Guest editorial

Citation

Andrew, A. (2009), "Guest editorial", Journal of Facilities Management, Vol. 7 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jfm.2009.30807daa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Facilities Management, Volume 7, Issue 4

The outlook for property and facility managers has not been so bright with opportunity or so fraught with difficulty for decades. We have been dragged blinking into limelight by the enormity of the recession. Valued but unsung members of the professional team, we are now faced with fulfilling enormous expectations from/for employers and clients who want us to cut costs, realise capital and release economic and environmental efficiencies from property.

Public sector asset managers have received particular attention in the form of eight reports from: Sir Michael Lyons; the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; the Improvement Service; the Scottish Government; and Audit Scotland. Faced with major financial constraints and a tight three years spending round, managers are being empowered to strategically manage their estates after years simply reacting to short-term operational demands.

In Scotland, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, John Swinney MSP in his Asset Management Review requires the Scottish Government, its agencies and non-departmental bodies to manage their 700+ properties more corporately, if necessary subordinating the interests of individual organisations to the greater good. To facilitate this property information is now being harnessed corporately through electronic Property Information Mapping System, mandatory in England and Wales, but whose coverage of fringe government bodies in Scotland has been patchy. The Scottish Government is actively reshaping the Scottish Public Sector starting with the restructuring of Scottish Enterprise and the abolition of Communities Scotland. Property managers have to respond creatively to ensure that the resulting estate serves the needs of the reshaped Scottish Public Sector, economically and sustainably. Improvements must be made in the energy efficiency of the estate and its wider environmental sustainability to meet carbon reduction targets.

In parallel, local authorities have been exhorted by the Improvement Service to see properties as corporate rather than departmental assets and to manage them accordingly. Given the large size of the local government estate, potential savings could eclipse anything realised by Central Government.

Meanwhile the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland is heavily involved in the Hub Initiative which is designed to streamline the construction procurement of buildings for the public sector and facilitate joint working between public bodies. Responding to issues raised by Audit Scotland about the management of NHS Scotland assets, work is underway to examine the condition of the estate in ways not dissimilar to the work undertaken by the Scottish Funding Council, seven or eight years ago with the Further Education Estate. NHS Scotland is also pushing forward its development of a robust asset performance and governance framework together with appropriate indicators and benchmarks on its properties and other assets.

To achieve the efficiencies sought, public and private sector property managers will have to convince and cajole their internal departmental clients to think corporately rather than see the assets that they occupy as their private kingdoms. This means encouraging a rethink of deeply set local attitudes to property which have built up over years of decentralised management of property. Longstanding occupiers may not enjoy a reinvigorated corporate approach to property which impinges on those freedoms.

A further constraint on asset managers is the need to finance change in a period of capital scarcity. Capital is needed to reconfigure buildings, acquire better and smaller ones and to refurbish inefficient, unsustainable assets. Corporate finance colleagues will need persuading of the need to part with scarce resources; to “spend to save” to reduce running costs, improve sustainability and release capital. This is all the more difficult in the current market when we cannot even be sure we can dispose of redundant buildings to replace that capital.

All our ingenuity and persuasive powers as asset mangers will be needed to enlist the support of colleagues occupying buildings and the finance teams who fund change. Property management has never been the most glamorous of the property disciplines but the opportunities today for property and facility managers in the public sector to demonstrate their persuasive and professional skills has never been greater and this is an opportunity that must not be allowed to slip by.

Anthony AndrewCCS: FES Property Advice Division, Edinburgh, UK