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Who is the Facility Manager and what he does

The Facility Manager is a professional figure who deals with the management of buildings and all instrumental services serving a company. They may be responsible indiscriminately for offices, shops or factories, managing their multiple utilities ranging from maintenance and security to telecommunications, cleaning services or canteen services. 

What the Facility Manager does 

Simplifying further, the facility manager is a professional in charge of defining the timing and modalities of facility maintenance, coordinating the staff in charge of services and always keeping a close eye on the available budget.

Among a varied skill set and task list, what stands out above all is the organisational, management and control activity, which must meet the efficiency requirements of the working environment. In fact, the services the facility manager deals with are either related to the physical infrastructure or related to improving workplace conditions. The first category includes maintenance management of electrical, heating or fire-fighting systems in buildings. On the other hand, services in the second category include the cleaning, reception and concierge services of a building or the company canteen to name the main ones. 

The competences of a facility manager

To fulfil their role effectively, a facility manager must possess a series of specific technical skills and soft skills:

• Organization and logistics: Excellent abilities in orchestrating resources and workflow. 
• Strategic communication: The ability to clearly transmit information to all stakeholders involved. 
• Operational leadership: Competence in supervising operational teams, ensuring effective collaboration in the maintenance and improvement of infrastructure and services. 
• Problem-solving: Creativity and promptness in finding effective solutions. 
• Financial savoir-faire: In-depth knowledge in finance and economic control. 

• Operational efficiency: Skill in analysing and optimising operational flows related to space and service management, aiming for quality with a reduction in costs. 
• Real estate expertise: Specific knowledge in real estate and asset management. 
• Regulatory knowledge: Awareness of laws related to environment, health, and safety. 
• Project Management: Skills in conducting infrastructure projects 

How a facility manager manages his skills 

The competences of a facility manager are diverse and inherent to different areas, among which the propensity for dialogue and confrontation with the customer is certainly not lacking. But in concrete terms, what does a facility manager of an apartment building or a large retail establishment deal with?

The facility manager must analyse the needs of his interlocutors and plan the management of the resources available both for infrastructure services (hard services) and for those services that improve the business (soft services). They must then be able to establish an expenditure forecast and breakdown costs by cost centre. Above all defining customer maintenance plans, facilities and installations and deciding on their operational procedures up to their “follow up”. 

Facility manager and real estate 

An aspect unrelated to maintenance or service management is planning of real estate assets, a management that, depending on the case, provides for their sale or purchase or a renovation due to changing conditions.

In all this, the facility manager is the professional who manages personnel, i.e. the teams that take care of the interventions (electricians, bricklayers, blacksmiths, painters, etc.), maintains relations with the client and verifies that each intervention, whether extraordinary or ordinary, is carried out on time and in accordance with the instructions. 

Maximum efficiency at minimum cost: the keywords of a good facility manager 

Once the ordinary services have been planned and any emergencies have been handled through calls for extraordinary facilities services, the facility manager has the task of analysing the results of management. An important part of their job, in fact, is to evaluate any deviations between what was budgeted and what was actually spent, analysing the quality of the services provided and recognising any criticalities and waste.

The goal of every facility manager is to maximise the efficiency of service delivery and save costs, depending on the type of facility management company to which they belong. They can achieve this objective by renegotiating certain supply contracts or by seeking new solutions, including technological solutions, capable of optimising expenditure without detriment to the quality of the service offered. 

Always present in the Facility Manager’s activities is attention to compliance with health and safety at work regulations (81/08), regulations that today impact on the many activities that are in the Facility Manager’s management. 

The evolution of the Facility Manager 

With the evolution of the labour market, the professional figure of the facility manager has also evolved, so much so that today the role becomes an active part of a new culture of collaboration, environmental sustainability, information sharing and innovation initiatives, and has a direct and strategic involvement in the business. Above all, it has to deal with new frontiers of facilities management, such as the dynamics of Energy Management, Risk Management, Data Collection and Data Analytics, Predictive Maintenance and Data Monetisation. 

How to become a facility manager 

Due to the varied tasks, there isn’t a dedicated training path to become a facility manager. However, those who decide to embrace this career must have a good technical background, a degree in Management or Construction Engineering or Economics, although experience is as important as educational background. Sometimes the experience factor in technical and economic aspects of building management plays a decisive role in the choice of personnel. 

In other cases, what can become really relevant in a selection is the specific expertise in retail management, or in residential buildings, or even in production plants: a career that can start as a facilities officer, a role in which one can acquire the first specific skills to then reach the role of facility manager. 

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