Let's integrate

Rebooting the IFM model for a new era of flexibility, efficiency, and integration

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Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) has evolved a long way in the last 30 years and has become the service model of choice for many property directors with complex, multisite portfolios. The IFM sector represents about a third of the FM market and as it continues to expand, clearly has a bright and sunny future.

However, the model isn’t working for everyone. The original motivation for outsourcing FM services was because the client organisation couldn’t get things done efficiently enough, cheaply enough or to the right quality. Today, there is a danger that the outsourced solution seems to have become more complex and cumbersome than the client they look after, while delivering fewer of the outcomes or benefits promised in the original tender. FM service providers are having to work harder to persuade clients that their version of IFM is significantly different and better value than that of other providers, in what has become a highly competitive market.

To be successful it’s now essential for suppliers to provide a quality customer experience and agile response to fast-changing client demands, across an everexpanding range of service lines.

To cap it all, in the last four years, the workplace has been through an enforced restructure because of the Covid pandemic, making the challenge even greater. FM providers have had to adapt and embrace new, hybrid ways of working and deliver a meaningful workplace experience that will encourage staff off their sofas and back into their offices. Linear models based on providing a range of services 8 hours-a-day, five-daysa-week simply don’t apply anymore. FMs need to measure the pulse of the building and its staff constantly and be ready to anticipate and step in with interventions, before a minor problem becomes a crisis.