Managing Change In Facilities Organizations: Strategic Approaches To Workforce Alignment

Federal agencies and other organizations are changing the way they deliver, manage, and value facilities. Public and private sector facilities management groups that once focused on managing individual buildings and projects are making the transition to becoming asset management driven organizations – managing real estate as a group of properties in order to achieve greater organizational and financial benefits. Success in making this transition, however, is threatened by a potential personnel crisis: facilities organizations may not have enough people with the appropriate mix of technical and managerial skills to manage their assets. Years of downsizing, outsourcing, failure to recruit younger staff, and cutbacks in training have resulted in smaller organizations, with aging workforces, the loss of institutional memory, and loss of technical skills. A new focus on asset management will require new skills, particularly financial, that may not be currently available. In this environment, there is an immediate need for organizations to identify their core skills and competencies and find strategic approaches to aligning their workforces in order to fulfill future requirements.

On April 3, 2002, the Federal Facilities Council (FFC) sponsored a forum to identify: (1) trends affecting facilities management organizations; (2) the skills and core competencies needed for effective asset management; (3) strategic approaches to aligning workforces to successfully carry out new management responsibilities. The seminar agenda, the presentation slides, and speaker biographies follow. Please note that all of the materials are in pdf format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Agenda with speaker presentations (in PDF format)

Speakers’ biographies