Australia
FM Action Agenda: a five year mission
By Stephen Ballesty, Trustee, IFMA Foundation; Immediate Past Chairman, FMA Australia; Deputy Chairman, FM Action Agenda; FM Exemplar Project Leader; and Managing Director | Advisory, Rider Levett Bucknall
 The Facilities Management (FM) Action Agenda resulted from FMA Australia’s advocacy efforts in late 2003. We demonstrated to the Australian Government that FM was a key integrator across a range of professions and services throughout the lifecycle of crucial infrastructure. During 2004 our strategic plan entitled ‘Managing the Built Environment’ (2005) was developed. This set out a 20 point action plan to improve the recognition of FM as the foremost contributor to a productive and sustainable Built Environment through improved innovation, education and regulatory reform.
Now in 2008, our third and concluding year of the FM Action Agenda’s implementation phase, significant progress has been made on initiatives across the Innovation, Education, Regulatory Reform and Sustainability platforms. The FM Action Agenda has not only enhanced FM’s recognition locally in Australia with some 40 presentations to date, but has reached out globally via downloads, articles and conferences in Asia, Europe and North America including status reports at IFMA’s World Workplace 2006 and 2007.
FM Exemplar Project: Sydney Opera House
The FM Exemplar Project: Sydney Opera House was initiated by the FM Action Agenda and undertaken by the CRC for Construction Innovation with industry partners to demonstrate the strategic importance of FM and gain a better understanding of best practice.
Sydney Opera House, as Australia’s most famous landmark and one of the world’s most recognisable icons and busiest performing arts centers, provided us with an excellent opportunity to explore some unique FM challenges some unique challenges. Some 23 participants from 10 organisations worked for 18 months, focusing on three FM research streams of Digital Modelling, Services Procurement and Performance Benchmarking, and making progress towards an integrated FM framework. This was demonstrated in the final research summary report entitled ‘FM as a business enabler’ published in February 2007. This was followed by a second publication in April focused on the Digital Modelling outputs entitled ‘Adopting BIM for facilities management’.
The FM Exemplar Project supported the FM Action Agenda in promoting the benefits of improved and integrated information systems, service delivery and performance benchmarking for the benefit of FM industry stakeholders and ultimately the community.
Moving Forward
The FM Action Agenda’s implementation phase will officially be completed the end of June this year, and its initiatives and legacy will pass to FMA Australia. The FM Action Agenda’s next update will be presented on May 14 in Sacramento at IFMA’s California Sustainability Mayday 2008 and its final achievements and conclusions on October 16 in Dallas at IFMA’s World Workplace 2008.
Construction Innovation is a national research, development and implementation centre focussed on the needs of the property, design, construction and facility management sectors. Established in 2001 under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme with headquarters at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, Construction Innovation is developing key technologies, tools and management systems to improve the effectiveness of the property and construction industry. Through its active industry diffusion program of targeted industry seminars and publications, Construction Innovation is bringing the outcomes of our applied research into industry practice.
http://www.construction-innovation.info/index.php?id=44
|
