The Environment Management Maturity Model …

1 4 Thomas Madritsch1, Matthias Ebinger2 performance measurement in Facility ManagementThe Environment Management Maturity Model bem3 performance appraisal in businesses has often traditionallybeen associated with accounting and the financial successof the organization. Historically, the functions of FacilityManagement and Real Estate (FM/RE) tended to belongthere too. FM/RE activities were measured on the basis ofoperational efficiency, such as operational and maintenancecosts per m? However, in the past few years the perceptionof the added value of facility Management and the realestate function has changed.

2 The focus is no longerexclusively placed on cost savings for the company and theperception of FM/RE as a cost centre, but increasinglyattention is paid to the added value that FM/RE provides tothe organization as a strategic function on its own goal of this research project was the development andpractical implementation of a Maturity measurement tool toreview an organization's FM capability to generate strategicvalue. The paper summarizes the findings of an exploratoryresearch study of over 50 firms in US and Europe.

3 Usingthe principles of the "Capability Maturity Model ", which inturn draws from the premises of Quality Management , theteam developed a process Model and overlaid it with amaturity assessment tool. The resulting "Built EnvironmentManagement Maturity Model " ( bem3 ) enables FMdepartments to professionalize Facility Managementfunctions, by highlighting the strategic value of FM/REprocesses, and by identifying potentials to raise theefficiency of organizational processes.<M10<Built Environment Management <Facility Management <Organizational Maturity measurement <PerformanceMeasurementOrgani zations can look at their real property portfolio fromtwo perspectives.

4 On the one side, real property land andimprovements is considered a cost center, drainingresources from the organization s core business. Facilitiesmanagers in organizations with this perspective must justifyand defend the level of expenses associated with realproperty. After all, these expenses constitute in mostorganizations the second largest expense category. On theother side, real property is understood to be a capital asset,an investment that contributes directly to the vision andmission of the organization.

5 This second perspectivesconsiders facilities Management to be more than just a costcenter, but an important function delivering strategic valueto the organization (Madritsch, 2009a). Facility manage ment activities are part of the value chain and are associatedwith critical success factors of the core business. Thisperspective focuses on the return on investment from itsfixed assets, it ensures that buildings are constructed orleased to further organizational goals and it strives to providean optimal Environment within which the highest productivityis of Applied Sciences FH Kufstein Tirol & University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology UMIT, AUSTRIA2 Pratt Institute, New York City & New York Presbyterian Hospital, Facilities & Real Estate.

6 USAC omprehensive assessment tools to visualize and bench mark the added value of FM performance are emerging, butare still fragmented and limited. Facilities Management andreal estate associations, as well as academicians havepublished and continue to work on models and definitionsthat could fill this gap. The International Facilities Manage ment Organization provides a knowledge based FM frame work that is organized around eleven core competencies(IFMA 2010) and publishes comprehensive benchmarkingsurveys. The new European FM standard contains a set ofdefinitions focusing on service delivery, quality manage ment, process development and space and cost standard ization (EN15221, 2006 2009).

7 The Institute of AssetManagement (2008) organizes relevant knowledge in itsrecently published Competency Framework . The Associ ation of Physical Plant Administrators (APPA), serving theneeds of institutions in higher Education, offers a body ofknowledge with four core competencies and manages acomprehensive database of comparative performancemetrics (APPA, 2010). The National Research Councilproposes a comprehensive, multidimensional Frameworkfor Facilities Asset Management (NRC 2004). Multiple otherprofessional organizations, such as BIFM, EuroFM, FMA,IREM, CoreNet or ASHE, to name just a few, produce oftenextensive FM/RE knowledge, in most cases as directresponses to the specific business needs of their members(Then 2004).

8 The academic world also has made importantcontributions to the discussion of how to leverage the FMfunction as a strategic resource. Chotipanich and Nuttdeveloped an inventory of FM functions and assessed howto best position these functions within an organizationalcontext to generate strategic value (Chotipanich, 2004;Chotipanich and Nutt, 2008). Then (1999, 2004) proposesa set of integration models and process sequences tofacilitate the alignment of facilities demand and (2003) borrows the concept of portfolio managementto develop an FM Model that can effectively respond to fastchanging corporate environments.

9 Dettbarn et. al. (2005)introduces the concept of Key Process Areas and ProcessMaturity, borrowed from Capability Maturity Models, todefine a Model that integrates the strategic, operational,and tactical aspects of managing real property portfolios .The need for a concise conceptual framework, that couldoutline in a simple, yet comprehensive manner the manage ment functions related to the built Environment and, evenmore important, how these functions generate specific valuefor the larger organizational context, is becoming increas ingly apparent.

10 Then formulated already in 1999 the needfor strategic business planning to incorporate and, indeed,integrate the facilities dimensions of business delivery . In2004, the US Government identified the Management of itsreal property as a high risk area , and called for a frameworkto overhaul real property business practices (Teicholz etal. 2005). Dettbarn et al. (2005) identified the need tointegrate the strategic, operational, and tactical aspects 2, 20115managing real property portfolios to increase the perfor mance of the real property function in supporting theorganization s mission.