BIFM FM Leaders Forum Debates The Future Value Of Facilities Management

Educating business, demonstrating economic benefit, linking facilities management (FM) to productivity and responding to future trends and consumer behaviour were just some of the areas debated by a panel of industry leaders at the latest British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) FM Leaders Forum.

The ‘Defining the future value of FM’ forum asked whether it is possible to define FM by outputs, and if a defined ‘value of FM’ helps strengthen the understanding of FM across organisations.

Deputy Chair of BIFM and forum participant Liz Kentish said: “Defining the value of FM was the starting point for the latest forum, but it soon became clear that we had to actually question whether this starting point was the right one. We need to consider whether the value of FM is already known. And if not, why it is not fully understood by wider business community. This is certainly not a new debate to the FM profession, and hopefully the forum paper which has been published will continue the debate to a wider audience.”

She continued, “Whenever a ‘value’ is referred to, there is an immediate sense that this relates to a numerical value. To an extent, this forum’s ambition was to find a quantifiable ‘magic element’ that would enable the FM sector to define its value to the rest of the business.”