MATEC Web of Conferences 204, 01018 (2018)

https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201820401018
IMIEC 2018

Understanding Facilities Management Practices

to Improve Building Performance: The
opportunity and challenge of the facilities
management industry over the world
Astri Anindya Sari1,*
1
Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, State University of Malang, 65145 Malang,
Indonesia

Abstract. There is much evidence that green building which is initially

believed to be the solution to solve the problems of climate change and
energy crisis can not perform as expected. The fact that green buildings
consumed more energy and emit more CO2 than expected during the
actual operation is due to the problems of inefficiency in building
operation and maintenance. Facilities management integrates the entire
component of the built environment including people, process, place and
technology to make sure that the built environment system works
optimally. It offer important contributions to address the challenge of
inefficiency in terms of building operation and maintenance thus make
facilities management industry become one of the fastest growing industry
in the world. By doing a literature review, this paper intends to understand
more about the practices of facilities management in different part of the
world. It is found that there is a stark contrast in the development of
facilities management practices in the western countries as compared to
that in the eastern countries. The industry of facilities management is
relatively new and the research related to that field is still limited thus
provide a huge opportunity to develop it in the future since the importance
of this field is increasingly recognize.

1 Introduction
Nowadays climate change and energy crisis has become one of the world’s biggest
concerns. IEA, 2015 [1] stated that the building sector (including residential and
commercial) consumes more than one-third of the world’s total primary energy, those
number is the highest compared to the energy consumption of other sector. In addition to
that, IPPC (2014) [2] argue that population growth, migration to cities, and increasing
levels of wealth and lifestyle changes globally have the potential to doubled or even tripled

*
Corresponding author: [email protected]

© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
MATEC Web of Conferences 204, 01018 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201820401018
IMIEC 2018

the energy consumption and emission of the building sector by the mid century [3]. Green
building is one of the strategies that are expected to solve that problem. Unfortunately there
is much evidence to mention that many green buildings perform poorly and emit much
more CO2 during actual operation [4]. Moreover, OECD/IEA (2013) [5] highlights that
many green buildings which have been designed and built in a very efficient technologies
and already been recognized with distinction awards such as LEED Platinum, also perform
worst in terms of energy consumption. The energy consumption of those buildings are
often much higher than expected [3]. Those facts reveals the opportunity of the building
sector to reduce the energy consumption and to overcome the environmental issues caused
by greenhouse gas emissions as well as mitigating the global climate change in the long
term.
The gap between the predicted energy consumption and actual energy performance in
green building may be caused by many things including the difference between the building
design and the as-built building in terms of the technical workmanship and installations,
choice of equipment and material during the construction stage, as well as the energy
behavior of occupants, which has been disregarded in the energy simulation process [6].
The higher the technology applied to a building, the better occupant understanding on the
way the building works and how to maintain it become more essential so that the building
can perform as expected. Occupant is the one that use the building and operate it everyday
that is why the success of an energy saving strategy in a building depends greatly on how
the occupants understand and interact with the building’s systems and technology [7; 8; 9]
In addition to occupant’s better understanding in the operational phase, a good and proper
maintenance system is also needed so that a building can be function optimally as expected
in the design stage [10]. When the tensions between energy performance and maintenance
practices are balanced, buildings operate efficiently. A proper maintenance is also
important since it widely accepted that it costs up to five times more to operate and
maintain a building than to construct it [11].
As stated before, the efficient building operation will result in the decreased of energy
consumption, the maintenance costs as well as the reduced in the environmental emissions.
Unfortunately, the efficiency in the building operation and maintenance is still a problem in
most of the countries in the world that might be the main caused which makes green
building can not perform as expected..

2 Facility management, a way to energy and cost efficiency of

the building
Facilities management (FM) may offer important contributions to address the challenge of
inefficiency in terms of building operation and maintenance. Facility managements is a
form of asset management which integrate all of the component of the built environment
including people, process, place and technology to make sure that the built environment
system works optimally [12]. Considering that building or built environment is a complex
system, so in terms of carrying its functions, facility management involves
multidisciplinary knowledge including architecture, civil engineering, behavior, accounting,
management, and so on.
In the past, facilities management is known as the field that serves only on the building
operation and maintenance field. However, as the industry is growing rapidly the service of
facilities management has become widespread nowadays. Teicholz [13] stated the 41
responsibilities set by the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) which
are grouped into eight categories covering real estate, planning, budgeting, space
management, interior planning, interior installation, architecture or engineering services,
and building maintenance and operations.

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IMIEC 2018

As facility management comprises a very broad range of services, facilities management

is considered to be a factor that has an important role to the success or failure of the
effectiveness of building performance so that it can be optimally performs as its designed
[14]. Implementing an efficient maintenance strategy is required to manage resources
effectively and decrease the costs of repairs and replacements, in addition to reducing
overall risk and equipment failure [15]. A good facility management system will ensure that
every technology and facility equipped within a building is already well function and meet
the standard. The facility management will also organize the people who are involve in the
building operation and maintenance to make sure that the building can perform optimally
and efficiently in terms of cost, operations, and maintenance as well as fulfill the client
needs and features [16].
Research and practice of facilities management began to start in the USA in around
1950’s and followed by the Europe in around 1980’s. The practices of facilities
management have expanded to the countries of Asia and Africa since 1990’s. The
importance of its practices makes the industry of facilities management become one of the
fastest growing industries in the world.

3 Methodology
This paper intends to provide more understanding on the practices of facilities management
in both developed and developing countries by doing the literature review on the previous
research published between the year of 2000-2017. At the initial process, we found 52
publications in the form of journal, proceeding, and Ph.D. thesis within the facilities
management topic which is published between the year of 2000-2017. In the next process,
we then excluded some publications that much focus on the management and education
field and left 22 articles which are focus more on the architecture and civil engineering
practices to be reviewed. The selected publications are mainly use observation, interview as
well as questionnaire to the facilities management practitioner so that they can briefly
describe the practices of facilities management in their country.

4 Facilities management practices in the USA, Europe, and

Australia
FM services were first provided in the 1950’s and 1960’s in the USA and they were fully
developed in the 1970s, while in the Europe facilities management practices had started to
develop in 1980’s [18]. The first country in Europe where facilities management practices
started to grow is the United Kingdom. Back then, UK is considered as the most important
facilities management market in Europe followed by Germany and France [17]. At present,
the UK, the US, the Nordic Europe countries and the Netherlands are considered to lead the
international developments in FM [18]. Italy is one of the European countries that facing a
delay in the practices of facilities management compared to other countries. Such delay
may be caused by the anomaly of the Italian economic structure, which is strongly biased
towards small and medium enterprises. In particular, such anomaly does not fit either with
an integrated facilities management approach or the traditional models based on in-house
management. Nevertheless, there has been a rapid growth in the Italian market in the last
decades as a caused to a diffused trend to outsource non-core activities and to a process of
reorganization of the supply market [17]. Limited publication found related to the practices
of facilities Management in Australia; however the development of facilities management
practices within this country is shown by the presence of accreditation system that had been
developed by The Facility Management Association of Australia (FMA Australia) in 2000.

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IMIEC 2018

This accreditation system defines three levels of skill in practicing facilities management in
organization.
Facilities management practices in USA and Europe is already performed widely by
both the property developers and facilities management companies. In both the USA and
Europe, operation and maintenance are included as the importance area in the facilities
management practices; however the scope has become broader and includes the
development of real estate and use of buildings in both the short and long term. The rapid
development of facilities management practices in USA and Europe shows an increased
awareness of the importance of the physical surroundings for the development of
organizations [19]. The development of facilities management industry is followed by the
increasing interest in the research related to the field of facilities management under the
international organization of facilities management (IFMA).
Research in the field of facilities management has result in a standard for quality
regulation in Europe which are the IS0 9000 Quality standards and EN 15221-3: 2008
Facility Management — Part 3 about guidance on how to achieve quality in facility
management [20]. This standard is expected to be the basis of a common understanding
related to the facilities management services thus emphasizes improvements of core
businesses productivity and people’s quality of life [21].
Some of the facilities management services in both Europe and USA are already left the
traditional system (reactive maintenance) and move on into the integrative facilities
management services which applying proactive maintenance [22]. The proactive
maintenance in the integrative facilities management services will integrate the all of the
building data from the design, construction, and the building operational phase to make the
process of controlling and maintenance will be much easier to do. In the proactive
maintenance, all of the system and technology will be controlled periodically so that the age
of components, the decrease of the component function, and the damage of the component
can be predicted and be repaired faster thus make the proactive maintenance to be more
efficient in term of time and cost as well as to make the building perform more optimally
[23].
There are some challenges in applying proactive maintenance that is faced by the
facilities management practitioners in USA & Europe. The first challenge is due to the
difficult transitioning process from traditional reactive maintenance to proactive
maintenance which involves not only the advancement of technology but also skill [10; 19].
The next challenge is the unorganized building data from the design and construction phase
thus make the proactive maintenance process become difficult to do [10; 24]. The
development of the newest Building Information Modeling (BIM) software which is being
used in the design and construction phases will allow the knowledge sharing between
facility management and design professionals. However, based on the research in the USA
[24] and the Nordic Europe [19] found that there is a knowledge and technology gap
between design and facility management professionals. In some cases, the facility
management team may not present themselves during the design and construction stage,
thus the designer do not know exactly on what kind of information that they should include
in the BIM database that will be needed for the maintenance purpose later. Therefore a
better practices and technologies are needed to carry such information with the
understanding of facilities management’s needs.
Other challenge in the growing service sector of facilities management the Europe is
how to deal with service quality [20]. Even though FM practices in Europe and USA are
already equipped with ISO standard but somehow there is still gaps between the facilities
management practitioners and clients in terms of the services priority. Since quality is one
of the most expected aspects by customers of almost all service products [25] so research

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IMIEC 2018

about customer satisfaction and the post occupancy evaluation become the important thing
to do.

5 Facilities management practices in Asia & Africa

The practice of buildings facilities management in Asia & Africa is still considered as a
new comer in the industry if compared to those in Europe and USA [26]. In Asia, the
facilities management practices has developed rapidly in the more developed countries of
Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, while in the developing countries of Asia such as
Malaysia and Thailand, facilities management practices is still considered in the level of
infancy. Hong Kong as the “door” to the Asia and the meeting point of western and Asian
culture has become one of the leading country of facilities management practices in Asia.
The facilities management practices in Hong Kong have began since 1994 under the local
International Facilities Management Association [26]. This organization support and
organize any research related to the field of facilities management in Hong Kong by
organizing annual conference as a means of sharing knowledge between the researcher and
facilities management practitioners in Hong Kong. In Singapore FM industry is already
implementing the integrative facility management services with proactive maintenance
despite the traditional one. By implementing the proactive maintenance building can
perform more optimally as well as save more energy [3].
On the contrary, facilities management practice in the developing countries of Asia such
as Thailand, Korea and Malaysia is still considered to be new and in the level of infancy.
Some survey that held on Korea and Malaysia shows the low awareness of people in the
importance of facilities management practice towards the better performance of a building
and built environment [27].
In the developing countries of Asia such as Malaysia, the practices of facilities
management is generally done by the outsourcing partner which is the international
facilities management company, there is no local facilities management company found in
Malaysia [16]. However, the development of facilities management practices and research
in this country shows that there is a growing interest on this in Malaysia, thus give a
positive insight to the future development of facilities management industry in this country.
Most of the practice of facility management in Malaysia at present is undertaken by real
estate firms as the property consultant. This is due to the fact that buildings such as high
rise office towers are managed by property consultants. The maintenance method that they
use is mostly the traditional of reactive maintenance instead of the proactive one [26].
Reactive maintenance is a maintenance and repair method which is being done only if some
damage is being found. This method of reactive maintenance and repairs are not efficient,
since it cost three to four times more than the proactive maintenance for the same repair
[23]. Unfortunately this method is chosen due to the poor record of data management since
the design and construction phase that make the process of proactive maintenance difficult
to do. Moreover, the poor data management is also result in the negative future planning of
maintenance works and services management.
Min et al., [3]; Myeda, & Pitt [27] stated that some other challenge the practice of FM
in Malaysia and other Asian country are (1) the lack of the people understanding of the
importance of providing a comprehensive FM services to achieve the desired building
performance 2) lack of skill, technical knowledge and expertise on the building services
and facility management field so the difficulty of handling various problems is often occur
thus the need to design a flexible FM planning that can be applied. 3) Lack of the standard
and guidelines in the FM services that can be used to measure the quality and performance
of FM practices by company as well as to standardize the practice and implementation 4)
the absence of specific FM organization to control and monitor the FM practiced by

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IMIEC 2018

property management or consultants in Malaysia. 4) Lack of financial support since

adoption of integrated FM requires high initial costs, unless the computerized programs can
be developed locally in the market or funding support is provided, thus make Malaysia is
still lagging behind in software development specific to FM. In addition to that,
Kamaruzzaman and Zawawi [29] argue that public awareness of the role of FM is still low
and attributed that to lack of an FM culture in Malaysia.
Nevertheless, the Government of Malaysia had taken some initiative to provide quality
of public services in terms of setting rules and providing budget, yet the government has
not yet implemented and adopted the facilities management in any organized way [27; 28].
The first facilities management organization in Malaysia (Malaysian Association of
Facilities Management) was formed in 2001; however there are no remarkable steps that
they have taken up to now to promote the FM profession locally. It can be concluded that
FM practices is relatively new in Malaysia, it is unlikely that facility management will be
widely practiced for some time in the Malaysian property sector until the property
management industry fully matures.

6 Discussion
Applying integrated facilities management and the proactive maintenance is proven to be
more effective and efficient in terms of time and cost if compared to the traditional reactive
maintenance. However, applying integrated facilities management is still a challenge in
both the developed and developing countries since it required not only a complicated way
of transfer knowledge and technology but also a strong financial support. Moreover,
different culture of eastern and western might be have different preference and challenge,
so there might be different strategies which is more suitable and effective to be applied in
certain culture. In order to address that problem, the future research within this area is
suggested to do. Beside that, since the preferences gap between the facilities management
practitioners and the clients concerning the service area priority is also a challenge faced by
the management practices, future research related customer satisfaction and post occupancy
evaluation is also in need to do.

7 Conclusion
There is a stark differences and slight similarity between the practice of facility
management in the developed countries in USA and Europe as compared to the developing
countries in Asia and Africa. The differences are concerning the quality of services, the
number facilities management standards that exist, and the number of research published
while the similarity is the lack of financial support that faced by the Asian countries as well
as some European countries and the Australia and the challenge in applying integrated
facilities management.
This field of facilities management is relatively new, yet the fast growing development
of this industry over the last 25 years have proven that this field is getting increasingly
recognized. On the other hand, many challenges that still faced by the facility management
practitioners over the world offer many opportunity for researcher to help solving the
problems that occur and filling the gaps of knowledge in this field.

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