IFMA (International Facility Management Association) annually organises world congress in the USA. This year, it took place in Phoenix (USA) in October 2019.
Apart from being interesting to participate to such kind of congress with all up’s and down’s as well as many “superficial” discussions, it provides opportunities to discover new trends about Facility Management services (FM):
- FM world is changing to a best integration of other services or sectors like workplace environment, HR, IT, etc.
- FM remains focused on basic services without any « big bang » changes (maintenance, cleaning, security, etc.)
- FM providers remains in their logic by delivering good and sustainable services without any big innovation
- Management tools, tracking systems and data management systems become standards and are more and more proposed to end clients by FM providers (e.g. Sensors, integrated chips, barcodes, etc.)
- According to IFMA studies, roughly 50% of key positions holders in FM will get retired within 5-10 years. Challenge will be to motivate and select enough good young leaders in FM talent-pools.
Thanks to IFMA, FM area made massive progresses by harmonizing services, processes and descriptions and intensively pushed training sessions and high-level courses with support of universities, offering a strong cursus in FM sector.
One recurrent theme? Technology seems to be more and more integrated into FM by supporting data management and services. For example, sensors and robotics more generally become topics for many FM providers.
Maintenance represents a good example how technologies can support quality leverage thanks to automation. In contrary, some services FM seem to stand in a more traditional approach, FM providers being more reluctant to change despite cost pressure, means margins.
Does it always make sense to apply new technologies: this question is pertinent while some solutions seen during this congress seem to be more nice gadgets than real added values for clients. The future will tell us which propositions will be in…