As per Ibis World, 2020:
- The global Facilities Management Market, valued at nearly 1.19 billion in 2018, it is projected to reach more than 1.74 trillion by the end of 2026, exhibiting a CAGR of 4.9%. (Market Watch, April 2020)
- The Industrial Cleaning Activities industry is one of the few that will likely benefit from the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.
- Entities operating in environments prone to contamination (e.g. hospitals, schools, public venues, commercial premises) have been advised by the government to hire professional sanitation and decontamination service firms.
- Demand for industrial cleaning activities, specifically decontamination, will likely spike as the United Kingdom ramps up its efforts to decontaminate environments with a significant health risk.
- Several challenges related to the Pandemic will not be absent in the next months. (Twin FM, April 2020)
Supply Chain Disruption
- FM providers may experience difficulties in procuring materials and supplies.
- The larger FM providers depend on a wide range of smaller, specialist providers, several of whom may find it harder to cope with staff shortages due to self-isolation or illness. Many may experience cash flow problems if other customers are adversely affected.
Staff Well-being
- The current situation will force businesses to think much harder about how to ensure employee wellbeing, including what to do about staff shortages caused by self-isolation or illness, and strain on the critical response, IT and HR teams, as well frontline staff such as cleaners, porters, security and catering staff.
- Corporate policies may need to be adapted to ensure best hygiene practices or restrict non-essential business travel, as well as to provide additional support for more vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women or staff with underlying health issues.
Relationship Management & Renegotiation with clients
- FM providers need to work closely with their customers. The agreement should be reached (and documented) before steps are taken to implement preventative measures which may affect staff and visitors, such as temperature checking and screening.
- In circumstances where customers are amid a re-tender or renegotiation of outsourced FM services, the various parties may need to work together to consider and – where required – extend contract terms as more time may be necessary to bring matters to a close.
Understanding Contractual Issues
- Where cleaning is concerned the environments may again require upgraded hygiene standards, e.g. food preparation areas, cleaning rooms and laboratories, and manufacturing plants compared with other facilities such as offices, trading floors and data centres.
- Understanding the nature of the contractual duties and obligations owed to the customer will be important in determining the FM provider’s basic day-to-day obligations at an operational level. Other factors include reporting and governance and ensuring that additional customer requests, like deep cleansing or mothballing of space, are properly managed under change control.
Business development and networking
- Businesses will miss out on the deals done and lead generation at events and will need to figure out other ways of filling their pipelines.
Other issues need to be considered:
- The availability of insurance.
- Problems with bringing in staff from overseas.
- The well-being of cleaning staff undertaking deep cleansing operations.
- Customers that become more open-minded when considering innovative solutions such as robot cleaners.