Facility management, outsourcing and contracting overview

The discipline of facility management has basically originated from the experience of the field and most of the business models are driven from the American market. The majority of surveys agree that organizational objectives vary according to different business environments. The link between a given company and its facility management department has been studied in details with a widespread agreement on the importance of tailoring to the specific context the facility management organizational model and the approach to the relationships with suppliers. In Europe two Technical Committees of the Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN) are currently adding to the body of knowledge terminologies, guidance to prepare agreements, control systems for maintenance management and directions of development. On the basis of findings coming from both the literature and the standardization state of the art, the framework reported here has been focused on the multi-service result-oriented approach. The standpoint if the framework is in the early recognition that the main problem in the field implementations of result-oriented approaches lies in determining whether the expected results have been achieved or not; then, given that two key tools are available, i.e. the service level agreement and the reporting system, the framework suggests a new organizational and managerial structure, even simpler than the traditional (i.e. not integrated) one and whose kernel is based on the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) approach early introduced by six-sigma. © 2009 Springer London.