What is Facilities Management?

Facility management is the practice of coordinating the physical workplace with the people and work of the organization. It integrates the principles of business administration, architecture and the behavioral and engineering sciences.

Although the facility management profession has been in existence since the evolution of the office, only in recent years has it received worldwide recognition. Business entities have come to realize that maintaining a well-managed and highly efficient facility is critical to success. New technologies, environmental consciousness and health concerns also have had a major impact on the importance of and need for facility professionals in organizations.

Facility professionals must be equipped with a tremendous amount of knowledge and the ability to cope with and solve a multitude of complex problems and challenges. Their numerous job responsibilities can be categorized into the following major functions:

• Facility strategic and tactical planning
• Facility financial forecasting and budgeting
• Real estate procurement, leasing and disposal
• Procurement of furnishings, equipment and outside facility services
• Facility construction, renovation and relocation
• Health, safety and security
• Environmental issues
• Development of corporate facility policies and procedures
• Quality management, including benchmarking and best practices
• Architecture and engineering planning and design
• Space planning and management
• Building operations, maintenance and engineering
• Supervision of business services such as repro graphics, transportation and food service
• Telecommunications
• Code compliance

What Hats Do You Wear?
Do you and your organization really understand the many benefits of strategic facilities management?

IFMA Calgary is a professional business association, one of 127 chapters around the world, focused on providing FM information resources. We are constantly working to increase the profile of Facilities Management and the role of Facilities Managers in the Calgary business community, providing resources to our members and promoting the profession to executive management.

If you want to develop your FM skills and knowledge or increase your organization's understanding of the benefits of effective facilities management, IFMA Calgary can help you.

If you want to learn more about facilities management, please join us at one of our upcoming events.