The Economic Case for Early Adoption of Facilities Management

The construction industry in Ireland has been the sector hit the hardest during the recession with a potential return to output volumes of the mid-1990s. In order to compete within this struggling construction sector the traditional way of doing business must be re-engineered. One of the ways to achieve this is by introducing the Facilities Management (FM) process much earlier into the construction process, in order to maximize long term sustainability, and above all whole life construction costs. This paper will focus on a recently constructed sports clinic in Dublin, in which an aggressive programme was introduced around energy management savings.The data collation methodology included in depth structured interviews with members of the Architectural/ Engineering/Construction and Facilities Management (AEC /FM) teams involved in the original construction and current operation of this building. There was also additional data collected and analyzed through the use of a questionnaire survey distributed to a number of senior academics and professionals within the AEC / FM sector, in order to triangulate all the research findings. The research findings strongly advocate that the FM process should be applied as a business strategy throughout the design and construction stage, so as to reduce possible sustainability impacts and life cycle costs. This approach could potentially maximise the usability of the structure and ensure that criteria that are usually overlooked at construction are properly addressed at the outset of a project.