Career Guidance – Facility Manager

What is a Senior Facility Manager?

A senior facilities manager is the person in charge of all facilities management in a given building. These buildings range from offices, to factories, art centers, museums, or even apartment buildings. Any place that exists as a facility, there by most buildings, require regular upkeep and organization. The person, or team, tasked with making sure all aspects of the building are running smoothly, from the technology to the meeting rooms is the facility management.

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What is Facilities Management?

Facilities management is, as the name implies, involved in the daily operations of an organization’s building. Though just because it relates to the physical building, this industry is incredibly interdisciplinary, and focuses on the logistical and human side of buildings rather than the construction itself. As facilities management relates not the physical upkeep of the building, but the overarching protocol, staff, and budgeting that allows for the physical upkeep, as well as the general maintenance of all aspects of the building. Facilities managers are the organizational backbone of property management.

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Facilities Management vs Facilities Maintenance

Though facilities management is directly related to facilities maintenance, they do involve different skills sets. Ultimately, facilities management is an aspect of facilities maintenance. The other side to the facilities maintenance coin is the role of technicians in management. While a facilities manager will delegate roles and jobs of upkeep, technicians are the ones that perform it. Upkeep.com illustrates this variation using an example of an Amazon distribution center: the facilities manager at a given center might notice a problem with one of the forklifts, they then delegate a technician to fix the given forklift. While the facilities manager will have brought in the staff and is in charge of ensuring the smooth operations of all forklifts at the center, the technician then does the actual fixing. Facilities maintenance is the practice of facilities management completely as both a broad overview of ensuring the smooth running of a given building, and the technical fixing and updating practice done by technicians.

So, what does facilities maintenance do? It generally maintains and increases the value of a building through organizing all staff, technicians, budgeting, and fixing the tools that are necessary for the functioning of a building, whether it be an office, a factory, or other space.

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Facilities Management vs Property Management

Another common type of facilities management is property management, which everyone who’s ever lived in an apartment building is familiar with. Despite the emails or notices one may see from a property manager, what actually is property management? The property manager of a building is essentially the same as the facilities manager of a factory or office building, but specifically related to the needs of a residential building.

Property management also tends to deal with the ownership of the building itself, more than a classical facilities manager would. In the case of managing an office or a distribution center, the focus is more on making sure the goings-on of that building work, and work well. A property manager has this task, but also focuses on the ownership of the building itself. Property management deals heavily with the buying and selling of the properties themselves, whereas the facilities management deals more heavily with the workings of a given property.

While they both function as to ensure the daily running of a building and all that goes into it, a facility manager deals far less with the buying and selling of the building or others than the property manager would.

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Is Facilities Management For You?

Facilities management is a complex role that deals with many differing aspects to building maintenance. It is more than the physical maintenance, in that it is also responsible for varying personal matters, in terms of staffing, budgeting matters, in payment and costs of renovation, costs of maintenance, etc. As times change, the role of facilities manager is also changing towards a more service and people-centered career path, rather than just in the organizational manner. Though, of course, strong organizational skills are necessary, recruiters like Hall Recruitment are requested by employers to favor candidates with strong people skills and customer service experience.
Think of it this way: in the field of facilities management, there are a number of potential roles and duties one must fulfill. On top of the expected duties like staffing, and organizing maintenance of the building itself, a facilities manager also deals with events, and legal issues. Events that occur in the facility are run usually through the facilities manager themselves, and therefore are in charge or organizing and ensuring everything runs smoothly. Similarly, legal skills can be incredibly useful to a facilities manager in handling the regulations and standards for a building, and a facilities manager must be aware and align with these regulations. A huge part of the role itself is in ensuring these regulations are met.

Essential Skills for a Facility Manager:

• Organization
• Adaptability
• Leadership
• Open to technology and new ideas.

Ultimately, facilities management is a huge job with many moving parts, and to thrive in this role, one must be able to switch from a variety of duties, from legal issues, to sending a technician out, to organizing various meeting rooms and schedules all in one day.

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Irish Facilities Management

If you think that facilities management in any of its variation, facilities maintenance, or property management are for you, there are a number of ways to break into facilities management companies in Ireland. There are a few ways to do this, including something as simple as looking up facilities manager roles on any job posting board, or going through a company like Hall Recruitment who specialize in the many facets of careers of facilities management.

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Job Opportunities in Facilities Management

For our latest job opportunities in Facilities Management & Facilities Manager jobs in Ireland please click here.