Facilities Manager's Desk Reference, 3rd Edition

2Key Drivers of Facilities Management

2.1 The business organisation

An organisation relies on its primary processes in order to achieve its strategic objectives. Changing market forces and developments coming from areas such as legislation, technology and mergers influence these processes constantly. These changes must be managed and structured at strategic, tactical and operational levels throughout the organisation in order to remain viable and compliant.

Support processes, which can be a part of the organisation or be delivered by external service providers, have a direct impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the primary activities. The distinction between primary activities and support services is decided by each organisation individually; this distinction has to be continuously updated. Some organisations in the UK refer to support services as non‐core and primary activities as core. What is considered core in one organisation may be considered non‐core in another.

2.2 Demand and supply

FM (facilities management, or facilities manager) aims at balancing the demand for supporting services with supply of an optimised mix between needs/service levels and capabilities/constraints/costs. This is illustrated in Table 2.1. To maximise performance and value, it is crucial to align demand and supply based on economic, organisational and strategic objectives. Figure 2.1 shows the demand–supply model of FM, which is described below.

Table 2.1 Demand and supply of FM ...