Facility Management

"Facilities management" or "FM" is a concept of Anglo-Saxon origin born in the 1990s. It today covers an activity in real development in France, Western Europe and little by little in Africa. It brings together under the responsibility of a single operator (the "facilities manager"), the overall management of goods, services and support activities necessary for the exercise of the main activity of the occupant of a site, with the objective of optimizing the overall quality/cost ratio.

The "Facilities Management" activity can be carried out internally by the company or the community itself, or outsourced, that is to say entrusted under global delegation to a single FM partner.

Thus, "facilities management" is part of the broader set of activities linked to services, maintenance as well as the technical and administrative management of real estate complexes which in fact constitutes its potential field of development. The service providers bring together the different general services professions in multi-technical and multi-service management services.

FM's service offering includes 2 types of services:

Multi-technical management, which includes the activities of:

•   Energy and fluid management: electricity, gas, water, compressed air, steam, industrial gas and water
•   Maintenance of installations: climate engineering, generators, access control, elevators, automatic doors, centralized technical management installations, computer networks (voice, data, image).
•   Real estate management, which includes: management of rental contracts, property management, legal and tax advice, accounting reporting, assistance with the management of works for new and rehabilitation constructions

Multi-service management, which brings together activities such as:

•   Services for occupants: reception, switchboard, mail, collective catering, travel, reprography, vehicle fleet, office maintenance, management of meeting rooms,
•   Security: security, video surveillance, fire safety
•   The environment: general and industrial cleanliness, removal of ordinary and special waste, green spaces, etc.

Multitechnical services represent the largest share of the FM market.

It is an original process for managing its real estate assets and general services. It allows the company to :

•   Better define the scope of its competence and its strategic action
•   Truly focus on your core business by benefiting from all the economic and structural advantages that the use of "facilities management" brings.
•   From an economic point of view, "facilities management" will allow the company to better allocate its resources and gain productivity and reduce operating costs.
•   From a structural point of view, it will also allow: the use of a professional who has know-how, masters the regulations and provides advice for the improvement, maintenance and enhancement of its assets; the implementation of maintenance that is more preventive than curative, and therefore generally less expensive.

On the other hand, in the eyes of the company, "facilities management" may present two disadvantages:

- Fear of loss of control over building management and general services
- The risk of irreversibility of a long-term delegation of services.