“When I started out, facility management (FM) was almost entirely about keeping the building running. Belonging wasn’t in the vocabulary. The job was maintenance schedules, cleaning contracts and making sure the lights stayed on.” This is not just a frank assessment by one of the industry’s senior FM professionals we spoke to for our cover story (pages 20-23), but a soberingly accurate one too.
The theme for this year’s World FM Day is ‘Cultivating belonging through built environments’, and the idea of doing so is a conversation that began in earnest only around five years ago. In the wake of the pandemic, when attrition rates soared across sectors, people who changed careers sought more meaningful opportunities. A facilities lead today isn’t just making sure their team hits operational KPIs, but is equally concerned about the team caring more deeply about their work. There is a deliberate effort to recognise individual effort as much as collective action.
With that theme in mind, there are plenty of features in this edition, including a veteran HR professional explaining new company policies that underpin hiring facilities managers today (pages 18-19), as well as a piece that talks about the specific steps required to be taken to drive gender equity in the construction sector (pages 26-27).
In our build-to-rent feature (pages 42-45), we examine new and upcoming projects in the country where thoughtful architecture and shared amenities are designed with the core aim of fostering a sense of community among residents.
Elsewhere in this issue, we look at an Indigenous co-founded and led procurement services company, Murrungar, which aims to bring about a generational change in involving Indigenous communities in the building services industry (pages 14-17).
One of the most popular sections of the magazine remains Meet Your Local FM (pages 48-51). On this occasion, we go behind the scenes to learn what it takes to manage one of Sydney’s premier tourist attractions and commercial spaces – the Sydney Fish Market – which opened earlier this year and is designed to accommodate more than six million visitors annually.
Enjoy the issue.
