Feature FM and BIM

close the gap between hard FM and corporate real estate advice.

And while BIM is a likely to be an

important integrator, Ross Agnew, director in KPMG’s asset management advisory team, points out that it is also part of a wider trend in the property sector encouraging clients towards whole-life decision-making – an approach that has been promoted by the ISO 55000 FM standard launched last year.

>business and other activities such as

roads construction in “support services” divisions. But Kier’s interim results, for instance, show that margins in the services division stand at 4.2% compared to 2.1% in construction, while Carillion says that it provides FM services to 150,000 buildings in the UK, Canada and Middle East. Recently it won sole provider status on a new £1.5bn Scape FM framework. But FM is a rapidly maturing industry,

“Historically the data handed over to FM has never been formally verifi ed. Now it will be, so we ought to be able to de-risk the process for the client” Kath Fontana, BAM

barely older than the concept of BIM itself. The market is undergoing considerable consolidation, polarising into multibillion- pound turnover “total FM” providers such as Interserve, Sodexo or ISS, with smaller specialist or regional players at the other end and very few in the middle ground. The biggest are steadily acquiring smaller companies to add new services or clients, and expanding into higher value business outsourcing activities or new “soft” services such as employee wellbeing. Others are expanding into FM

from other angles. Leading property consultancy CBRE bought technical services fi rm Norland last year and is now negotiating to buy Johnson Controls’ global FM and energy business, which would give it much greater scale and

22 | APRIL 2015 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER

“There’s a fundamental shift in the marketplace that’s been going on for a couple of years,” he says. “The majority of the bigger property-owning organisations have started to make life-cycle cost decisions aligned to business outcomes, working across the asset life cycle rather than just taking decisions at construction or maintenance stage.” There may be different drivers for organisations in the public and private sectors – budget cuts or profi t – but the result is the same. On the other hand, CBRE's Smith believes there remains a major divide between those responsible for capital and operational expenditure. “The gap is closing, but I think it will take legislation. For organisations that take whole

buildings, cost is a real issue and they’re looking to do anything to reduce costs. But the vast majority of UK occupiers are in 10,000sq ft or less – that’s 75% of the market in multilet buildings - and integrating FM is much tougher for them.” And new buildings account for a very small proportion of the built estate.

Integration or independence The view from Steve Davies, who just joined Kier as managing director of its FM business, moving from FM giant Compass Group, is that there’s certainly a rationale for more joined-up solutions. “I think we are uniquely positioned – we can go to a client with a fully integrated, cost-effective solution to build an asset and look after it. As long as you can provide best value, why wouldn’t you? The FM aspect of a building is actually very small, but energy costs are a huge number in a corporate real estate director’s budget. So if you can deliver, say, an energy solution as well, the opportunities are huge. FM has evolved over time as companies add more and more service lines – I can see the construction side asn an extension of that,” he says.