As the pace of change continues to increase, Mark Wilcock looks ahead to a time when the PFI terms mature and tells us to use all that we know now when preparing for what’s next
05 May 2006
It is often asked where FM will be in the next five, 10 or even 25 years. I would argue that it is impossible to accurately predict a position to which we as FMs can work to, there are just too many possible variables: greater scarcity of gas and oil; more use of ‘alternative’ fuels; technology across all walks of life; short-termism driven more and more by technical advances and politics; carbon taxing and other myriad environmental policies and goals; security and terrorism; building designs changing to reflect the above; and FM budgets falling as operating costs rise.
However, what we should be doing is working with the finance, HR and operational directors to ensure that we can collectively have an input on shaping the working environment to reflect the image, culture and professionalism of the business in an efficient, value-for money, staff/user-friendly and compliant manner.
This got me thinking about PFI projects that generally last for 25 years. It is within these projects that we can really stamp our FM ‘personality’. We can assist in the whole life-cycle and particularly the design and operation of highly flexible buildings for the future that are easy to manage and complete with appropriate building and facilities management systems that truly add value and reduce cost from the bottom line.
How will this affect PFIs? Take the case of hospitals: at the moment a PFI is usually for 25 years but as yet no single PFI has matured over a full term in the UK.
So let’s look at this from the contractor’s point of view. After 24 years of operating a hospital will he really be that interested in maintaining the fabric, assets and landscape of the facility? Will the data be fully maintained? Will the key personnel be slowly yet inexorably moved to new and better projects so as not to be lost to Tupe? Indeed what will the contractors attitude be at 20 years when a major asset fails – eg, a boiler. Bodge it and scarper?
Will the assets all be functioning to their optimum given all the changes in building regulations (part L) and carbon taxes? Will the contractor care? Would you want to take over a building that was 25 years old, potentially poorly maintained with outdated assets and technology? The point in the building’s life-cycle will have been reached where some serious investment decisions will need to be made. How good was the original cost model and was it really costed for 25 years or for the full life of the building? This will have driven the contractor’s maintenance strategy.
A hospital designed and built in Victorian times while structurally excellent will be shabby inside and unable to cope with the demands for modern hospital life. Patients are no longer in hospital for weeks or even months. Drugs aid recovery and, MRSA aside, cleanliness and nursing standards are better. Looking at how surgery and technology is currently advancing who is to say that modern hospitals will not be viewed as outdated facilities in 25 years time?
Take this further; surely it would be better to build a modern hospital that will only last for the length of the PFI. Five years before the end of its life the service is retendered. A brand new hospital is built that delivers to modern standards, designed for modern techniques and capable of housing modern technology.
The core of the site, eg reception, nursing homes, stores, laundry facilities (the ‘back-office’), could remain but the wards and theatres (the ‘operational centres’) would be demolished and rebuilt on adjacent land (that had been cunningly purchased and left to lie ‘fallow’ 25 years before). Then in 25 years time the new wards etc will be demolished and rebuilt on the land used 50 years previously.
Modern hospitals, motivated staff, needs driven, technologically advanced and ultimately cost efficient. Contractors know at the outset that they are building in obsolescence on the fabric and assets. Maintenance regimes will be costed accordingly with perhaps little PPM being effected in the final years of the buildings life. New equipment will not need to be shoe-horned in and expensive building refurbishments all but redundant.
Perhaps these are the short term, cost-efficient, IT driven and technically competent, modern contract methods of the future.
Mark Wilcock is an FM consultant for Bucknall Austin
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