On the 2nd and 3rd of June, an international cast of around 200 attendees from the FM community gathered at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre for the 2010 Integrate Conference. The two-day conference was opened by current IFMA Hong Kong Chapter President Graham Tier and incoming President Deric Probst-Wallace.
Francis Kuhn, member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of IFMA, then took the stage to talk about the activities of the International Facility Management Association as well as discuss what facilities management (FM) means and where it is going.
Kuhn shared his views on how FM impacts a business today and clarified some basic questions such as what are the responsibilities of a facility manager. To answer this question, Kuhn showed a clip from a Steelcase video produced 30 years ago that quite amusingly and succinctly demonstrated that a facility manager is responsible for everything, has to expect the unexpected, predict the future, know many things about almost everything in a facility and juggle all of these things all the time – sometimes with one hand tied behind his or her back.
One of the issues confronting FM leaders today is finding the next emerging leaders – ‘the new grey hair’. 'Are they out there,' Kuhn rhetorically asked. According to recent research from BOMA, there are over 450,000 facility managers globally – IFMA has about 20,000 members managing around 4.5 billion sqm of space. With 450, 000 managers out there, a simple extrapolation was made suggesting that there is 90–100 billion sqm of non-residential space under management worldwide!
According to Kuhn, 6.5 million sqm of additional space comes on-line annually. Thus, there is a need to develop new facility managers through education and skill selection as well as accredited degree programmes such as the one offered by Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University with its Masters in Facility Management. Scholarships are likewise an increasingly important way of attracting new blood. According to Kuhn's research, 50,000 new FM professionals will be needed per year. IFMA is doing its part to address this through professional certifications such as fmp (curriculum based) and CfM (competency based).
Kuhn also stated that sustainability is becoming a key issue within facilities and technology is playing an important part in running them. In light of these developments, IFMA has been listening to its members around this area and has been very receptive to hear more about what organisations need so IFMA can lend a hand.
Wilfred Wong took his turn at the stage to discuss 'Natural Born Leaders'. Wong's background is in construction, and he took over the firm Hsin Chong Construction a few years ago.
'A leader is prepared to speak up, make a decision, surround himself with great leaders and people who are more intelligent than you—you need to get people "off the bus" if they are not part of an A team,' said Wong.
In order to succeed and have a sustainable operation, his advice is to 'keep things simple' and bring issues back to basics. In the case of Hsin Chong and the construction industry, 'you need an order book for at least three years,' Wong asserted. You have to have a sustainable business to be in business. Also, make people accountable and look at collaboration. Changing the top layer is not enough; you need to create a strong community within the organisation. Communication is one of the tools that can help. Wong used the theme of Benjamin Button to get the message across to his staff about changing a company with a 70-year history and making it young and energetic once again.
Wong suggested the following strategies to help make a change within an organisation:
- Create an exit strategy for those that need to be moved
Think for the long term
- Read the behaviour of your senior
Some of the key lessons learnt from Wong's talk were the importance of teamwork, doing collaborative work outside the organisation and encouraging everyone to do their best.
Microsoft's Brian Crockford talked about 'Discovering and Responding to the New Normal'—how the global economic crisis affected his company and what its real estate and facilities (RE&F) did to adjust to the situation.
In 2008/2009, Microsoft’s mandate was to reduce opex and capex to deal with the reduction in operating revenue and profit. From an initiative in Asia and through their collaboration with colleagues in EMEA, the RE&F team set up a community involving MS staff and vendors to establish a strategic approach on devising ten key strategies with the objective of making and tracking savings. Some of the top strategies included:
- Implement energy-management initiatives
- Reduce expenses to landlords
- Revise service levels
These initiatives led to significant savings, giving the RE&F team great kudos, which ultimately caught the attention of Microsoft's global CFO who pushed for a worldwide roll-out of the programme. The results were even greater than initially expected.
To lend greater focus on initiatives that had the biggest impact, the number of strategies was pared down from ten to six. One such initiative was the introduction, actually resurrection, of the newly branded Work Place Advantage (WPA). WPA is a programme to empower Microsoft employees to align their working needs and better support the way they work today. By looking at more collaborative and more flexible space, productivity can increase by 5–25%, depending on the environment the employees are working in. There are actually more than just anecdotal data that support these findings.
Clean air activist Joanne Ooi spoke about ‘Managing Air Pollution in Buildings’. However, her focus, after some clarification, was more on outdoor air pollution. She started with an overview of the outdoor air pollution in Hong Kong and how SO2 and NOx are affecting people's health leading to three pollution-related deaths per day. According to Ooi, these data were gathered from the Hong Kong government's statistics; and alarmingly, she added that this is actually a conservative number.
The biggest nuisance (not necessarily cause) has come from roadside emissions. This has a direct impact on health and affects indoor air quality (IAQ). Other contributors include VOCs and radon, particularly, those found in construction materials, finishes and office equipment. Mold and fungus are also contributors. The key learning here was in order for us to improve IAQ, we need to clean up outdoor air quality (OAQ).
Tony Wong, Executive Director of Morgan Stanley, talked about ‘Vendor Management’ by which he meant vendor or supplier relationship management. Wong started off his talk on where we are and the future convergence, e.g. risk/reward, on/off balance sheets, rules vs. principles.
So why the focus on vendor management—according to Wong it is because there is a lot of spend on CRE, and vendors are responsible for managing a big part of this. Wong raised the question of what the organisations want from their vendors: the answer to this is market pricing, flexibility and scalability. Additionally, what do organisations look for in their vendor nowadays? Again, the answer is senior-level relationship, understanding client expectations, and having them aligned and incentivised, contracting with a share of values and risks.
Senior management need to spend more time on strategy and vendor management to realise real value; and perhaps, allocate less time on service delivery BAU where less long-term strategies are established and real benefits can be brought.