Failure to adopt strategic facilities management costs UK £1bn annually

A new report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) claims that over a quarter of UK organisations are failing to adopt a strategic approach to facilities management. For those firms without this approach, the annual average cost is calculated by the report’s authors as £120,000, suggesting a total cost to the economy of nearly £1 billion. The claim is based on a study of around 700 organisations in both the public and private sector and across a range of organisational types and sizes.  Around half of those with a ‘dedicated FM programme’ said that doing so had saved their organisation money, 59 per cent reported an increase in productivity, a fifth (21 percent)reported a drop in absenteeism and nearly half (49 percent) claimed it had made them more attractive to customers. The best results were recorded in the public sector with 70 per cent saying strategic facilities management had increased productivity and 71 percent claiming they had seen an increase in employee engagement.

Johnny Dunford, global commercial property director at RICS, claimed that his organisation’s research “clearly demonstrates that more needs to be done to get leaders in the private and public sectors on board with the new approach. By recognising facilities management as an important strategic discipline, businesses could reap the huge business benefits it promotes.”

Last month RICS published a new series of case studies to highlight the strategic importance of facilities management to organisations with regard to a range of objectives including the implementation of BIM, wellness, client retention and asset management. Paul Bagust Associate Director, Commercial Property (RICS) claimed that “the important message that permeates all of these case studies is that facilities management needs to have a place at the heart of an organisation and be fully embedded and absolutely focused on delivering the mission and vision for that business.”