Design and facilities management in a time
of change
Francis Duffy
Abstract
The development of facilities management over the last 20 years is reviewed. A parallel
and similarly retrospective view is taken of developments in office design. There is
some reason to believe that both movements have been a failure for the same reason –
an exaggerated notion of the importance of cost cutting leading to the predominance of
supplying side values rather than serving the real interests of increasingly demanding
views. More optimistically, it is agreed that, if both facilities managers and designers
(including architects) were to give proper attention, in a period of particularly rapid
change, to user interests, then considerable and beneficial innovation would become
possible.
• Many authors consider cost control to be an important task of facilities managers and
some define FM as an economic function concerned with ensuring an efficient use of
physical resources by controlling cost (Duffy,2000 and Grimshaw, 2003). History shows
that a business environment that is focused on an adequate return on capital has
impacted the practice of FM towards cost control and outsourcing over time (Duffy,
2000). For instance, a Dutch study (cited in Van Wagenberg, 1997) on outsourcing
(Groeneweg, 1996) indicates that cost reduction was the main motive for outsourcing. ...
... So there is a conflict between these logics though the logic of rationalization has
been dominant since 1980s. The facilities managers speak the language of suppliers
rather than users and the profession has not invented and delivered the emerging
needs (Duffy, 2000). FM claims to be strategic but most practitioners work at
operational levels; FM wants to be at the heart of the organizational development but
many FM services are delivered either by external consultants or in-house teams set up
as internal consultants; FM claims to be proactive in managing change but it is reactive
in most cases (Ventovuori et al. 2007). ...
... The reflections could direct the attention of the practitioners that the 'logic of
professionalism' requires attention so that the profession could develop holistically.
Though some research in FM generates waves of professionalism (Duffy 2000; Roberts
2001; Grimshaw 2003), the field would be better off with more FM research. It is stated
that we only explain how IFM has been constructed. ...
• ... In crossing the Atlantic the same putative body of knowledge became known in the
UK as facilities management and the original sense of workplace design came to be
confused with the provision, and especially the outsourcing[1] of building support
services (Price, 2002a). Early commentators stressed a complex and``and``ecological''
stance on new workplace design (Becker, 1990; Becker and Steele, 1995) but the
message has been largely lost and the current workplace debate focuses on``on``open-
plan'' versus``versus``cellular'' space (Haynes et al., 2001), retains neo-Taylorist
overtones (Duffy, 2000), is uncritical and apparently unaware of the post modern
organisational discourse (Cairns and Beech, 1999a,b) without evidence of impact on all
but the most mundane measures of productivity (Haynes et al., 2001) let alone a
theoretical framework for understanding same. Facilities, as opposed to facility
management, has become a discipline and industry, dominated by building operations
and maintenance (Lord et al., 2002). ...
... Cairns and Beech (1999a,b), while taking care not tò`seek to deny that any of the
concepts of flexible working may be truly valid and applicable'', highlight the advocacy
bias in many speeches and presentations on the subject. The revolution foreseen by the
pioneers of FM has not materialised (Duffy, 2000) and the glittering prize remains out of
reach for most office workers (Nathan and Doyle, 2002). Issues of organisational
culture, foreseen by Becker (1990) remain under-appreciated (Ho Èrgen et al., 1999). ...
... The skill of managing office space may have developed but the office environment
itself remains very much as it was. Duffy (2000) attributes the failure to conservatism by
suppliers, to lingering Taylorism and associated hierarchical cultures in organisations,
but most of all to a cost focus on the part of both facilities managers and design
professionals: Programmes of research could have been initiated, using comparative
data from cumulative case studies, to dem ...
