Numerous other Standards, such as ISO 14001 Environment Management Systems, ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, and ISO 50001 Energy Management Systems, are pertinent to help Facility management adhere to legal obligations and best practices.
To improve Facility management performance in Sri Lanka, many standards were frequently implemented and accredited at various times over the years. It makes sense that the practitioners would feel stressed throughout the year having to undertake evaluations and audits for several Standards if the Standards were audited by various certifying bodies. If the systems are used in isolation, this may result in the Facility management function being unproductive and ineffectual. To address these issues, Facility management should combine the various Standards with the Facility Management System Standard to create a single system that complies with all applicable Standards’ requirements and has a single set of goals and rules.
The following are some advantages of deploying an Integrated Management System (IMS) for Facility management:
- Increasing effectiveness and efficiency;
- Cutting costs associated with various audits;
- Displaying a consistent chart of direction for the function;
- Providing facilities services of a consistently high caliber;
- Enhancing internal and external communication;
- Preventing overlap, repetition, and duplication of effort;
- Ensuring legal compliance and best practices compliance and;
- Facilitating ongoing FM performance improvements.
To give clarity and a coordinated effort, having an FMS in place allows FM practitioners to refer to the FM function’s policies, objectives, and their separate processes, roles, and duties in FM operations.
There will many companies be doing several posts on the scope, key ideas, and advantages of the International Standards for Facility Management (FM). I’ll discuss the FM’s scope and benefits in this piece of article.
A wide range of support services that are frequently essential in assisting an organization’s core business operations are managed by Facility management. The goal of Facility management is to free up the organization, often known as the demand organization, to concentrate on its primary business operations.
Scope: The facility services may consist of managing infrastructure, facilities systems, real estate or places that provide space, and utilities, event management, catering, fleet management, access control, reception and guest services, printing services, green services, etc.
Specific services for users and visitors are necessary to keep all of these resources viable and fruitful for both the organization and its users.
An international standard on facility management for planning, describing, and providing relevant support services are offered by ISO 41001:2018. It offers benchmarks for measuring and evaluating FM, facilities services, and management systems.
The demand and rising expectations from organizations have accelerated the practice of facilities management’s evolution.
According to ISO 41013:2017, the goal of FM is to increase organizational efficiency and people’s quality of life.
A facility management system (Facility Management System) gives functional FM or FM service providers a standard manual for managing the interconnected processes of their services to meet their goals. It gives a broad overview and clarifies how the FM fits into the organization’s main business.
The fact that ISO 41001:2018 adopts a process-based management approach to managing and continuously improving the processes to meet the Facility management policy, objectives, and key results are one of the standard’s main advantages. From purchasing to handling a client complaint, all Facility management actions can be categorized as processes. The phases it will go through are as follows in these three steps:
- Analyzing the performance of the processes,
- Documenting the procedures and,
- Improving the processes.
Although not all of them, the advantages of putting in place a process-based management system include the following enhanced visibility of work routines and practices with more clarity of roles; increased process efficiency, improved performance, lower costs, improved uniformity, minimizing or eliminating job duplication, increased client satisfaction as a result of operational transparency, enhanced individual process ownership, assistance for risk mitigation, and adherence to regulatory standards.
In conclusion, implementing ISO 41001 Certification will enhance performance improvement by streamlining what appears to be complex in facilities management.
Both functional FM within the demand organization and FM Service Providers are suitable for any organization that wishes to go with ISO 41001:2018 with other standards.
