Facilities Management - Moving Towards ITIL
Facilities Management - Moving Towards ITIL
Facilities Management - Moving Towards ITIL
Working with predefined process flows is not a common practice for Facility Management. While ITIL process models seem to dominate the IT world, Facility Management does not seem to have its own process model. We are all familiar with standards such as ISO 9001, but these are standards or certifications and do not structure processes. This comes as no surprise: IT works according to process flows such as ITIL or ASL BiSL, while Facility working methods are more task-oriented. That gap is now closing, as Facility Management is working with ITIL more frequently. Facility and ITIL: can and do they match?
TEXT: HENRIEKE KORTEN
According to Jaap Bregman, newSolutions consultant and specialist in the area of facilities management, the last few years have seen a shift within facilities management: Todays facilities manager is less preoccupied with operational services and has become more of a director.1 Facilities management can then no longer escape the reality of working with process flows. Despite this shift from an entirely operational focus to a more directional focus, facilities management processes have still not been fully developed. Bregman further writes that methods such as the Facility Excellence Model enable visibility of costs and other figures within facility services, but that the methods do not manage or structure these costs. They are also familiar with the structural registration of complaints, wishes, information and errors, but it usually ends with registration.
A marriage of convenience
Jurgen Koster, facilities management account manager within TOPdesk, notes that facilities management and IT are moving towards each other: There are a number of new developments within facilities management. Firstly, suppliers of Facility Management Information Systems (FMIS) are moving increasingly towards IT service management. With this, they use (ITIL) terminology which was formerly only used by service management suppliers. Suppliers of IT service management software indicate a similar movement towards facility management.2 When facilities management and IT cooperate even further, they can profit from each others strong points; facilities management can borrow process models and match them to their specific needs. Why would you want to re-invent the wheel when your
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(Configuration management in ITIL terms) and Incident management can be applied to facilities management processes with great success. Many organisations put a lot of time and money into describing their so-called unique processes - it seems in this case that ignorance is bliss. Koster furthermore says: Compared to IT, where ITIL is the standard process description and working process-based has come a long way, facilities
management methods are much less developed. Nevertheless, this process oriented working method has definitely caught the attention of the managers. Managers of facilities departments then seem to be interested in working with processes as they search for models they can implement themselves. But why does Kosters survey tell a different story? According to him, the introduction of process oriented working and thinking is not as easy in the rest of the organisation.
Employees are used to focussing on the job at hand and not in delegating. Koster: You also have to deal with a thing called product-object oriented working. Being customer oriented is not something that comes naturally to facilities; they often dont realise that they are providing a service to customers and they do not feel that their work influences the primary process, the well-being of employees or even operating results. Considering your own colleagues
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Inevitable
Jaap Bregman notes the inevitability for facilities management of adjusting their task oriented working methods. Organizations are becoming increasingly complex and dynamic which requires more flexibility in facilities support. According
to Bregman this does not call for unquestioningly copying the structure of an IT department: A facilities manager can continue to be a doer and be service minded, but needs to register and plan in order to use the information coming from within the organisation. He does not though many might think it have to choose between being service and process minded: he
can easily do both. Jurgen Koster thinks that facilities support organizations will have increasing impact on IT organizations, which enables both to work with the same software. This software must be recognizable and usable for both parties: That requires a lot from the use of terminology and package design. >
IT
Planner Technician Specialist Procedural (ITIL) and rigid Focussed on problem analysis Avoids risks Self-willed / closed
FM
Doer People minded Generalist Ad hoc and flexible Focussed on solutions Lacks an overview Inefficient
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1 J. Bregman, ITIL: best practice voor ondersteundende dienstverlenende beheerprocessen. Effectieve procesmethodiek voor facilitaire organisaties,in: Facility Management Magazine September 2007. 2 J. Koster, TOPdesk Facility Management, productontwikkeling voor TOPdesk 2006.
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