The Facility Management Pie – Scope and Responsibility

Facility Management Pie - Roles and Responsibilities

Unlike some professions, Facility Management encompasses many different roles and skills. Not everyone in the facility or property management profession are responsible for all of these roles. Some are responsible for specific functions as specialists, others are responsible for everything while some oversee all these roles through other specialists.

Regardless, it’s important to have a working knowledge of each one so you can effectively deal with your colleagues, manage staff or interface with external resources. A pie-shaped diagram is the easiest way to represent the broad responsibilites in the Facility Management Profession since FM includes so many different skills and responsibilities.

This FM Pie has been very popular with FM’s around the world. It has been translated to Czech and Russian so far. For the Russian version, visit the Russian International Education Centre of Facility Management. For the Czech version, visit the Czech Chapter of IFMA.

If you want to translate it to your native language, please contact me for the source graphic.

(A larger version of the FM Pie is provided below along with a download link. A mouse pad is also available.)

This Pie Graph, which comes directly from the book “Managing Facilities & Real Estate” , shows the full range of Facility Management responsibilities.

You could categorize them or subdivide them differently, but the fundamental responsibilities are all within this diagram. Depending on your role, you may be responsible for all these elements or just a few. You may also oversee them all, but have other experts on your team who focus on a specific aspect of the role. Some of these specific areas are actually represented by their own professions when performed as a distinct, separate role. For instance, a portion of the Pie covers both Commercial Property Management and Project Management. The Facility Management profession actually encompasses both of those functions.

From this, you can see that it is impossible for any given FM to have all the knowledge and skills to perform all the roles that are frequently expected of them. In addition, many of the responsibilities are non-technical, and they are in fact increasingly becoming strategic in nature. That’s why a Facility Manager has to rely on other experts, whether on their staff or as contractors and consultants. The profession of Facility Management isn’t just about the person with the Facility Manager title – it’s also about the large supporting cast of specialists, experts and other professionals.

Facility Management Scope

The Facility Manager’s most useful skills are Management & Leadership related – particularly the ability to develop strategy, communicate, lead and manage resources. The top FM’s in any large company rose to their level because of those skills.

The issue of scope and responsibility is further expanded when you consider typical portfolios, which can range from a single building to a regional or national portfolio and even an international portfolio of properties. Like many other profession, the larger the scope, the more people involved at different levels. Where a smaller property may have a single Facility Manager, a large portfolio may have a Vice President, Facilities, with several hundred staff under them.

Get your free full-size PDF version of the FM Pie.

To get your copy of the graphic, simply fill in the form below. We’ve had almost 1000 downloads to-date.

You’ll receive an email with the download link. Be sure to check your inbox and if you don’t see it, check your spam or junk folder. We’ll also automatically add you to our mailing list.

Now Available as a Mouse Pad

FM Pie This is a Mouse Pad with the FM Pie graphic on it. It’s 7.5″ diameter round super thin mouse pad with a hard surface and non-slip backing. Price includes shipping via letter mail. Limited quantity available.

Facility Management Pie - Roles and Responsibilities

Now Available! “Managing Facilities & Real Estate : 50 Strategies, approaches and Leading Practices”
It comes in either a Soft Cover or Hard Cover version.
Order your copy today direct from the Author.

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Tags: FM Pie, leasing, management, portfolio, projects, real estate, responsibility, roles, scale, scope

Comments

Posted On

Jun 06, 2011

Posted By

Linda

Michel,
Great job on this. Thanks for sharing this on LinkedIn as well. I am sure many appreciate this great visual. Who does not like a great pie chart!! Hope your summer is going well too.
Thanks,
Linda

Posted On

Jun 10, 2011

Posted By

Michel

I’m curious to know how budget allocation for FM stacks up against this pie chart.

Cheers,

Michael

Posted On

Jun 12, 2011

Posted By

Michel Theriault

Michael, that’s not an easy thing. First, it depends way too much on the scope, size of portfolio and more, second, benchmarking info available (i.e. IFMA, APPA, BOMA and many others) typically doesn’t capture many of these things or capture them in a way that you can compare them. Some responsibilities don’t have much of a cost associated with them, even if they take lots of effort, or the budgets are held by others.

Posted On

Jun 23, 2011

Posted By

Fred Kloet

What a great invention. If you connect the copyright remark with the graph you could spread it around without risk. I think it is important the world gets to see this pie more.

Posted On

Jul 06, 2011

Posted By

David Cocozza

Hi Michel,

Great post, certainly puts in perspective how an FM role is so complex and crucial to business success, thanks for sharing!

Best Regards,

David

Posted On

Aug 05, 2011

Posted By

Timo Lähdesmäki

If I had only know about the complexity before taking on my previous position as an integrated property services manager. I come from security background, with reasonable experience in managing security officers and security related issues. As a facility manager, I failed miserably after the first six months, left my employer and started my own business. I’m happy where I am right now, but the failure was a tough experience.

One needs to have a working knowledge on a vast variety of issues in order to become a successfull FM, or “integrated property services manager”.

Timo – Finland