The job is to stop problems becoming bigger problems

Reactive work is part of FM and always will be. Response times matter and clients quite rightly expect their contractors to act quickly when something goes wrong.

But, for me, the real value of a good FM company is what happens before the phone rings.

Planned preventative maintenance should not just be an engineer turning up, ticking a box and leaving. The engineer should know the building and understand what they are looking at. If a piece of equipment is starting to fail, if something keeps coming back with the same fault, or if an asset is clearly getting towards the end of its life, that information is useful.

Sometimes a five-minute conversation with a client can be more valuable than a long report that nobody reads.

You need to know the building

One thing I have always pushed within Clermont is the importance of knowing the buildings we look after. Not just having an asset list on a system, but actually understanding how the building works.

Every building is different. Every client is different. The priorities in a busy City office will not necessarily be the same as those in a residential block or a mixed-use property.

That is why I do not think FM should simply come down to a price per visit or a number of engineer days. Obviously cost matters, particularly in the current market, but there has to be some value behind the number.

A good FM partner should be able to tell a client what is happening in their building, what needs attention, what can wait and where money is likely to need to be spent in the future.

Communication is still a big part of the job

We have all the technology now. CAFM systems, mobile reporting, asset registers, digital PPM records and plenty of other tools. They are useful, but none of them replace good communication.

I think clients generally want three simple things from their FM provider: tell me what happened, tell me why it matters and tell me what you recommend doing about it.

It sounds obvious, but sometimes the industry makes things more complicated than they need to be.

If an engineer finds a problem, the client needs to understand it. If a contractor recommends replacing something, the client should understand why. And if something does not need doing immediately, they should be told that too.

That honesty is important. It builds trust, and trust is a big part of any successful FM relationship.

Taking ownership

As Clermont has grown, one of the things I have become even more conscious of is ownership.

Clients should not have to spend their day chasing contractors for updates. They should not have to ask three people who is dealing with a problem.

That does not mean every problem can be fixed straight away. There are budgets, lead times, access issues, specialist contractors and sometimes things that are simply outside anybody's control.

But someone should own the issue and keep it moving.

For me, that is what good operations is about. When something goes wrong, the first question should not be 'whose fault is it?' It should be 'what are we going to do about it?'

FM has a bigger role to play

I think there is a real opportunity for FM to have a bigger voice in property management.

FM teams are often the people closest to the building. They see the plant rooms, the pumps, the air-conditioning, the doors, the roofs, the electrical systems and all the little things that can become big things if they are ignored.

That knowledge should feed into wider decisions about capital expenditure, asset replacement, compliance, risk and the general running of the property.

Rather than simply saying that something has failed, we should be asking why it failed and whether there is a bigger issue behind it.

Rather than simply completing a maintenance visit, we should be asking whether the maintenance strategy is still right for the building.

People still matter

There is a lot of talk about technology and AI at the moment, and I can see the benefits. But FM is still a people business.

Engineers, facilities managers, property managers, managing agents, contractors and specialist suppliers all need to work together.

The best buildings I have worked on are the ones where everyone understands that they are on the same side. The client wants a well-run building. The FM company wants to deliver it. The engineer wants to do a good job. That should not be complicated.

At Clermont, we have grown quickly and that is something I want us to keep hold of. Growth is important, but it cannot come at the expense of service. The bigger you get, the more important it becomes to keep accountability and communication at the centre of what you do.

It is about more than fixing things

I think the future of facilities management is about moving away from the idea that FM is simply the company you call when something breaks.

The good FM companies should be helping clients understand their buildings better, plan ahead and avoid unnecessary problems.

That does not always mean spending more money. Sometimes it means spending money in the right place. Sometimes it means replacing something before it becomes an emergency. Sometimes it means doing nothing until there is a genuine need to act.

Ultimately, good FM should make a building safer, more reliable and easier to manage.

And if we are doing that properly, the best work we do might be the work that nobody ever notices.

By Joe Price, Operations Director, Clermont Facilities and Building Services