Facilities managers of all types of properties must deal with critical health and safety issues.
This applies to commercial, residential and retail properties.
Various responsibilities are integral to the FM role, including:
These responsibilities are interconnected and interdependent with health and safety as core concerns.
For example, general maintenance of the building should help keep the asset safe and prevent accidents or injuries from occurring.
Also, keeping a watchful eye on health and safety is a part of general property management, helping ensure that leaseholders and tenants are satisfied. This has implications for the landlord attracting business and being able to justify charging rents at competitive rates.
Health and Safety Risk Assessments
Conducting health and safety risk assessments is a core part of the FM’s role.
These assessments should include the top health and safety challenges of facilities management:
Facilities managers must carry out fire safety inspections to meet government regulations. This requires that they identify potential fire hazards and risk areas and act to remove or reduce them.
The safety of electrical systems and devices is vital in both residential and commercial settings. This requires a regular and thorough risk assessment.
Building owners or landlords must manage asbestos and inspect buildings for which they have responsibility for any traces of it. A broad range of materials containing asbestos was used in construction up until 1999. Asbestos can be in ceiling tiles, insulation and other parts of a building’s fabric.
Legionella poses another potential health hazard. This bacteria can cause legionnaire’s disease and it grows in water tanks and systems. People can contract the disease from breathing in water droplets from air conditioning systems and plumbing. This is why regular inspection of water tanks and legionella risk assessments are a fundamental part of the FM’s role.
The biggest causes of fatal injuries are falls from high places. Accidents can happen when employees or other service providers are working at height, such as doing maintenance when up a ladder. The FM must assess risks connected with working at height.
In some locations, there is a risk of exposure to dangerous substances. Various cleaning materials, disinfectants, air fresheners and paints contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These can emit gases that are harmful if inhaled.
Older buildings may still contain lead pipework, which again can be potentially harmful if it gets into water supplies. Cooking and heating products can produce carbon monoxide. At high concentrations, this is harmful and can be lethal.
The FM must conduct careful risk assessments of such substances.
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Today’s facility managers find themselves in the midst of many challenges, including regulatory and compliance hurdles, resource scarcity, and burnout. Resource constraints, for example, which affect time management, materials delivery, and budget planning, pose major obstacles, all the while demanding highly prudent allocation without operational efficiency taking a hit.
Technology is rapidly expanding into all spheres of life, and this is especially true of industries. In the property management sector, for instance, one is surrounded by disruptive technology which is improving ‘quality of life’ for not only property and facility managers but also tenants.
The property and real estate sector has traditionally been associated with stacks of paperwork, manual documentation, and physical blueprints. However, all that is changing quickly as the idea of paperless building operations is steadily gaining momentum.
If we go back a few years, the property management sector was a bit slow to adopt new changes, especially those revolving around technology and automation. But in the present day, it has taken a dramatic step forward.
In a 2021 survey where 2,000 UK adults were surveyed who had rented a home over the last 5 years – 66% of them had experienced some kind of disrepair issue, while 26% of Housing Association Properties tenants were not happy with the quality of repair and maintenance during their stay.
Everyone wants nothing more than to have secure, safe, and decent housing. Unfortunately, the housing supply in the UK has been unable to keep up with the surge in demand over the last couple of years. This has made accessing housing of any kind rather difficult for individuals and families alike, especially those from low-income households.
Tenant experience is an important metric to understand when it comes to property and facilities management – it describes how your tenants interact with the properties they live in. The quality of these interactions along with the amenities you offer can have a major impact on your ROI.
If you recall the government’s 2019 election manifestos, all the main parties committed to boost housing supply in England. The Conservative manifesto, in fact, pledged that the number of homes being built will continue to increase, targeting at least 300,000 affordable homes by the middle of 2020.
The property management industry has been traditionally shy and somewhat hesitant to embrace new technological trends. The word “automation” would make everyone from real estate agents to property managers cringe with disapproval – as if impending doom and job insecurity was right around the corner.
Data standardisation refers to using consistent methods for collecting data, although this is a very basic and somewhat generic description of what it truly is. If we delve in deeper, data standardisation is the process used for transforming data to fit a constrained and predefined set of values – ultimately, relying on uniformity to improve efficiencies.
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