The FM sector itself was identified in the Real Estate Industry Transformation Map (REITM) as requiring transformation to enhance service delivery and uplift the industry. The Tripartite Facilities Management Implementation Committee (FMIC) set a goal is to advance the FM industry from a labour intensive industry to a productive one leveraging on data analytics, predictive maintenance and smart solutions. Two industry level challenges identified by SPs to achieve these goals viz. Building owners rely on headcount-based procurement practices and offer short contracts that do not reward innovation and quality FM service’, and ‘Lack of authoritative standards to guide FM service delivery’.

OB FM Service Procurement will help resolve some of the challenges identified. Such contracts will require SB to specify standards of service delivery and as far as possible objective measurable service outcomes for evaluating service performance, leaving the SP to decide how to plan and resource the work to achieve the specified outcome. They are also of longer term duration with incentives for enhanced performance outcomes beyond the specified outcomes. A small number of enlightened SBs have started the OB procurement journey, adoption on a wider scale is needed to realise the FM transformation journey.

To initiate OB outsourcing of Facilities Hard Services (Maintenance, Repairs & Replacements), SBs will first need to establish their needs. This has to be done holistically by linking property assets contribution to organisational mission, and the support services required to realize this mission. Central to this is the need to identify property attributes, the nature, type and level/standard of facilities maintenance services which yield value add outcomes contributing to productivity and competitiveness of the organisation, and metrics and key performance indicators to measure and track outcomes of the maintenance processes delivered by Service Providers (SP). OB service outcomes requirements should equally apply to services delivered by in-house teams (in sourced teams).

Rather than wage a ‘price war’, SPs should ride the OB outsourcing wave by attempting to understand SB’s organisational and business needs and constraints, attributes of their property/properties and facilities maintenance requirements and strive to innovate to deliver cost effective value-add services for the rewards invariably incorporated with such contracts.