Innovation In Facilities Management

Primary function of Facilities Management is to provide strategic management advice on the efficient operation of buildings and the minimisation of life cycle and operational costs. Besides that, it also responsible for ensuring that services are delivered in order to contribute to the better productivity and profitability of the occupants’ businesses. The range of services provided by facilities management firms relate mainly to the operation of a building such as repairs and maintenance, security and cleaning and also technical services requiring skilled personnel. Services are an important part of economic activities and employment in the developed countries, and involve a significant share of innovative effort (OECD, 2005). Among services,

(2001) Innovation is the development and successful implementation of a new or improved product, service, technology, work process or market condition, directed towards gaining a competitive advantage

Gemuenden (2003) Innovation is a process, involving multiple activities, performed by multiple actors from one or several organizations, during which new combinations of means and/or ends, which are new for a creating and/or adopting unit, are developed and/or produced and/or implemented and/or transferred to old and/or new market-partners.

Whittaker M. (2014) Innovation in facilities management is the introduction of a new product or process, which delivers tangible and measureable benefits, in terms of operational cost reductions, increased efficiency and optimising building usage and performance. It is not merely process improvements

Innovation processes in service firms have been often characterised as being unsystematic, not science-based (Sundbo and Gallouj, 2000) and often resulting into ad-hoc innovations that are not anchored into a strategic plan (Gallouj and Weinstein, 1997). Recent literature, however, has showed that innovation activities in service firms are starting being strategically planned and organized (Sundbo, 1997). Furthermore, the process of innovation, both in manufacturing and service firms, is shifting from being closed, mainly internal to the firm, to being open and involving a range of external players distributed up and down the supply

These include both in-house client based innovations and third party innovations. Cardellino and Finch (2006) found that FM organizations in UK are highly active with service innovations, but that these are generally one time commitments. They also found that primary determinants for the success of an innovation in FM organizations were the awareness of the external market, the development process and the firm’s strategic and business