Search Results for: facilities

November 5, 2013

RICS’ new FM Guidance Note aims to improve business performance

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has launched a global guidance note which can help facilities and estates managers increase efficiency and drive up profits across business. The Global Strategic Facilities Management (FM) Guidance Note is aimed at facilities managers and corporate real estate professionals overseeing the running of commercial property worldwide, providing recommendations on developing, implementing and evaluating a strategic plan for the running and servicing of individual buildings and property portfolios. The note is also accessible for clients and consultants by providing them with a clear picture of the best practice methods that should be implemented in the running of buildings in order to boost organisational performance. More →

October 30, 2013

Major injuries at work have reached an all-time low says HSE

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Legal news, News, Property

There has been an 11 per cent drop in major injuries at work compared to 2011/12, according to the latest Health and Safety Executive (HSE) statistics – though construction remains one of the most dangerous sectors. Meanwhile, figures compiled by health and safety expert ELAS shows the HSE has fined UK firms more than £5.5 million for health and safety failings under its ‘Fees for Intervention’ scheme (FFI) since its launch one year ago. Under the Health and Safety (Fees) Regulations 2012, companies that break health and safety laws are liable for fines to cover HSE related costs, including call-outs, inspections, investigations, and taking enforcement action. Businesses were fined a total of £5,532,565 for such breaches by the watchdog since October 2012. These can range from slips, trips and falls, right down to not providing enough toilets or washing facilities. More →

October 30, 2013

Workplace Trends conference justifies the workplace in a virtual world

by Sara Bean • News, Property, Workplace design

In his lightning summary of five decades of the office at Workplace Trends 2013: Making it Work, which took place last week, architect Frank Duffy remarked on the challenge of justifying place in an increasingly virtual world. It’s never been easy to gauge the productivity of offices and knowledge workers – a conundrum the conference returned to throughout the day. Tim Oldman from the Leeman Index, which has gone some way to measure workplace effectiveness, revealed that only 53 per cent of 42,677 workers questioned had agreed their workplace enables them to work productively. Yet despite this, as most of the sessions of the day confirmed, the office is far from obsolete, and as a place for workers to congregate and collaborate, it remains king. More →

October 22, 2013

Over 40 percent of refurbishment projects fail September health and safety checks

by Mark Eltringham • Legal news, News, Property

Following the extensive enforcement action it took against construction sites in March, the latest Health and Safety Executive ‘swoop’ on refurbishment projects in September found that more than 42 percent of them failed the subsequent inspection. During the month, HSE inspectors paid unannounced visits to 2,607 construction sites where refurbishment or repair work was taking place and reported that 1,100 of them failed the safety checks. On 644 of the sites, practices were deemed so poor that enforcement action was taken to protect workers. More seriously, 539 prohibition notices were served to put an immediate end to dangerous activities and inspectors issued 414 improvement notices requiring standards to improve.

October 22, 2013

What happens in a designer’s mind and Mac can be very different to reality

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Social media is inarguably closing the gap between organisations and consumers of their services. Advances in the way we interrogate the opinions of building users are lifting the veil on some sharp practices in management and the negative impacts of poorly thought out design or badly executed installation of designs into the built environment. The positive impacts of this new, more open world are evident in changing attitudes to mental health and other wellness issues that affect us in the workplace. And it is becoming ever more evident in the response to a clear disconnect between what happens inside the designer or architect’s MacBook and its effect on the physical spaces with, and within which, we interact.

October 18, 2013

RICS is first professional body to introduce BIM standard

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has become the first global professional body to introduce the first recognisable building information modelling (BIM) standard. Employers and clients are struggling to find industry accepted criteria on which to base knowledge of practitioners’ BIM skills, while BIM competent professionals lack a single indicator that will demonstrate their abilities to the sector. This has resulted in different assessment methods being used across the industry. RICS’ BIM Manager Certification aims to assure contractors, consultants and investors that the professionals and firms delivering construction and infrastructure projects have the relevant knowledge, experience and skills to implement BIM at an industry tested and approved level. More →

October 14, 2013

AHMM chosen for new Met Police headquarters project

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Company news, Facilities management, Workplace design

Courtesy of Simon Heath

The firm of architects chosen for Google’s enormous new North London headquarters project as well as the redevelopment of the BBC’s Television Centre has been chosen to design the new home of the Metropolitan Police in Whitehall. The decision to award the job to Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) was announced by the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC) is selling New Scotland Yard, and moving to modern offices at the iconic Curtis Green building on the Victoria Embankment in 2015. This new building will then revert to being called Scotland Yard.

October 9, 2013

Joint survey investigates where energy use is on the FM agenda

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News

The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) and the National Energy Foundation (NEF) have announced a joint survey exploring FM professionals’ experiences and expectations of improving the use of energy in the buildings. Both organisations hope the findings, which will be made available in a report in January 2014, will identify new areas of focus and shed light on how FM professionals are tackling the gap between actual and predicted energy performance in the buildings for which they are responsible. According to Lucy Black, Chair of BIFM’s Sustainability Special Interest Group (SIG), the survey should help identify areas where barriers persist, and FM knowledge is strongest or needs further support. More →

September 27, 2013

What’s wrong with adopting a more positive approach to work and workplaces?

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Public Sector, Workplace, Workplace design

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Has there ever been a UK government more interested in the workplace than this one? Most of it has been about cutting costs of course, so the majority of announcements emanating from the Cabinet Office have been about procurement, design and environmental performance. David Cameron even at one point announced that he wanted to measure people’s happiness. The questions needed to work out how happy we are proposed by the Office for National Statistics as a result would have had a very familiar feel for anybody who has ever completed a workplace satisfaction survey even if they miss the most blindingly obvious point that when you’re skint and in mortal fear of losing your job, most other things about work lose their lustre.

September 12, 2013

When it comes to transparency, most businesses might fail The Peacock Test

by Simon Heath • Comment, Workplace

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The HR profession took a savaging yesterday in a Daily Telegraph article by Louisa Peacock following what many felt to be a disastrous appearance by the BBC’s head of HR, Lucy Adams in front of the Public Accounts Committee. You can see a brutal excerpt above. A thread of sensationalism runs through the Telegraph piece but some good points are made that have broader lessons for the commercial world. There have been acres of coverage generated by the debacle at the Beeb, but there is a real sense of “there but for the grace of God go I” and schadenfreude about much of the commentary and chatter from the business community.

September 10, 2013

We deserve better than a polarised debate about cellular v open plan offices

by Andrew Mawson • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Jacques Tati’s Playtime

Stimulated by a number of rather unsubtle commercial interests, the ‘in’ workplace discussion seems to have swung from ‘collaboration’ i.e. organisations need more new spaces for formal and informal collaborative interactions, to ‘distraction’ i.e. open plan workplaces are creating a loss of productivity because people whose work requires concentration are impeded by constant interruption. The implication of the latter is that people should keep their ‘cubes’ and open-plan should be avoided at all costs. You can see pretty quickly where the commercial axes are being ground can’t you.