Frank and Brown

Today I wearing an FM hat, not a PR one, and talking about IT and sustainability. IT is a much maligned discipline. It gets flak, but we need it if we’re going to address climate change and have dynamic carbon neutral work spaces, but in the past two weeks I have been exposed to two different opinions about IT. 

I put together an article for one client about the change in the work place as a result of the economic pressures of the past eighteen months. Far from being a driver of innovative design and creating dynamic workspace, IT was picked out as an inhibitor of change, not an ‘enabler’ in the FM jargon. (more…)

Managing a magazine is always a bit odd as you’re working at least one month ahead.  The January/February edition of FMX has just been signed off, and the digital edition went live, http://bit.ly/4OYtNV, today, and some of the content might already be out of date. But the arguments and themes we champion in the magazine are still current and unlikely to go away any time soon.

In my leader column I comment that 2010 is going to be tough. We will probably see a Conservative administration, albeit with a small majority, and we might witness the dawn of a new era of austerity that probably won’t be all that different from now. Everyone is going to be urged to tighten their belts. One thing we can all do to economise is be more efficient about the energy we use – at work, at home and in the schools, hospitals and what ever other facility we might enjoy the benefit of.  This is a key theme in FMX, and across the whole of the facilities management industry, because FMs are going to be the people that help everyone make the buildings and facilities in the UK become more efficient. (more…)