Facility management

In business, facility management is the management of buildings and services. The services are sometimes considered to be divided into "hard services" and "soft services"; hard services includes such things as ensuring that a building's air conditioning is operating efficiently, reliably, safely and legally; soft services includes such things as ensuring that the building is cleaned properly and regularly or monitoring the performance of contractors (e. g. builders, electricians). The term "facility management" is similar to "property management" but often applied only to larger and/or commercial properties where the management and operation is more complex.

It is the role of facility management to ensure that everything is available and operating properly for building occupants to do their work. Facility Management Solutions. Facility management may range from the small scale (e. g. single small building custodial services) to the large scale (such as Johnson Controls' operation of Chrysler manufacturing) or even on an international scale (e. g. global service provision to a multinational corporation). Some facility management companies (e. Software Facility Management. g. Regus, evoma) have grown to simply provide environments which other organisations may rent on demand in order to do business in a 'hotel' environment.

In the UK and other European countries facilities management has a wider definition than simply the management of buildings and services. For example the BIFM's definition is:

'Facilities management is the integration of multi-disciplinary activities within the built environment and the management of their impact upon people and the workplace'.

In Australia, the term Commercial Services has replaced Facilities management in some organisations.