FM type support roles within the military so moving into civilian FM roles can often be an attractive proposition. They are also equally attractive to employers.

“Ex-military personnel have skills in logistics, people management and team leading. Many with engineering skills move across into hard services management and the management of more complex buildings that have a higher standard of technology, as they understand new technology very well and are able to use this knowledge to good effect,” says Anne Lennox-Martin, managing director, at FMP360.

Ex-military personnel have an excellent ‘can do, get done’ attitude and strong organisational and people management skills. They can envisage how to get from A to B easily. They have logistical and co-ordination skills, they’re comfortable managing projects or managing buildings and they’re good at co-ordinating operations, all of which means that they fit FM roles.

Directly prior to leaving the armed forces back in 1994, Rob Farman was a staff officer at HQ RAF Support Command at Brampton in Cambridgeshire.

One of his last roles involved developing a command management plan reporting against performance indicators including time, quality, quantity and cost – a project brought about by the devolved budgets introduced by NATO at the time.

These are clearly the kind of skills ideally suited to FM, but Farman says that as much as FM is often misunderstood by those leaving the forces, they too need to better explain the skills they can bring so that potential employers understand their potential.

“I’ve been astonished at what I’ve seen,” says Farman. “One chap explained that he’d been an artillery observer. What does that mean, I asked? It involves co-ordinating the fire power of guns and

MILITARY PRECISION Ex-service personnel have already learned how to ‘be the best’.

They can give and take instructions and have the logistical nous to take over in a crisis – all of which should feature in the CV of a good FM, says Kevin Stanley Illustration: Patrick George 20 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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www.fm-world.co.uk

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www.fm-world.co.uk

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FM FEATURE

MILITARY TO FM

KEVIN STANLEY

mortars and air power while advancing with the miltiary, adjusting your plan of attach as you move forward, bringing shells down as little as 150 yards next to your own infantry. Someone who can do that is quite incredible.”

Get some in Angela Unsworth, transition manager at Carillion Amey, says ex-military personnel are used to finding solutions and delivering results.

“A military career, on the whole, builds competent, capable operators. Astute, pragmatic and quick to cut to the heart of a problem, their focus is on the commander’s intent; understanding his or her operational output requirement is key to them delivering ‘service excellence’ and achieving the objective. It’s not difficult for them to change the emphasis of this to focus on the customer’s intent and on understanding the customer’s requirements in delivering service excellence,” says What ex-military personnel do find challenging is understanding that in civilian life they can delegate tasks upwards. They have a military command structure ingrained in their minds.

“They’re used to instructing others lower down the structure to complete tasks and in turn being instructed by their superiors. It’s challenging for them to be in a civilian FM role where they may instruct someone to do something and they might not do it,” says Jane Wiggins, director at FM Tutor & Associates.

“This mindset, however, serves them very well in public sector jobs such as in the NHS or in local authority or education environments, or organisations such as financial or construction, where there is a strict process that must be adhered to all of the time, perfectly, to avoid accidents.

They tend to be logical and methodical and used to working within a structured environment.”

While there are certain similarities, there are also big differences between military and civilian FM. Military FM is often more varied and pressured.

A military FM based in Afghanistan, for example, might be setting up a temporary camp, or be involved with the logistics of catering for a large number of people on the move. There are many FM roles in the military that would not be required – or would be different – in civilian FM. FM roles within the military are usually referred to by military terminology such as QMs RQMs, logistics managers or storemen. These jobs are not often regarded as powerful roles, but the amount of experience that they can gain is still significant and can be very useful in civilian FM roles.

Rob Farman was in charge of 170 soliders and 22 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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airmen in the Falklands War, providing ground equipment and maintenance support to the aircraft and mechanical transports. Farman believes that the demand for developing and conforming to standardised workflows and procedures in the armed forces provides future employers in FM with a mindset attuned to the tasks in hand.

“In the armed forces things have to be careflully planned and procedures standardised,” says Farman. “With people moving around the forces frequently, teams have to form quickly in response to crises. That’s when you want things standardised as much as possible. Also, the army and RAF both have separate standards and procedures so it was important to resolve any conflict between the two.

“Compare that to the skills involved in, for example, the data centre environment - they each require similar procedures to ensure that this mission critical service is kept running. In fact, mission critical is a phrase that originated in the armed forces.” www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 16:47

MILITARY TO FM

Training for transfer Training may be required for ex-military personnel moving into civilian FM and even if they may already be competent from a qualifications perspective they may face cultural issues.

“Ex-military personnel are comfortable with taking orders and following instructions, they’re very used to it so there’s a cultural difference between military and civilian life,” says LennoxMartin. “Ex-military personnel working in civilian FM roles do find that working with people who have different opinions can be challenging at first.

When they have intelligent and capable people reporting into them they have to allow them empowerment and they can find that really tough.

It’s a psychological difference,” she adds.

Training may be required to learn new skills and methods of communicating. In terms of commercial skills they’ll also need to understand how a business works and to align their service to what’s needed.

“Moving into civilian FM they’ll have soft FM skills such as catering, management and leadership that they’ve developed throughout their military career. They’ll have been educated and trained, but these skills may not have been formalised in a badged qualification such as NEBOSH, IBOSH, a PRINCE2 or a APM qualification,” says Wiggins.

Ex-military personnel who move into civilian FM roles in the middle of their working lives can be in a good position to take advantage of opportunities for career progression into senior positions.

“Ex-military personnel can often double, triple or even quadruple their salary within three to 10 years of moving into civilian roles. They’re used to changing roles and moving around in terms of geographical postings,” says Wiggins.

“Military people are extremely flexible and adaptable as a result of working with very fluid, dynamic, operational activity; consequently, we’re very effective contingency planners” www.fm-world.co.uk

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“They’re used to developing new relationships and new friends, comfortable with regular annual performance reviews and stretching themselves in the work environment. They’re adaptable and capable of hitting the ground running, which makes them capable of being successful quickly,” says Wiggins. Upon leaving the military they have many challenges to face – finding a new job, deciding where to live. It’s a big adjustment for them and their families. Fortunately, there’s a lot of help available. Commission periods are usually 12 to 20 years, but they can be up to 30 years. When nearing the end of their commission, personnel are given a two-year transition period. This is an important time as it will shape the rest of their working careers and personal lives. During this time they may receive training. It’s good for them to gain a BIFM-recognised qualification to verify their ‘on the job’ knowledge. Other skills such as health and safety and project management skills are useful.

Some will have technical trade skills from working as chefs, electricians, or military police officers. In order to transition they’re given an ELCAS grant, which helps to pay for training and qualifications.

Assistance also covers housing, job interview skills and social services.

“This help and resettlement period is very important as if someone joins up to the Army, Navy or RAF at 16 to 18 years of age and doesn’t leave again until they are in their late thirties they may never have had a real job interview and lack the skills to perform in this environment. To come out of the military might be a shock, especially if they are being made redundant,” says Wiggins.

On a positive note they are mature and have a good deal of common sense. They are able to look after people and buildings; this is an attraction for FM employers. They’re used to helping other people in their unit and have lots of life experiences and practical abilities. When they move into civilian FM in a steady, safe, environment it’s easy for them to help other people.”

Orders is orders There are other practical differences between military and civilian FM. The often-cited concerns within FM about the lack of board-level recognition and the role of FM in organisations is something ex-military people will also have to overcome. They could find organisations that allow free-thinking difficult to understand. They expect board members and managing directors to be respected without question. Why don’t people do what they are told?

Why would it be necessary to consult people about space management and change? Why would they need to persuade someone to do something? These FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 23

02/10/2014 16:55

so NO ld W ou t

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02/10/2014 14:28

MILITARY TO FM

are all real questions that ex-military personnel ask when moving to civilian FM roles. But they are usually able to quickly adapt.

“Military people are extremely flexible and adaptable as a result of working with very fluid, dynamic, operational activity; consequently, we’re very effective contingency planners. Our extensive experience in conflict resolution can be of great benefit to any organisation. We’re strong characters with well-developed leadership and people skills.

We’re able to resolve disagreement and seamlessly align people and resources to the task,” says Unsworth.

“All of the outputs of contracted services have a profound and direct impact on the output of the client. Any lack of joined-up service delivery could fundamentally undermine the CEO’s output.

It’s imperative that the FM has full oversight of every aspect of the business. When I was in this role it was fundamental that I sat on the board to manage those risks. I was able to capture fleeting opportunities that enhanced our business, opportunities that I would have no sight of if I was positioned elsewhere in the organisation. It’s here that employers are missing business opportunities in FM – if you want to be even more successful, get your head of FM on the board,” she adds.

“Military personnel can have a perceived maverick streak to how they operate that may alarm the faint-hearted. But if you interpret this as having the intellectual capacity to make rapid and accurate decisions and the moral and physical courage to apply those decisions, then who wouldn’t want such an asset on their staff?

Look at it this way, it’s not maverick behaviour, it’s innovative behaviour. We’re energetic, agile, loyal and committed and we don’t stop until we have a solution that is sustainable from all perspectives,” says Unsworth. FM

“Ex-military personnel can often double, triple or even quadruple their salary within three to 10 years of moving into civilian roles. They’re used to changing roles and moving around” www.fm-world.co.uk

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FM FEATURE

THE FARRELL REVIEW

ROB COWAN

LESS

NOISE &

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Sir Terry Farrell’s long-heralded review of architecture and the built environment arrived earlier this year. Rob Cowan casts a critical eye over the recommendations and asks whether they will make a difference

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rimarily funded, researched, written and organised by Farrells. Commissioned by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.”

Those words on the back cover of the Farrell Review of Architecture & The Built Environment seem incongruous.

If the government department commissioning the report was not sufficiently committed to the project to fund it, what was the point of Sir Terry Farrell, his team and 1,000 consultees spending a year trying to answer the department’s detailed brief?

MORE

Creative industries minister Ed Vaizey asked Farrell to make recommendations to inform the department’s approach to promoting high standards of design. His request came a few days after a round of job losses at Design Council Cabe caused by that same department’s withdrawal of financial backing. The publication of the report a year later, on 31 March 2014, coincided with Design Council Cabe being quietly wound up. Cabe had already lost its capitals; the name was no longer an acronym – the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment having been abolished.

Now it has been decided that in future the residual, minimal Cabe-ish activities will be carried out by the Design Council itself, under the brand “Cabe at the Design Council”.

In the face of all the evidence that promoting high standards of design is not high on the government’s agenda, Farrell took on the task with impressive seriousness. Not having to answer to the department as paymaster, he has taken the opportunity of giving the 200-page report a strong autobiographical element, and of highlighting some of his own company’s work in promoting a wider interest in design.

Vaizey said at the launch: “I hope this report is the beginning of a dialogue within the industry about how we can build on our successes and recognise the critical importance of architecture and design in all aspects of our lives.”

Some observers groaned. After a year’s intensive work, were we only at “the beginning of a dialogue”? Was that dialogue to be only “within

DIALOGUE www.fm-world.co.uk

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02/10/2014 15:50

FM FEATURE

THE FARRELL REVIEW

the industry”? Was there no commitment by the department – or, more relevantly, Eric Pickles’ Department of Communities and Local Government – to implement at least a few of the report’s 60 carefully considered recommendations?

A snapshot in time The Farrell Review is not actually the beginning of anything. The issues that it highlights are ones that Farrell himself has been campaigning on for at least 30 years. He was one of the early members of the Urban Design Group in the late 1970s; he helped found the Urban Design Alliance in the late 1990s; and he campaigned for what eventually in 1999 became CABE. It was Farrell who lobbied for the government’s intended “Commission for Architecture” (CA) to be given an additional “BE”, on the grounds that it had to be about more than just architecture.

As Farrell’s report acknowledges, the review is a snapshot in time. Few of its ideas and proposals are new, many of them have a long and chequered history, and implementing them is not necessarily a job for government. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, governments rarely lead, and the built environment will be no exception.

Farrell has spoken of changes in attitudes being needed on the scale of those that have been seen in the UK in recent decades in relation to health and food.

Governments have passed the necessary legislation in those fields, but the revolutionary changes in attitudes came from below. Dramatically different attitudes to standards of design and development will depend on educators, communities and neighbourhoods, the civic and environmental movements, 28 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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ROB COWAN

developers and the property industry, and a wide range of professionals and their professional organisations.

When those people succeed in making the political weather, politicians will take notice and start asking what they can do to make things happen. We are not there yet.

When the Farrell Review was commissioned, some commentators complained that the brief seemed to have an excessively architectural focus.

Question 1 asked: “Britain has some of the best architects and designers in the world but that does not automatically mean that standards of architectural design in England are as good as they could be. Why is this?”

The answer seemed staggeringly obvious. A great deal of development is not designed by architects, let alone by notably good ones. Most clients are not interested in commissioning the best architects and designers, and the standards of development depend on much wider issues than just architecture.

Question 3 asked: “Would having a formal architecture policy (as some European countries do) help to achieve improved outcomes?” It was not a question that anyone else seemed to be asking, and not even the RIBA’s evidence to the review favoured the government introducing such a policy. The Farrell Review wisely answered succinctly – in essence, “no”.

even wider, but place has a physical, spatial dimension that urban designers, planners and architects tend to be comfortable with.

When thinking of the role of built environment professions, the review suggests, we should regard them as each representing some of the core skills needed to make successful places.

Think of PLACE as an acronym, Farrell says: P for planning, L for landscape, A for architecture, C for conservation and E for engineering.

Actually, to include all the professional members of the now-defunct Urban Design Alliance we would have to add U for urban designers and S for surveyors.

Farrell’s report acknowledges that the review is a snapshot in time.

Few of its ideas and proposals are new, and many of them have a long and chequered history

Quality of life Farrell has successfully steered the review from architecture to the wider matters that shape the built environment. The report’s title is Our Future In Place, and place is the key. That short word is taken as summing up what needs to be addressed. “Quality of life” might have set the remit www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 15:51

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FM FEATURE

THE FARRELL REVEW

That would replace PLACE with CAPSULE, an acronym that would do little more than remind built environment professionals to keep taking the tablets. Five cross-cutting themes run through the Farrell Review:

1 A new understanding of place-based planning and design.

2 A new level of connectedness between government departments, institutions, agencies, professions and the public.

3 A new level of public engagement through education and outreach in every village, town and city, and volunteering enabled by information and communications technology.

4 A commitment to making the ordinary better and to improving the everyday built environment.

5 A sustainable and low-carbon future.

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ROB COWAN

How the professions relate to these themes is not clear. The professionals in Farrell’s P-L-AC-E professions have valuable skills, but professionalism in the built environment these days is a flexible business. Individual professionals have a wide variety of competencies and experience, and many develop these in unexpected ways over their careers. Increasingly they may be members of more than one professional body, or change allegiance as they progress.

Attempts by professionals to organise themselves in ways that promote placemaking go back to the creation in 1978 of Architects in Planning, which in a few weeks changed its name to the Urban Design Group. In 1997, with the active support of Farrell, the Urban Design Alliance (UDAL) was formed by a group of professional and campaigning bodies that identified a common interest in improving the quality of life through urban design, particularly through collaboration between professionals and their institutes. It took the initials UDAL rather than UDA to distinguish it from the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association.

Urban design’s time seemed to have come. Richard Rogers’ 1999 Urban Task Force report Towards An Urban Renaissance, urging the importance of high standards of design in urban regeneration, caught the mood of the New Labour government that had commissioned it. The creation of CABE in the same year seemed to offer hopes of everything that the urban design movement had dreamed of; the establishment of urban design thinking in professional practice and at all levels of government.

A report by a government Urban Design Skills Working Group followed in 2001. By 2004 the government’s urbandesign-related buzzword was “sustainable communities”.

Sir John Egan’s review Skills For Sustainable Communities was published in that year.

The following year Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced the creation of the Academy for Sustainable Communities to help develop those skills.

In 2011 the process seemed to stop. The dramatic scaling down of CABE seemed to reflect the coalition government’s lack of conviction about the value of urban design, and certainly about any significant local or central government role in promoting it.

In that year the Bishop Review reported to the government on “how good architectural, landscape and urban design can be achieved”, but it had little effect beyond providing its chairman, Peter Bishop, with useful experience for his later role as a member of the Farrell Review’s expert panel.

Urban room Seen in that context, the Farrell Review is one more attempt to get to grips with the complexities of placemaking in a history rich in expectations and disappointments. Frustrating as the present situation is, the urban design movement needs to keep working on strategies to lift it out of its government-induced slough of despond.

The Farrell Review’s proposals range from the general to the specific. The report calls for built environment professions to be guided by a common pursuit of place quality, and to educate their members through a common foundation year in further education. It wants “place reviews”, with panels

representing all the place professions, to replace design review. Every town without an architecture and planning centre should have an “urban room”, actual or online, to focus interest and debate.

The government should have chief place advisers and a chief architect, and it should be advised by a Place Leadership Council with representatives of the private and public sectors.

Above all, the review says, planning needs to become more proactive.

“Our planning system has become too reactive and relies on development control, which forces local authority planners to spend their time firefighting rather than thinking creatively about the future shape and form of villages, towns and cities,” it says. “Proactive planning would free up valuable time for local authority planners to develop masterplans and design codes which are supported by local communities, while reinvigorating the planning profession and its public perception.”

Who is going to make it happen?

Not this government, which does not see the value of providing the necessary resources. Not the Urban Design Alliance, which no longer exists. Not “CABE at the Design Council”, which does not have the capacity.

Not the professional institutes, which have yet to learn how to collaborate with one another, or to focus effectively on place rather than on narrower concerns. The urban design movement needs to rethink and regroup. The Farrell Review does not provide a blueprint for making that happen, but its deep thinking may be of considerable value in supporting the process. FM FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 31

02/10/2014 15:51

FM MONITOR JOHN SANDS

TECHNICAL

John Sands is principal consultant of BSRIA’s Sustainable Construction Group

G ET TIN G THE M O ST O UT O F BI M

dentifying and naming the individual elements present in a building information model is key to the success of its subsequent maintenance, as John Sands explains

I

entities) e.g. airports, hospitals, universities, power stations; 3. Space e.g. office, canteen, parking area, operating theatre; 4. Product e.g. boiler, door, drainpipe; and 5. Facilities that combine the space with an activity that can be carried out there, e.g. operating theatre.

Indeed, other classes can be added to a classification system such as ‘system’, which works very well in an MEP environment.

Similarly, an ‘activities’ class would be very helpful to define a range of activities which might be able to be done within a particular space, as an alternative to using the ‘facilities’ class.

ISTOCK

Class action As BIM experience increases, a number of key issues are becoming apparent. One such example is classification – what ‘things’ are called. If you have a vast quantity of data or information, that can be a very powerful resource. However, all that potential may be difficult to realise if you can’t find the particular piece of information efficiently when you need it.

Classification can be defined as: ‘the act or process of dividing things into groups according to their type’. Classification has been used in the construction world for many years, often without the users knowing it. For example, many engineers would recognise that a section called ‘T10’ in their specification dealt with ‘gas/ oil-fired boilers’. This came from a classification system called Common Arrangement of Work Sections (CAWS), which covered

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architectural and MEP elements for construction projects.

Subsequently, Uniclass was derived from this system and gave the opportunity to classify ‘things’ in different ways, not simply as a system or an object. Uniclass was based on the general structure described in ISO 12006, which promoted the use of classification classes, each of which relates to a classification need. As well as products (or objects), some of the other classes suggested by ISO 12006 are: 1. Entity e.g. a building, a bridge, a tunnel; 2. Complex (a group of

Although consultants and contractors have managed well using just a couple of the classes above, other groups have found great benefit in classifying in a number of different ways. For example, it would be very helpful in a hospital FM environment to use the ‘spaces’, ‘activities’, ‘systems’ and ‘products’ classes.

In a hospital it is useful to classify the ‘spaces’ in the first instance by type, and then to classify each space further by which ‘activities’ can be carried out within them. From this it is possible to classify the ‘systems’ that support the spaces and then the ‘products’ that form the systems. A practical example

“It is vital that any solution must be suitable for all stages of an asset’s life, for all types of assets and for all those involved in the asset”

would be if the chilled water system was taken out of action then you could quickly see which spaces were affected – an operating theatre. Once that’s known it is simple to determine which activities cannot be carried out – a number of planned operations. Also, other products or equipment can be identified which can now be worked on as the system they belong to is not working – chillers or chilled beams.

Collaboration stations In this era of greater collaboration it is not enough to know what we are calling things, or which classification system we are using. We must communicate with whom we are working to make sure that the solution suits all of us, and moreover that it is suitable for the whole life of the asset and not just the design, or the construction phase.

It may be that a new classification system is required to satisfy all parties involved in an asset and to make information available throughout its whole life. This is no simple task, and it becomes more complex when the range of assets is considered in both buildings and infrastructure.

It is tempting to try to find solutions to what we do individually, but it is vital that any solution must be suitable for all stages of an asset’s life, for all types of assets and for all those involved in the asset.

Once this has been achieved, the full potential of BIM can begin to be exploited, and tangible benefits demonstrated in the use of information management processes. FM www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 16:03

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29/09/2014 15:40

THIS SEASON’S

PICKINGS Updated: Managing FM Performance 13 November, Central London Explaining the requirement, deciding on the measures and determining performance continue to present challenges for clients, service providers and in-house teams alike. Key topics covered include service level agreements, key performance indicators, incentives and penalties, and how to drive for performance improvements.

OCTOBER

13-17 Management Development [ILM Level 3 Award in Leadership & Management] 14-16 Understanding FM [Foundation] 15 Customer Focused FM 15-16 Effective Space Planning 16 FM Contract Models 21 IOSH Managing Accessibility NEW 21 Building Surveying & Maintenance 22-23 Understanding & Managing Building Services 23 Understanding CDM Regulations 28-29 Managing Relocation, Fit-Out & Move 28 The Tender Process * * ask about our discounted 29 Contract Management * contracting trio 30 Negotiating to Win * 30 How to Procure a Fit Out for FMs

NOVEMBER 03 4-6 5-6 11-13 11-12 12 12

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Want to be at the cutting edge of FM? Then get involved in the BIFM

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BIFM cutting edge NEW 186x123.indd 1 34 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

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the future of our business – from the business end. Whether you’d like to simply attend a regional meeting and the national conference, organise an event, join a committee, become a mentor or sharpen your vocal or literary skills by being a key speaker or writing

in FM World, we’d love to hear from you. Because to help everyone in the industry make the most of it, we need all the useful tools we can get our hands on. So why not get involved and get more out of FM – for yourself and everyone else.

T: 0845 058 1358 E: membership@bifm.org.uk www.bifm.org.uk

2/8/10 12:19:58

29/09/2014 15:37

FM MONITOR MARKET INTELLIGENCE

INSIGHT ECONOMY

The figures on this page have been compiled from several sources and are intended as a guide to trends. FM World declines any responsibility for the use of this information.

INBOUND VS OUTBOUND MARKETING IN THE FM SECTOR

VAT rates: Standard rate – 20% (from 4 January 2011) Reduced rate – 5% Zero rate – this is not the same as exempt or outside the scope of VAT Source: HM Treasury (hmrc.gov.uk)

Bank of England base rate: 0.5% as of 2 October 2014.

The previous change in bank rate was a reduction of 0.5 percentage points to 0.5% on 5 March 2009.

SOURCE: BUSINESS SERVICES GROWTH.COM

97%

PERSONALISED EMAILS HAVE A

10% HIGHER CONVERSION RATE

SOCIAL MEDIA LEAD CONVERSION RATES ARE

13% HIGHER BUSINESSES THAT BLOG GENERATE

126% MORE LEADS

Source: Bank of England (bankofengland.co.uk)

Consumer Price Index (CPI): The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) grew by 1.5% in the year to August 2014, down from 1.6% in July. Falls in the prices of motor fuels and food and non-alcoholic drinks provided the largest downward contributions to the change in the rate. The largest upward effects, partially offsetting the fall, came from clothing, transport services and alcohol.

THE AVERAGE COMPANY THAT BLOGS GENERATES 97% MORE INBOUND LINKS

THAN AVERAGE

81% OF BUYERS IN THE FM SECTOR PREFER TO RESEARCH CHALLENGES THEMSELVES, RATHER THAN BE APPROACHED BY A SUPPLIER’S SALES TEAM.

THAN THOSE THAT DON’T

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

WALL CLADDING MARKET REPORT

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS INVOLVING UK COMPANIES – Q2 2014

UK WALL CLADDING MARKET REPORT - 2014-2018 60 55 50

Source: (www.ons.gov.uk)

45 40 35

EMPLOYMENT

30

National Minimum Wage NOTE: The following rates came into effect on 1 October 2014: Category of worker

Hourly rate from 1 Oct 2014

Aged 21 and above

£6.50 (up from £6.31)

Aged 18 to 20 inclusive

£5.13 (up from £5.03)

Aged under 18 (but above compulsory school age)

£3.79 (up from £3.72)

Apprentice rate, for apprentices under 19 or 19 or over and in the first year of their apprenticeship

£2.73 (up from £2.68)

www.fm-world.co.uk

35_Insight.indd 35

25 IN UK BY UK COMPANIES

ABROAD BY UK COMPANIES

IN THE UK BY FOREIGN COMPANIES

20 2010

2011

2012

2013

2014 FCST

2015 FCST

The number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) involving UK companies was low in Q2 of 2014.

There were 37 instances of UK companies acquiring other UK companies involving a change of majority share ownership – two fewer than the 39 in Q1.

There were 19 acquisitions of UK firms by foreign companies) in Q2 2014 – the fewest such purchases since Q1 2013 (also 19). Some 17 foreign companies were bought by UK firms during the period, a fall from 34 transactions in the previous quarter. The average quarterly number and value of purchases abroad by UK firms was lower between 2012 and Q2 2014 than during the previous five years.

The 2009-2011 downturn in new house building, industrial and commercial markets hit demand for most cladding products and materials – facing bricks, profiled metal panels, artificial stone, metal panels and curtain walling in particular.

The total installed wall cladding area declined from over 45 million square metres in 2008 to 39m sq m, showing gradual improvement to 48m sq m in 2012 and 2013. Since 2011 private home building has picked up, as has work on social housing, waste management infrastructure and London’s office market. But public spending cuts will hit demand for cladding on education, MoD and NHS buildings.

SOURCE: OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS

SOURCE: AMA RESEARCH

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 35

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16:24 29/09/2014 16:03

FM MONITOR IAN LYONS

HOW TO...

Ian Lyons, commercial director, Vigilance Properties

U SIN G LIVE-IN S ECUR I T Y TO M ANAG E VACA N T P RO P ERT Y

he law regarding squatting in a residential building may have been tightened, but FMs in charge of vacant commercial premises still face enormous risks from illegal occupations, warns Ian Lyons

T

FMs who leave their buildings empty have had a harsh warning this summer as cases hit the news of squatters causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage – in some cases losing their lives.

From the tragic events at an illegal rave in a derelict post office in Croydon to a club in Brighton being stripped of everything of value, squatters are now more organised and sophisticated with the help of social networking.

Although squatting was made a criminal offence under section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the law remains contentious as it currently only extends to residential properties.

For companies with assets in the commercial sector, squatting is still only a civil offence.

The traditional security service of manned guarding to protect property assets can be expensive; if a team of guards is rostered 24/7, costs can run into tens of thousands of pounds a month.

FMs seek a more cost-effective alternative and some organisations have looked beyond licensed security outfits to companies that provide occupiers in exchange for a minimal fee. These people pay an administration or licence fee to live in empty property. But is this domestic alternative protecting the asset? Vigilance Properties thinks not. There are too many considerations when instructing www.fm-world.co.uk

37 How To security.indd 37

external companies to provide people to live in commercial property.

1⁄

Use an accredited organisation

Vigilance Properties has channelled its military and security expertise into developing a robust and highly accredited service in the form of its Security Industry Authority (SIA) Licensed Caretaker service. It installs ex-servicemen with full security qualifications into buildings of all types at a fraction of the cost of conventional security guarding.

Having SIA-licensed former members of the Armed Forces in situ gives peace of mind to FMs, owners, managers and insurers. The role and the manner of instructions under which Vigilance operates differs from that of a security guard, but the specialist training and the Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS) accreditation under which the company operates is common to both. Caretakers live in the property and can alert the authorities to criminal activities.

2⁄

Have trained operatives in residence

Operatives are exclusively security-qualified people contracted to do a professional job. Their focus is to bring

valuable skills, expertise and industry-leading standards to maintain the integrity of the asset they are protecting. With nearly 10 years of experience, Vigilance believes that a strictly limited number of professionals securing an asset will control access effectively and deter threats.

3⁄

Ensure all visits are logged

A vacant property is a timeconsuming project because of its daily management needs.

Caretakers are tasked with easing this pressure. A key caretaker role is to assist with routine tasks – from performing and reporting on systems check or readings, to routine maintenance.

An important role of the caretakers is to manage, check and record the visitors authorised to attend their site. All visits are logged and although not engaged in greeting visitors, caretakers manage threats and risks and perform the full range of skills a security licence permits. The military attention to detail of many of the ex-servicemen working for Vigilance brings peace of mind to clients. They will have a sound knowledge of the property and provide a professional presence at all hours.

4⁄

Conduct an H&S assessment

Any problems found by the security service company should be identified by a full risk assessment and corrected before caretakers move in. As professional caretakers will be protecting the property 24/7 it is essential to make sure the property is fit for purpose and

that essential services are running and safe. Choose suppliers that have departments qualified to ensure this is the case. For example, all on-site electrical items supporting the caretaker occupation should be PAT-tested, fire regulations adhered to, and living conditions assured under a hesalth & safety system that is Safe Contractor accredited.

5⁄

Consider the effect on usage

A large proportion of nonresidential property is lying vacant, and with many areas keen to promote employment opportunities ‘multiple occupancy’ of vacant commercial properties for predominantly residential use is coming under increasing official scrutiny. There is growing concern among the agencies charged with keeping the public safe, or buildings used for their designated purposes.

Potential change of use triggers, fire regulation breaches, and House of Multiple Occupancy legislation are all potential risks. An SIA-licensed security professional in a commercial property bears no such risk.

6⁄

Low impact, maximum protection

Ultimately, a low-cost caretaker can provide security while the client enacts its plans. Until the law on squatting extends to commercial premises FMs and managers must take their own preventive action by securing vacant buildings, making the property more difficult to occupy.

But the drive to keep costs down need not drive property managers to unnecessary risk. FM FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 37

02/10/2014 15:53

FM MONITOR TOM WELLAND

HOW TO...

Tom Welland, conformance and regulatory affairs manager, Fireco

DISAB ILITY ACCESS

ost employees can react quickly to emergencies in the workplace, but organisations must also ensure the safe evacuation of disabled people from their premises, explains Tom Welland

M

Providing for disabled and hardof-hearing building occupants should be high on the fire safety agenda.

1⁄

Comply with all legislation

Facilities managers need to guarantee compliance with the Equality Act 2010, which sets out to legally protect people from discrimination in the workplace and in the wider society.

Facilities managers should install fire safety systems and/ or products to make certain that disabled and hard-of-hearing guests are made aware of a fire alarm sounding and are able to evacuate the establishment quickly and safely.

FMs should therefore be able to recommend adequate fire safety products and solutions to ensure a safe environment.

It is often a combination of equipment as beacons, for example, cannot be relied upon in bright light.

FMs also need to be aware of the Fire Safety Order (FSO) – the current fire safety law in England and Wales. The FSO nominates one person as the ‘responsible person’ for a building.

The responsible person has a duty to fulfil the requirements of the FSO. These stem from having a suitable and sufficient fire-risk assessment.

Facilities managers also have a

38 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

38 How ToRevised.indd 34

legal responsibility to ensure that the premises are compliant to the Equality Act, which replaced the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and 2005 (DDA) on October 1st 2010. Where an employer does not make provision for the safe evacuation of disabled people from its premises, this may be viewed as discrimination.

2⁄

Develop your evacuation strategy

Good communication with disabled people about the evacuation plan is vital to its success. Where staff or regular visitors to a building have disabilities the HR department or building manager must create an evacuation plan tailored to their needs, called a ‘PEEP’ (Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan).

This does not only apply to permanent disabilities; temporary injuries such as sprained ankles and mobility problems associated with pregnancy also need to be addressed.

Products should be installed to ensure that those with impaired hearing are made aware of a fire alarm. This could be a product that vibrates and/or uses light to alert to a fire alarm, or in the case of Fireco a ‘deaf message system’ (DMS) system which alerts deaf or hard-of-hearing people with a text message. Ensuring that these sorts of products are in place will offer deaf and hard of-hearing

people the freedom to move around buildings without the worry of not being aware of an emergency situation.

Should the building that you are responsible for host occupants with physical disabilities, the evacuation procedure should take these into account. Keeping means of escape routes clear at all times is an all-important part of fire safety and becomes even more vital when considering the space required for a wheelchair to get around.

3⁄

Ensure fire doors are kept closed

Fire doors are one of the most important fire safety features in a building but also the most commonly abused. Research carried out by Fireco showed that 64 per cent of premises visited by the fire service found fire doors wedged open.

Being aware of this issue and offering a solution could help keep all occupants safe in the event of a fire.

Fire doors are most often wedged open to aid the free-flow movement within a building and to facilitate cleaning. There are products available such as wireless freeswing door closers that allow a fire door to be held open but ‘listen out’ for a fire alarm and safely closing the door in such a scenario, protecting those behind it from the dangerous spread of smoke and fire for 30 minutes.

4⁄

Train your staff

Train staff in ‘disability escape etiquette’ to

be able to provide assistance and advice to disabled users of the building if an incident develops.

FMs should also: ● Ensure that the fire-risk assessment is a live document, rather than a ‘tick box’ exercise carried out once a year. ● Regular checks of the building need to be made, e.g. that fire doors are still closing properly and the means of escape routes are kept clear of any obstacles. ● Spread out fire training through the year. Training updates could involve evacuation drills, how to use a fire blanket and fire extinguisher training. ● Keep an online diary of fire safety training with a sign-off for employees. ● Make sure that everyone who comes into contact with the building is also trained in fire risks including agency staff, builders, cleaners and gardeners. They also need to understand the importance of keeping a fire door closed and not wedged open, and looking out for things like damage to fire doors, frayed wiring and blockages to means of escape routes.

The most important piece of advice for facilities managers is to ensure that adequate adjustments have been made to accommodate disabilities and that fire safety has been made part of everyday life. FM For more information on the Equality Act 2010, visit tinyurl.com/ukeqact2010 For more information on the Fire Safety Order, visit tinyurl.com/firesafetyorder2005

www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 15:53

FM MONITOR CARLY WILLIAMS

Court Report BREAK CLAUSES: RENEWAL OF A BUSINESS LEASE AT THE EXPIRY OF THE CONTRACTUAL TERM

Youssefi v Mussellwhite [2014] EWCA Civ 885 THE ISSUE

Under the provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, a tenant has the right to renew its business lease at the expiry of the contractual term.

A landlord can seek to oppose the grant of a new renewal lease using the grounds laid out in s30(1) of the 1954 Act, which includes cases where there is disrepair (ground (a)), delay in paying rent (ground (b)) and substantial breaches of tenancy obligations (ground (c)).

BACKGROUND

In this case, the tenant had a lease of a dwelling house, shop and premises.

The tenant was required under the lease to: l Allow the landlord access to the

property to examine its condition; and l Use the property for the purposes of any retail trade within use classes A1 and A3.

It was not obvious what business the tenant was using the property for, but it was not open for retail trade within classes A1 or A3.

When the lease was up for Carly Williams is an associate in the Real Estate Disputes Group at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP

www.fm-world.co.uk

39 CourtReport.indd 39

The judge at first instance concluded that ground (b) was not made out, but held that grounds (a) and (c) were satisfied on the following basis.

Disrepair - ground (a) – There was creeper growth at the rear of the property. The tenant’s failure to control this plant growth was a breach of an implied covenant to use the premises in a tenant-like manner and demonstrated disrepair for the purposes of ground (a).

Substantial breaches of tenancy obligations - ground (c) – The tenant thwarted the landlord’s attempts to access the premises.

She also failed to open a business within one of the specified use classes in the lease. The judge found that these were substantial breaches of the access and user covenants in the lease.

The judge made the appropriate order for the termination of the current tenancy without the grant of a new lease. The tenant appealed.

whether in view of the state of repair of the property, brought about by the tenant’s breach of its obligation to repair and maintain the property, the tenant ought not to be granted a new tenancy. This involves the court focusing exclusively on the state of repair and asking itself whether, looking forward to the hypothetical new term, the proper interests of the landlord would be prejudiced in continuing in a landlord/tenant relationship with this particular tenant.

Under ground (c), however, the approach is broader. The court, when considering whether a new tenancy ought not to be granted, is entitled to focus not merely on other substantial breaches but also, or alternatively, on any other reason connected with the tenant’s use or management of the property.

Finally, the court made it clear that a landlord need not prove that the relevant breach adversely affects the rental income or value of the reversion in order to show that his interests are prejudiced.

DECISION

THE APPEAL

The Court of Appeal gave some general guidance on the court’s approach to grounds (a) and (c).

In relation to ground (a), the court has to ask itself

The Court of Appeal agreed with the tenant and allowed the appeal in relation to ground (a). Under the lease, the landlord had an express obligation to keep the structure of

renewal, the landlord opposed the tenant’s request for a new tenancy on grounds (a), (b) and (c) noted above.

ARGUMENT

the building in repair. The removal of the creeper from the structure of the building was not therefore the tenant’s responsibility, but the landlord’s, and so there was no neglect to repair by the tenant for the purposes of ground (a). In addition, the judge had been wrong to think that the failure to remove the creeper, even if it were a breach of a tenant’s repairing obligation, was a substantial breach when the sum involved in carrying out the work was said to be only £350.

However, the Court of Appeal did agree with the findings of the first instance judge in relation to ground (c) and therefore held that a new tenancy should not be granted.

IMPACT

Cases where the landlord is able to make out that a tenant is a “bad tenant”, and therefore ought not to get a new lease have been rare.

However, this is the second significant case this year that has discussed the use of ground (c) (see the case of Horne and Meredith Properties Ltd v Cox [2014] EWCA Civ 423), which might suggest a growing tendency for landlords to explore this type of opposition.

Although the facts of this case are unusual, the case does provide some helpful clarification on what the courts will look at when considering objections under grounds (a) and (c).

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 39

22/10/2014 16:15

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

When lightning strikes: protecting your property There are more than 300,000 lightning strikes in the UK every year and organisations should have their lightning protection system maintained to protect their building and its occupants and contents from damage.

Most buildings with a Lightning Protection System will be defined as critical structures as specified in the British Standard for the design, installation and testing of lightning protection systems, BS EN 62305:2011, and will require an annual test and inspection to ensure the protection system is able to protect the building.

Buildings with risks of explosion, such as industrial plants and possibly even hospitals, should have their system visually inspected every six months with full electrical testing performed once a year.

Choosing a specialist Lightning protection testing is highly specialist work and must be carried out by a contractor with the knowledge and experience to ensure its compliance with the British Standard.

To assist those in charge of buildings and facilities management to understand the service they should look for, the Association of Technical Lightning & Access Specialists (ATLAS) recently launched the Inspect and Protect Campaign. The campaign has two key objectives – to establish clear standards of competency and to encourage clients to specify ATLAS members for testing and inspection work.

Many organisations that tender for the annual testing of their lightning protection system are unaware that a specialist contractor should have formal qualifications.

Competent contractors will also regularly

40 | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | FM WORLD

40_Advertorial 10-9 DS.indd 49

update their employees’ knowledge.

ATLAS has published a leaflet, Choosing A Specialist Contractor for Your Lightning Protection System, outlining what to consider when choosing a test engineer, including their qualifications.

Every lightning protection system should be tested in line with BS EN 62305 and ATLAS has provided a client checklist for protection systems with details of the information that should be provided in an annual testing report.

Use an ATLAS member ATLAS has been representing the leading companies in the lightning protection and steeplejack industry since 1946 and is committed to best practice, technical excellence, and the qualification and training of the workforce to provide the highest quality service to the industry’s clients.

ATLAS members are subject to strict criteria

that have to be met every year and this gives clients confidence that they are working with a contractor who meets recognised standards of competence. All ATLAS members have a track record of financial and technical delivery and a commitment to health and safety and a qualified workforce. Each member is also required to adhere to the code of conduct, which provides clients with clear standards to expect.

The consequences of inadequate lightning protection can be serious and only qualified specialist contractors such as members of ATLAS have the knowledge and skills to test and inspect the system properly and prepare an accurate report identifying any non-compliance issues. ATLAS members are committed to providing clients with the most appropriate and cost-effective lightning protection solution.

For more information about ATLAS and the Inspect and Protect Campaign, visit www.atlas.org.uk.

www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 15:07

FM MONITOR NIGEL KNIGHT

HOW TO...

Nigel Knight, sales manager at Evoqua Water Technologies

PROTECTIN G AGA I N ST BACT ER I A L I N FECT I O N O U T B R E A K S

acilities managers running both public and commercial premises should consider taking take a fresh look at how they safeguard their water supplies from the dangers of bacterial infection. Nigel Knight explains why

F

One only needs to recall past headlines associated with outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease to understand the severity of any such incident.

Legionnaires’ and bacterial infection in general are public health issues that are refusing to go away. Official figures state there are over 200 Legionnaires’ cases a year in the UK, although some experts believe the true figure is as high as 9,000 because few cases are reported.

Leading public health experts and microbiologists warn that we could to see an increase in incidents. This is because managers of public buildings such as hotels, hospitals and swimming pools – as well as facilities managers of offices and other work environments – can struggle to tackle, contain and eradicate extremely harmful waterborne bacteria such as Legionella in recessionary times.

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), any water system with the right environmental conditions can be a source of Legionella bacteria growth. There is a Legionella risk if a water system has a water temperature between 20-45°C; creates and/or spreads breathable droplets, e.g. aerosol created by a cooling tower, or water outlets; stores and/or recirculates water, or is likely to contain a source of food for the organism – sludge, scale or fouling. www.fm-world.co.uk

41 How To Bacteria.indd 41

Breeding grounds The most common sources of Legionella in man-made water systems are found in cooling towers including evaporative condensers, hot and cold water systems and spa pools. These can include unspecified ‘hotspots’ such as infrequently used or dormant taps or showers that can begin to harbour bacteria within just 12 hours.

There are also a number of other high-risk systems that may pose a risk to exposure to Legionella. These can range from humidifiers to air washers, as well as emergency showers and indoor ornamental fountains.

Prevention So what can managers of such premises do to further cut risk and more effectively control the possibilities of potential outbreak?

The long-term answer lies in the application of chlorine dioxide as a safeguard against infection by bacteria – most notably Legionella.

Generally, hospitals, health care premises and commercial buildings obtain water supplies directly from the town mains.

Although the water is of good quality, it is often stored in old tanks and then distributed around the site, primarily in old pipework systems.

It is acknowledged that such systems will invariably suffer from biofilm build-up on internal

surfaces, which can often shelter dangerous bacteria such as Legionella, as well as pseudomonas. Although regular treatments applied to clean the system will work adequately in the short term, they unfortunately only provide a temporary solution as it will not ultimately penetrate and remove the biofilm.

Chlorine dioxide has a track record in doing just that – providing adequate levels are used. If applied at a rate of 0.5 parts per million it will slowly remove the biofilm. It will gradually work its way through the system until a residual exists throughout and it will continually bathe the now-clean pipework with a disinfectant residual, preventing the new formation of the bacteria supporting biofilm.

Application Although it is acceptable to inject directly into the live water main, it is often a more convenient method to deliver the chlorine dioxide solution into the tank alongside and under the water inlet. Likewise, to assist recording and monitoring objectives, the dilution water supply linked to automatic monitoring equipment is usually taken from the storage tank outlet before the generator so it can be sampled and continuously monitored. This monitoring stage provides an additional safety device with the inclusion of low and high-level alarms to signal potential issues.

The application outlined is not an overnight fix for an existing problem. But it will deliver a chlorine dioxide residual throughout the legacy

water distribution system, and safeguard against bacterial proliferation and exposure over time. For acute issues, localised pipe cleaning is recommended to provide a temporary respite until such times as the chlorine dioxide residual is well established.

Undertake monitoring each month because the chlorine dioxide solution builds up, at which point frequency of testing can be reduced. Importantly, from a cost perspective, it is also possible to reduce hot water temperatures, as water temperature is no longer the primary control mechanism to control the biofilm and bacteria growth.

Current Legionella guidelines view chlorine dioxide as a suitable treatment for Legionella prevention. Once a continuous disinfection regime of this nature is established it is no longer a statutory requirement that water storage tanks are taken out of service and disinfected annually – this will save time, cost and resource pressures.

For managers across public facilities in health, education and business, the responsibility to minimise the risk of deadly water borne bacterial outbreaks is a priority.

Although temporary measures can be implemented, the longterm performance benefits of an established and automatically monitored chlorine dioxide solution offer many clear advantages to provide a clean and safe water supply.

It is easy to install, drives resource efficiencies, gives peace of mind and will drastically reduce the chance of a bacterial outbreak. FM FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 41

02/10/2014 15:08

BIFM NEWS BIFM.ORG.UK

CATERING & HOSPITALITY SIG

truth; and ● Administration – can be a burden simply through the sheer quantity of documentation.

Future talent, adapting for success At a forthcoming BIFM Catering & Hospitality Special Interest Group event, delegates will consider ‘future talent, adapting for success’.

Taking place on from 6pm on 23 October at the Royal Bank of Scotland, London E1 8DX, the event will focus on ‘recruiting, retaining and celebrating the next generation’, and will include a Young Talent Food Showcase with some of the most exciting young culinary talent from the contract catering sector.

The event includes sessions on: Attracting and retaining talent – expert panel discussion and Q&A ● Westminster Kingsway/RBS Student chef of the year ●

The hot topics to be addressed will include: ● Allergens and the EU Food Information for Consumers Regulation – are we ready? ● Energy and waste management – how you can deliver savings and return profit to your bottom line via innovative and engaging channels ● Young Talent Food Showcase

The event also includes a Market Exchange and networking with drinks and nibbles sponsored by BaxterStorey.

The Catering & Hospitality SIG also now has a presence on Twitter: @BIFM Catering i For further details contact Paul Greenwood, paulg@tricon.co.uk, 07795 011399 or confirm your free place at http://www.eventbrite.co. uk/o/bifm-catering-amphospitality-sig1887727235?s=28824633

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Delegates from the North Region recently visited BBC MediaCity at Salford for a seminar on using new forms of communication in business BIFM NORTH REGION

Broadcasting House New ways of working, communicating and dealing with suppliers were the topics for the most recent BIFM North region event held at BBC MediaCity in Salford.

More than 40 delegates were welcomed by North region committee member Lee Murfitt, who was quick to tweet about the first speaker – Katie King, MD of social media agency Zoodikers, who talked about how FMs can avoid extinction by evolving into social businesses.

“Think twice before you give social media to the intern,” she said. “It’s a tool for people who really understand and lead business strategy.”

Despite delegates enjoying visiting one of the UK’s most envied workplaces, the next speaker – Andrew Mawson, MD of Advanced Workplace Associates – dismissed the preeminence of the role of offices.

“A workplace is wherever you work, it’s not a building, and the

21st century workplace is not just one workplace, but many – home, cafes, client sites, on the move.”

He argued convincingly that people’s energy makes an organisation a success: “Organisations are large communities of humans strung together by technology.”

But facilities professionals also face a number of challenges in their lives and the last two speakers discussed two of those: managing the information from a large supply base and negotiating terms with those suppliers.

Tim Hoiles, chief operations officer at Trade Interchange, outlined the challenges of managing supplier information: ● Risk to brand – from insurance to H&S certification and environmental accreditation, it’s crucial to know that your suppliers are fully compliant; ● Lack of visibility – with a large number of suppliers it can be difficult to know the current status of each; ● Information silos – there may be multiple versions of the

FM service provider Servest’s head of procurement Stuart Wright shared his experience of negotiating with suppliers to help the FMs in the audience to get the best deal. Wright highlighted the benefits of asking open questions, not taking positions on things that aren’t important, making controlled concessions, making sure of a shared understanding and agreement and never gloating.

“The other person must feel that they got the best deal available.”

Delegates then enjoyed a behind-the-scenes tour at two key BBC sites – Quay House and Dock House.

HEAD OFFICE

New colleagues BIFM would like to welcome Lee Grant and Peter Brogan to BIFM. Lee has joined BIFM as head of service and community development.

Previous to BIFM, Lee was head of membership communities at the Institute of Fundraising, responsible for membership growth and community development.

He will be responsible for ensuring that BIFM’s membership offering reflects the needs of today’s FM professionals and membership across all grades continues to grow alongside the profession as a whole.

Peter has joined in the newly created position of research and information manager. He joins BIFM with a wealth of experience overseeing research teams at standards setting bodies, awarding bodies and professional www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 10:01

Please send your news items to communications@bifm.org.uk or call +44 (0)1279 712 620

bodies and will head up BIFM’s research and information activity.

BIFM COMMENT

John Nahar is Senior Corporate Account Executive at BIFM

FM EDUCATION

Do you use the FM Professional Standards?

The BIFM Facilities Management Professional Standards clearly define the competences that are necessary to be a competent FM practitioner at all career levels.

Created in consultation with industry stakeholders, experts and professional standards writers, the standards form a global competence model for the profession.

These standards can be used to benchmark skills, knowledge and competence for those working at all levels in the FM profession.

The FM Professional Standards Framework The FM Professional Standards framework is the supporting structure that clearly defines: ● The key functions (the functional areas) performed by FM practitioners; ● The main components of each functional area (functional area component); and ● The competences that are required to be a competent professional when carrying out each function.

The framework includes highlevel competences defined for each facilities management career level, from a support role through to a strategic role.

The FM Professional Standards Handbook The FM Professional Standards Handbook provides the full detail www.fm-world.co.uk

42-44_BIFM news new.indd 43

BIFM SUPPORTING THE FM INDUSTRY

n what has been both an exciting and interesting two years at BIFM, the past 12 months has seen a sharp increase of new products and services that have created real value to BIFM members and the FM community as a whole.

As one of the client-facing representatives at BIFM, I find myself engaging daily with service providers, product suppliers and FMs. It is great to hear the positive feedback on the services and opportunities that we are creating for members, and it is inspiring to hear the infectious passion and enthusiasm of people within the industry which makes ours such a great sector to be part of.

In my role supporting Corporate Members, the shift in focus away from a simple list of benefits attached to an annual renewal has been an interesting transition. I have received extremely encouraging comments from our Corporate and Group Members on our new, more personal approach. It provides us with a platform to develop meaningful partnerships with our members by understanding their needs and requirements from BIFM as a professional body and creating unique solutions for our members as we support their organisations.

This change in focus has been fruitful – for example, we are working closely with Carillion on a bespoke, forward-thinking partnership that sees our two organisations working together to develop Carillion‘s staff and advance their professional careers.

Our focus on developing staff has also seen organisations such as Santander, JLL, BUPA, John Lewis, Sodexo UK and Ireland, OCS, Bouygues and many other organisations working closely with BIFM on development projects.

A new exciting activity among Corporate Members has been the Corporate Member Monthly event. We have created a platform for members to engage on current topics and share knowledge and experience, as well as providing excellent networking opportunities with peers and individual members. Designed as an event produced by the members for the members, it has proved an extremely popular event in the BIFM calendar. September saw a focus on ‘People and Technology in FM’, this month we will look at procurement on the back of our forthcoming procurement FM Leaders Forum, whilst November will explore client and supplier relationships.

Corporate Members of BIFM also have the chance to engage with our independent Corporate Representatives. Mike Rollinson of Gleeds and the recently appointed Sajna Rahman of Sodexo are independent sounding boards for members and we encourage you to speak to them as well as members of the BIFM team.

Another announcement is the appointment of Lee Grant, head of service and community development. Find out more about Lee on page 42.

There are several additional activities and opportunities for BIFM Corporate Members to be part of over the coming months and we look forward to sharing the details with you.

I

“WE HAVE CREATED A PLATFORM FOR MEMBERS TO ENGAGE ON CURRENT TOPICS AND SHARE KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE”

i @johnnahar, John.nahar@bifm. org.uk

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BIFM NEWS BIFM.ORG.UK

BIFM TRAINING

Innocent drinks is one of the firms supporting Workplace Week

on the standards, expanding upon the high-level competence statements contained within the framework. It sets out: How to use the FM Professional Standards; ● The FM Professional Standards by each FM functional area and component; ● Behavioural competency framework; ● Achieving professional excellence; ● Attaining professional standards; and ● Demonstrating professional standards.

CONSTRUCTION [DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT] REGULATIONS ARE CHANGING

i Learn more at www.bifm.org.uk/ standards

CHARITY SUPPORT

Support Workplace Week 2014 for Children in Need Google, Mintel, Innocent Drinks, BDO, Edelman, Lloyds of London, Guardian Newspapers, CBI, Invesco, Prostate Cancer and PWC are just some of the big names participating in Workplace Week 2014 to help to raise money for the BBC’s Children in Need charity while celebrating workplace innovation.

Workplace Week, which takes place from 3-7 November 2014, is being organised by leading workplace consultancy AWA. This year’s event involves various initiatives: ● A programme of 90-minute tours of some of the UK’s most innovative workplaces including Google, Mintel, Innocent Drinks,

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he planned CDM 2015 regulations are based on the EU Temporary Working Directive and make a number of changes to existing rules, such as the removal and replacement of the CDM co-ordinator role, replacement of the ACoP, growth of the CDM remit and changes to the competence requirements.

Everyone who has duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, including clients who commission any construction, renovation or demolition work, FMs, contractors, designers, project managers and planners need to understand the key aspects of the regulations, ensuring they are well equipped to make the necessary changes to their operating procedures to ensure compliance with the new CDM 2015 rules and to follow best practice in the field.

To be ready for the changes book now for a course on 23 October 2014 in Central London to understand the legisation’s main requirements, be able to identify when they apply and how to comply, understand the roles of the dutyholders: clients, designers, principal contractors and other contractors and importance of the preconstruction information, the phase plan and the health & safety file, and what details should be included.

T

●

BDO, Edelman, Lloyds of London, Guardian Newspapers, CBI, Invesco, Prostate Cancer, and PWC, with more bigname participants still to be announced. There are only 16 places available on each tour so delegates are advised to book early by visiting workplaceweek.com/workplacevisits/ ● A selection of inspirational fringe events hosted by Herman Miller, Kinnarps and Humanscale. Fringe events are free to attend so delegates are advised to book early by visiting workplaceweek.com/ workplace-fringe/ ● A one-day convention for anyone interested in the work/ place, and in taking human performance to new levels, with inspirational speakers offering case studies, insights and new research. The convention is being held at PWC’s 7 More London Riverside office on Thursday, 6 November.

For more information visit workplaceweek.com/workplaceconvention/ ● A reception, which is free for all event attendees, at PWC’s 7 More London Riverside office on Thursday, 6 November from 5.30-8.30pm. i To take part in Workplace Week 2014 or get involved with as a sponsor visit www.workplaceweek.com

New IOSH Managing Accessibility Certificate, 21 October, Central London, Disability, User Needs & Reasonable Adjustments How does the Equality Act differ from the Disability Discrimination Act? What adjustments are reasonable for employees and visitors? This one-day course takes a holistic approach to access and egress for people with disabilities. Attendees will be trained to influence practices and design decisions to ensure access is on the agenda. Learn different user needs, manage associated risk and make reasonable adjustments for services and evacuation from buildings. The course includes: ● Critical health & safety, CSR & sustainability measures ● Legislation: from planning to delivery of inclusive environments ● Examination of user needs and reasonable adjustments ● Inclusive design principles – spatial, visual & functional ● Fire safety arrangements for disabled people ● Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans [PEEPS] This course supports the Paralympic Legacy initiative for access qualifications for built environment professionals and includes two short tests to give delegates an IOSH accredited qualification. i To register please call BIFM Training on 020 7404 4440 or visit our website www.bifm-training.com and visit the health & safety training section for details

www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 10:01

FM DIARY INDUSTRY EVENTS 13 October | BIFM Awards 2014 The BIFM’s annual awards ceremony, bringing together the leaders in the sector with the winners to celebrate excellence in FM, giving national recognition to the leaders in the profession.

Finalists to be announced in August.

Tickets from £250 + VAT, with 1,200 FM professionals attending.

Venue: Grosvenor House Hotel, London Contact: Visit www.bifm.org.uk/ awards2014 – to book tickets or tables for the event, contact the BIFM Awards team on 01279 712 640 or email awards@bifm.org.uk 3-7 November | Workplace Week 2014 Organised by workplace consultancy AWA, to raise money for BBC Children in Need. A number of organisations, including Google, Mintel, Innocent Drinks, BDO, Edelman, Guardian Newspapers and PwC, are to hold 90-minute tours, in a celebration of workplace innovation. Also a selection of fringe events, hosted by Herman Miller, Kinnarps and Humanscale. A one-day convention at PwC’s More London office, near London Bridge, is to be held on 6 November.

Venue: Various, London.

Contact: For the full programme, visit www.workplaceweek.com 19-20 November | Energy Management Exhibition Supported by BIFM. Exploring the latest measures to reduce energy use, regulations and grants, Low Energy Companies and Energy Performance Contracts.

Venue: ExCeL, London.

Contact: Jason Franks at 0208 505 7073 or visit www.emexlondon.com 27 November | The Building Services Summit 2014 Building services equipment is responsible for more than 80 per cent of energy consumption in commercial buildings. The Building Controls Industry Association has joined forces with the Building & Engineering Services Association to announce the 10-80-10 – Building Services Summit. Speakers include Deborah Rowland, head of property asset management, UK Ministry of Justice, James Pitcher, head of energy and environment, Tesco, and Michael Dick, head of buildings, City of London. www.fm-world.co.uk 45 | 8 MAY 2014 | FM WORLD

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Send details of your event to editorial@fm–world.co.uk or call 020 7880 6229

Venue: Barbican, London.

Contact: buildingservicessummit.co.uk CHANNEL ISLANDS BRANCH 13 November | Breakfast seminar – space management and acoustics Full details to follow.

Venue: Harry Bound Room, Les Cotils, Guernsey Contact: Email Naomi Fry at naomi.fry@investec.ci.com or call 01481 706474 5 December | Guernsey quarterly training day - stress management The guest speaker is Dr Robert Gallagher.

Venue: TBC, Guernsey Contact: Email Naomi Fry at naomi.fry@investec.ci.com 12 December | Jersey quarterly training day – space management and acoustics More information to follow.

Venue: TBC, Jersey Contact: Email Naomi Fry at naomi.fry@investec.ci.com IRELAND REGION 24 October | A behind-the-scenes visit to the Nomadic This is the boat that ferried passengers to the Titanic for its illfated maiden voyage. The Nomadic has been restored and is berthed in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast Contact: Dan Uprichard at danuprichard@ymail.com 14 November | Ireland conference Hosted by Jim Fitzpatrick, former BBC Northern Ireland business editor. Presentations to be announced in the near future.

Venue: Titanic Building, Belfast Contact: Email Stephen Welch at stephen.welch@niassembly.gov.uk LONDON REGION 4 November | Evening event An evening considering fitout, project management and professional services. More details to follow.

Venue: T. Rowe Price International Ltd. 60 Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4N 4TZ Contact: Email Jacqueline Stanton at jacquelinemstanton@gmail.com NORTH REGION 14 October | Sheffield University Technical College (UTC) tour

More information to follow.

Venue: Sheffield University Technical College Contact: Email Bob Rabagliati at bailiff@trinity-estates.org.uk 6 November | Developing supply chains Practical advice for facilities professional on the key techniques and methods involved in negotiating with suppliers. From 5:30pm.

Venue: Newcastle College, Rye Hill Campus, Scotswood Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE4 7SA Contact: Email Mick Anderson at michael.anderson@esh.uk.com 27 November | West Yorkshire networking event More information to follow.

Venue: TBC Contact: Email Richard Keane at richard.b.keane@cummins.com SCOTLAND REGION 30 October | All about FM! 2014 conference The Scotland region’s annual conference, including talks from Fergus Ewing, Minister for Energy, Enterprise & Tourism, Simon Toseland, head of health and safety at Workpalce Law, David Walker of Aegon UK and John McGurk, head of CIPD Scotland, as well as BIFM CEO Gareth Tancred and BIFM chairman Julie Kortens.

Venue: Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh Contact: Email Michael Kenny at mkenny@fesfm.co.uk SOUTH REGION 12 December | The involvement of FMs in the design process FMs complain about the buildings they inherit and manage. There are number of initiatives, such as ‘Soft Landings’, which are designed to give FMs a say in design.

Venue: Brighton University Contact: Email Ian Fielder at ian.r.fielder@gmail.com.

SOUTH WEST REGION 28 October | Dorset evening seminar A seminar on drainage and water services, thermographic testing and its benefits. Sponsored by Property Consortium Drainage.

Venue: Executive Business Centre, 89 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8EB

Contact: Email Nick Fox at nicholasjamesfox@outlook.com or visit www.tinyurl.com/ovcxczp to book tickets.

14 November | Quarterly training day Full details to follow.

Venue: Hilton Bristol Hotel, Woodlands Lane, Bradley Stoke, Bristol BS32 4JF Contact: Email dan.knight@ norlandmanagedservices.co.uk.

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS 23 October | Catering and hospitality – Future talent, adapting for success A debate, discussing the current challenges faced within the FM and catering professions, and looking at the opportunities available to attract Generation Y into the sector. Also a presentation to the Westminster Kinsway RBS student chef of the year.

Venue: Royal Bank of Scotland, Aldgate Union, 10 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 8DX Contact: Paul Greenwood at paulg@tricon.co.uk or visit www. tinyurl.com/pbradkg to book tickets.

28 October | Women in FM – Generation Z Young person panel and debate about the future of the workplace.

More details to follow shortly.

30 October | The future of IT and Facilities A seminar in partnership with the Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI), sponsored by DC Professional Development.

Venue: 15 Hatfields, Southwark, London SE1 8DJ Contact: Bernard Crouch at risingfms@gmail.com or visit www.futureofitandfm.eventbrite. co.uk to book tickets.

12 November | Risk & business continuity – Business resilience forum From 8:30am. Operated with RiskCentric and DSM. Discussions on communicating in a crisis, building the business case for continuity planning and more.

Venue: The Old Hangar, Elton Road, Sibson, Peterborough PE8 6NE Contact: Steve Dance at steve1dance@btinternet.com or visit www. tinyurl.com/oxplm6o to book tickets.

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 45 www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 10:02

Call Jack Shuard on 020 7880 8543 or email jack.shuard@fm-world.co.uk For full media information take a look at www.fm-world.co.uk/mediapack

FM innovations ▼ OCS celebrates sports successes

▲ New generation of gutter cleaners A new generation of high-reach gutter cleaning equipment has been launched after five years of development by Spacevac Technologies Ltd. Operated from ground level, the new system has four major features. It removes operational guesswork as it comes with a close circuit TV camera on the cleaning head; it reaches higher than any other product – 4 storeys (14 metres); has greater suction power – will safely remove an engineering brick from a gutter; and its carbon fibre tubes make it much lighter than any other. It is 40 per cent quicker and a significantly more effective cleaner than any other product.

Unlike traditional high-reach gutter cleaners, the Spacevac is extremely lightweight and can be assembled on the ground by one person – owing to heavy tubes others have to be assembled in the vertical position by two operators.

W: www.space-vac.co.uk

Martin Gammon, OCS’s CEO UK mainland and Europe, joined SportsAid partners and ambassadors, along with athletes, past and present, last month. The event was attended by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, SportsAid’s Patron.

OCS and SportsAid run the OCS Young Sports Person Awards to fund emerging UK sports talent.

Former OCS Young Sports Person Awards winners achieved three gold, six silver and five bronze medals during the Games. Gold medals were won by Louis Smith and Sam Oldham in the men’s gymnastics team event, swimmer Dan Wallace won the 400 metres individual medley gold and a silver as part of a 200 m freestyle relay team. Multiple medals were won by Laura Halford – who took a silver and two bronze in rhythmic gymnastics – and athlete Jodie Williams, who was awarded silver and bronze in individual and team sprint races.

▲ New sales team for LCC Bob Vincent, executive chairman of LCC Support Services, has appointed a new sales team.

Heading the team is sales director Peter Robb, a well-known FM sector sales professional, with three new business development managers – senior BDM Ian Hall, Natasha Birdi and Bobby Vincent. The team will be supported by Amanda Carless as sales administrator.

Vincent said: “I have chosen this team for their communications, combined skills and sector knowledge – essential to an effective sales team.”

LCC Support Services, which was launched in 1997, has developed from a London cleaning contractor to a national support services group operating from Southampton to Scotland. Current turnover is in excess of £23 million and LCC is looking for acquisitions in strategic parts of the UK. T: 01277 268899. W: www.lccss.co.uk

▼ Keraflo launches Tanktronic

▲ Jangro launches new ID Jangro has launched a new corporate ID to celebrate its third decade as a leading innovator in the cleaning supplies industry. With £120 million turnover and 41 outlets, it is has more points of sale than any other janitorial supplies organisation in the UK and Ireland.

The new corporate ID is being launched on to Jangro Members’ vehicles, literature, stationery and promotional materials. The first packaging to adopt the new colourful house style is the Jangro Professional range. This will soon feature on the Premium range – products for demanding tasks; the Enviro range of products that have minimal effect on the environment and the Contract range of no-frills commercial products for everyday cleaning tasks.

The label is colour-coded to each range for easy identification and has been updated with colourful, consumer-style illustrations. QR codes have been added, enabling the user to access the relevant safety data sheet, risk assessment and product user guide.

W: www.jangro.net

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Keraflo, manufacturer of Aylesbury float valves and tank management systems, has launched a user-friendly version of its digital water tank control system Tanktronic. It provides a cutting-edge solution for buildings with water tanks to service a big reserve of water, i.e. hospitals, hotels and office buildings, and allows users complete control over their water stores.

It has been on the market for three years and is already installed in many prominent buildings such as The O2 Arena in London. One Tanktronic unit can control either one or two single water tanks or a twin-tank system. The enhanced model has a host of new features such as the Repeater Panel, which enables control from up to 100m away (meaning tanks housed in basements or roofs can be controlled from the comfort of the management office) W: www.keraflo.co.uk E: info@keraflo.co.uk

▲ De-Ice makes it a clean sweep at awards De-Ice, one of the UK’s longest-established and leading winter gritting and snow clearance specialists, has won two Mid-Essex Business Awards.

The company, which entered the Customer Service and Business Man of the Year Awards, was successful in both categories, and will now automatically go through as a finalist for the main Essex Business Awards in early 2015.

Mark Lopez, managing director of De-ice (and winner of the Business Man of the Year category), said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have won these awards, our success is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of the De-Ice team.”

W: www.de-ice.co.uk

www.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 15:08

FM PEOPLE MOVERS & SHAKERS

BEHIND

DATA

THE JOB

DAN WARREN TOPIC TRENDS

NAME: Dan Warren JOB TITLE: Facilities manager ORGANISATION: Bristol Water JOB DESCRIPTION: Planned and reactive maintenance of all company structures. This includes delivery of various hard and soft FM services.

If you could give away one of your responsibilities to an unsuspecting colleague, what would it be?

OUR INTERVIEWEE RATES THE IMPORTANCE OF CURRENT FM TOPICS OUT OF 10. THE ‘AVERAGE’ SCORE (IN GREEN) IS TAKEN FROM OTHER RECENT INTERVIEWEES.

Sitting down with finance to run through the budgets.

If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be?

There is a lack of understanding of FM and its benefits. Focusing and embracing FM as a key business objective alongside other core functions can have such a positive impact, not only on staff, space, and environment, but also the bottom line.

Ensuring compliance with legislation

9

10

AVERAGE

DAN WARREN

What attracted you to the job?

The challenge and impact potential of the role. FM was a new department within Bristol Water when I was offered the job, and being able to implement and manage this business change was hugely appealing. I had worked in property and operations management – FM seemed a natural career direction with opportunity to apply my skills and experience alongside continuing to learn and develop.

Any interesting tales to tell?

During a recent company ‘Wellbeing Week’ I invited a good friend of mine who happens to be a TV celebrity chef. He put on a demo and Q&A session at lunchtimes. It was a great way to engage staff in the benefits of healthy eating and raise the profile of the Wellbeing Week. I won’t name-drop but he managed to sell a few cookbooks as well!

My top perk at work is…

Bristol Water owns some of the most stunning land in the Westcountry. FMs are responsible for grounds maintenance, so I am fortunate enough to visit areas of outstanding natural beauty such as Blagdon Lake and Chew Valley Reservoir. My wife and I got married on the grounds overlooking Chew Valley Lake.

WHAT SINGLE PIECE OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNG FACILITIES MANAGER STARTING OUT? “Get out and talk to people, learn, ask questions, have an opinion and promote yourself.

Oh, and be efficient!”

How did you get into facilities management and what attracted you to the industry?

It’s an inspiring industry to be in. There’s a youth and ambition that’s hugely attractive. An innovative and problem-solving culture to age-old challenges of how to manage the working environment and those in it.

What’s been your career high point to date?

I’m particularly proud of our FM Team at Bristol Water. Together, we’ve managed to implement FM successfully within the business and continue to drive improvements and better ways of working. …and your biggest career challenge to date?

Our head office is undergoing major internal office space refurbishment. A complete modernisation of the building that includes open-plan offices, formal and informal meeting spaces, and a central atrium deli cafeteria with glass roof! It’s a great project to be involved in, leading to some really exciting changes for our staff and culture. www.fm-world.co.uk

47_Behind the Job.indd 47

If I wasn’t in FM, I’d probably be…

A rock’n’roll star! I used to be a singer in a band.

Introducing/ working with new forms of IT

5

5

Working on energy-efficiency initiatives

7 3 Which “FM myth” would you most like to put an end to?

That FMs are stressed out, firefighting, basementresiding employees. FM can be challenging, but we are changing. FMs are more proactive than ever, getting out into the business, listening to the staff and embracing changing ways of working.

Adapting to flexible working

5

7

How do you think facilities management has changed in the last five years?

There’s a growing importance of FM in companies and businesses. This is indicative of how much more professional the industry has become.

And how will it change in the next five years?

Social media will become even more relevant and important to the FM. For me, communication and people are so important and fundamental to the success of FM as an industry and as departments within business. Embracing social media isn’t just a bit of fun, it’s a vital way to communicate, keep your ear to the ground and improve your business.

Do your friends understand what FM is?

Maintaining service levels while cutting costs

8

9

Adapting FM to changing corporate circumstances

8

9

I would say they understand about five minutes of what FM is, after that they get bored.

FM WORLD | 9 OCTOBER 2014 | 47

02/10/2014 10:02

Appointments

Call the sales team on 020 7324 2755 or email jobs@fm-world.co.uk For full media information take a look at www.fm-world.co.uk/mediapack

JOBS PLAN YOUR NEXT MOVE

on the move New features available through your smartphone See the latest job listings View all the jobs from the website Search or browse to find the right opportunities Create and update your live email job alerts View jobs directly from your email alerts Save and apply for jobs Save jobs to your profile Email jobs to yourself or friends Apply for the right jobs first using your saved CV Keep track of all your jobseeking activity

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jobs.fm-world.co.uk

02/10/2014 16:34

FM opportunities Facilities Manager | Managing Agent North West • £35,000-£45,000 There is an immediate need for a Regional FM to join a bestin-class managing agent. Covering the North West region, the successful candidate will take the reigns of a mixed portfolio of c.15 properties to deliver hard and soft services. Using your stakeholder management skills, you will coordinate outsourced contractors and seek to find cost saving initiatives whilst upholding quality and adding value to portfolio. This role is best suited to candidates that have come from a managing agent/property background. IOSH qualifications are preferred but not essential.

Ref: 278751

Associate Director – FM | High End Residential London • £45,000 This is a rare opportunity for a Facilities professional to join a highly regarded managing agent. You will set and manage the FM strategy and oversee the delivery of hard & soft services to a very high end residential estate in central London. Using your stakeholder management skills, you will manage both the landlord and tenant relationship, focussing on increasing compliance and implementing cost saving initiatives whilst upholding the highest of quality standards. You will ideally be NEBOSH qualified and MBIFM and will have come from a strong managing agent background.

Ref: 270488

Offices globally www.cobaltrecruitment.com Please apply for any of the above roles by emailing apply@cobaltrecruitment.com or call 0207 478 2500 to speak with David Bremner quoting the relevant reference number.

The power of people

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An exciƟng opportunity has arisen for a project manager with the recently created Estates Management department of the University as it enters an exciƟng period of growth and development.

You will be a proacƟve project manager with demonstrable relevant experience in the successful delivery of small and intermediate scale capital and lifecycle fabric and infrastructure renewal projects. Experienced in working within a complex, demanding, dynamic and live environment, you will have knowledge of Scoƫsh procurement policy and processes.

natural choice in FM recruitment

Working as part of a small team, or independently, you shall develop projects from incepƟon through client brieĮng, esƟmaƟng, business case preparaƟon, approval, consultant selecƟon, brieĮng and appointment, design development, value engineering, to procurement and delivery.

An excellent communicator and team player, you will have a proven track record of successful delivery to demanding cost, Ɵme and quality criteria. You will work within a vibrant, customer focused department.

Further informaƟon, including details of how to apply, is available at

www.uws.ac.uk/jobs or by contacƟng the Department of People and O.D. by email to marie.leckie@uws.ac.uk or telephone: 0141 848 3561 (24 hour answering service) quoƟng the relevant vacancy reference No. 14/220 Closing date for applicaƟons: Friday 10th October 2014 Interviews will be held on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd October 2014 UWS is commiƩed to equality and diversity and welcomes applicaƟons from under-represented groups. University of the West of Scotland is a registered Scoƫsh charity, no. SC002520.

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To find out how you can benefit from working with Eden Brown, contact us today on 0845 4 505 202.

02/10/2014 15:43

02/10/2014 16:36

FINAL WORD NOTES FROM AROUND THE WORLD OF FM

NO 2

DAYS

THE SAME

A GLASS ACT To paraphrase Sir Alex Ferguson, “technology, eh? Bloody hell”. In a breathtaking example of helpdesk service soon to come, Google Glass, which we’re sure you already know of as an optical head-mounted display (essentially, a pair of glasses with a computer attached) is being trialled at Edinburgh Airport where, until the end of this year, it will be used by the airport’s customer welcome team, Blackjack (a division of Omniserv limited).

The team will seek to improve the passenger experience by providing flight information, foreign language translations and the answers to general enquiries about the airport and city. Google Glass is already being used in this capacity at London’s Heathrow; We shall watch this trial carefully to assess whether or not this works. Because if it does, the potential for hotels and office receptions is enormous.

NOBODY PUTS FM IN THE CORNER…?

Earlier this month the civil engineers behind some of London’s most iconic infrastructure projects channelled their inner Beyoncé on a video posted on YouTube to show the public – and young people – how happy they are to be engineers – and of course about the diverse careers open to those studying STEM subjects.

Choreographed by Jeanefer Jean-Charles, staff and lecturers of all ages and sizes dance – or in some cases just gamely jig about – to Pharrell Williams’ hit Happy on location at some of London’s engineering triumphs. The film was commissioned by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in association with Bechtel.

Performers included the teams behind Crossrail, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the Thames Barrier, London Underground, Walton Bridge, King’s Cross Station, Beckton Sewage works, and the Hammersmith Flyover. Our favourite was the man in a straw boater getting his groove on in his office at ICE’s HQ. ICE isn’t the first engineering body to use

this idea; a cursory glance at YouTube turned up Pharrell copyists at several institutions in other countries – including students at the National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India.

So, The FM Sector, ICE has clearly thrown down the gauntlet here. Choose your song – and let's see your moves. (Editor's note: we are well aware of Mitie's version of Queen's Don't Stop Me Now. Good that it is, something representative of the sector, and not just one firm, is a logical next step.)

TRANSFORMING THE CAPITAL It may look like something from 1972 sci-fi flick Silent Running, but this giant club sandwich is a genuine idea for a London skyscraper.

The competition-winning design by SURE Architecture envisions that we should be building living space – together with green spaces – into one big vertical structure.

Known as the Endless City, the conceptual 300-metre skyscraper would extend into the sky in a spiral form that could be extended infinitely upwards by a pair of interwoven ramps that wind around the building perimeter.

SURE, a Chinese firm with a branch in London, developed the design for the SuperSkyScrapers Awards, a contest seeking an "inspirational

typology for a high-quality organic skyscraper concept to be used as a tech city". The designers say it could contain homes, businesses, schools and parks. It’s low-energy, using natural lighting and ventilation.

"There is no break anymore between the street level and the skyscraper, nor between the skyscraper floors themselves," says the SURE team.

"Rather than superimposing one floor on top of another without real continuity, our project is thought of as two endless ramps circumrotating continually and rising gradually."

The two ramps would be linked intermittently with bridges and the structure supported by six steel tubes that would house the staircases and lifts used to move through the building.

What would the classic movie’s gardening drones Huey, Dewey and Louie make of it, we wonder?

SURE ARCHITECTS

IN THE NEXT ISSUE OUT 20 OCTOBER

FEATURE: THE BIFM AWARDS 2014 – DETAILS OF ALL THE WINNERS AND HIGHLY COMMENDED PROJECTS FROM THE SECTOR’S MAJOR ANNUAL EVENT/// FM SURVEYING TOOLS /// FM FUNCTIONS OVER IP NETWORKS /// UPS MAINTENANCE /// BATTERY RECYCLING /// ALL THE LATEST NEWS AND BUSINESS ANALYSIS

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02/10/2014 16:48

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