How to Assess and Manage FM Risks

How to Assess and Manage Facilities Management risks

Liam Sandford: Are you managing your FM risks? If not, the consequences could be huge. In this video, I interview Ian Giles, Director at NReed, who has over 30 years' experience in the FM industry. In this conversation, Ian shares his knowledge on how to effectively assess and manage risks in your building, how to conduct a condition survey and how to effectively prepare for an FM audit.

Let's jump straight into the interview with Ian.

Welcome Ian Giles to the webinar. So for those in the audience who don't know you, Ian, could you introduce yourself in your own words?

Ian Giles: Thanks, Liam. Yeah. Hello everyone. I'm Ian Giles. I'm a Director at NReed. I'm a chartered engineer and fellow at CIBSE and I sit on several committees and panels within CIBSE, and I've been in and around the FM industry for over 40 years now. So hello everyone.

Liam Sandford: It is amazing. And today, we're going to be discussing how to assess and manage risks within FM. So if anyone does have any questions for Ian, please do put them in the chat. And if we don't answer them today, we'll answer them in a document that we'll send out to you next week. So every question will be answered. And Ian, I wonder to start off, how do you deal with constantly changing legislation and then what impact does that have on keeping your maintenance plans up to date and making sure that any risks that your buildings carry are mitigated or, you know, at least assessed?

Ian Giles: Well, I guess the first thing to sort of really say is how many changes there are in any given year. And that varies obviously, from year to year because some years when things like the tragedy at Grenfell happened, the outcome of that has more impact on legislation and regulation than other years when things don't happen. But typically from experience, there's probably in the order of 200 pieces of legislation, regulation, ACoP, that type of thing that change within any given year. So the size of the problem to keep up to date, it's enormous or you know, it's fairly enormous. And, you know, there are different ways that you can keep up to date.

You can subscribe to things like the HSE and they, you can make it more specific about sort of information that you want when changes happen. You know, within sectors, I mean, major legislation changes normally come out in things like the trade press and people on site or within a site, you know, they would probably be part of a professional body. Now most people would expect that and within your sort of own CPD, you will have the chance to look at, you know, changing legislation. Also parts of the workforce like Gas Safe and NICEIC, they will be helping their members with changes.

But you also, you know, some of these changes with that 200, and that's what it's averaged out over the last five or six years. Within that, some are fairly minimal impacts, some will have impacts on the design, some will have impacts on maintenance. It's a, it is, you know, it is a huge job to keep up with everything. I mean, that's one thing that SFG20 do. And the other thing is you've got to understand what the piece of legislation is and what it's going to impact, what assets you've got. And bearing in mind something if it was like a refrigerant change, that's going to impact on quite a few of your assets potentially. If it was the wiring regs, because again, that's going to have a fairly large impact where some, you, you can spend hours and hours and hours looking through British standards, through your British standards to find out what's happening. But you know, the worry is that you miss something. So certainly, you know, SFG20 certainly helps you out in that department.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. And you know, you mentioned that some of these changes are so significant that almost it might, you know, knock you off course or it could, you know, cause you to need to manage risks in a slightly different way. So if you think about the specific risks that are associated with any change, like what's the mindset there when you are looking at, okay, here's a change that's come in and here's a risk that I have associated with that. How do you think about managing that to change the processes that you've got to ensure that you are managing that risk correctly?

Ian Giles: Well, I think you need to know what it is that we're talking about. So, you know, if it was something that's not going to impact on safety of the building or safety of the people within the building, then you know, it comes obviously further down the line where if it's something, you know, like with the Building Safety Act, then it's something that's, you know, it affects every building, let alone high-rise buildings, any building. And you've got to be sure that you are following what that new legislation or regulation is saying. You've got to be able to prove that you're doing it. You know? So whether that is in terms of the actions you are taking, the testing regime that you are undertaking and the way that you document that you've been doing it, or that within the risk assessment that you undertake, because there could be some things.

I was talking to a client this morning, we were talking about showers of all things and you know, the fact of how they could or couldn't afford to descale shower heads. And of course, you know, it does make a difference. It's a simple little one to some extent, but it does make a difference if you're in a soft or hard water area. And I think it's all of these things. It's doing the risk assessment and doing the risk assessment, make it personal to your business because you can do standard risk assessments, but actually if you are in the business of security and you know, you like prisons or something, then that security side of things is a far higher requirement than maybe in somebody else's business. So it is having the ability to have a bespoke risk assessment.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. And that's an interesting lens to look at this through, you know, because some sectors are going to be more highly regulated than others in terms of, you know, what they need to do for their buildings. And, you know, I wonder if from your experience, there is like one big risk that, you know, you see across the board that almost every organisation or every building is holding at any one time? Like is there one particular risk that stands out to you that, you know, people need to be mitigating or focusing on?

Ian Giles: Well, I think that, I mean, the one that really is, you know, with us all at the moment is, you know, is fire. You know, and I think is fire compartmentation. And when you look, I mean, outside of any risk, whether you don't know you've got an asset on site, because that's always, you know, it's important. So if you don't know what you've got, you don't know how to maintain it. But with fire, you know, fire and understanding, you know, when you are doing a survey, it's not only looking at the condition of the assets, but you know, you really want to be looking at, you know, fire and statutory regulation to make sure that you are compliant.

So the hardest thing is the hours that it can take. You know, if you've got say a, you know, a hospital or something like that just to do the fire compartmentation checks, it really is a Forth Bridge job. And the difficulty is, because it's so labour intensive and difficult and intrusive, is it always done? And you know, you only really, the sad part is, you know, do you find out sometimes when it's too late.

Liam Sandford: Yeah. And that's it, isn't it? You know, a risk that you are carrying that is not mitigated and you know, not up to standard, the consequences could be huge. Absolutely. And you know, we see it so many times, don't we?

Ian Giles: Everyone, you need to know what your risks are. I think that's the thing, you know, within any building, you've got assets that are going to give you risks such as, you know, pressure systems, gas systems, you know, any of those sort of systems that without maintenance are going to, you know, cause you a problem. You've got other risks, you know, that come in, you know, environmental risks that where if you don't manage something, you are, people are going to be looking at your business and viewing it in a not particularly pleasant way because you are doing things that are harmful to the environment.

So, you know, whichever way you look at it, you've got to understand the risk and what if you don't do something, what are the implications of what you are not going to do? And, you know, I don't think any of us want to be standing for corporate manslaughter or something like that because we haven't done something. So I think, you know, by at least knowing what you've got on site, what is the minimum requirement, you know, to keep you out of jail and statutory legal. You don't want to be over-maintaining and you don't want to be under-maintaining. So, you know, it is knowing what you've got and being able to look at all of the risks and the implications of failure.

And then from that you, you know, hopefully people understand that you have to do certain things. That if you are going to stay compliant, you've got to do, you know, this amount and that's going to cost you that amount. And, you know, it would be a, I would certainly be looking to the top of any organisation and saying, okay, then well, which ones do you want to tell us not to maintain? And everything needs to be recorded, you know, in terms of why somebody's telling you not to do something.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. And I wonder, Ian, is that piece of not every piece of maintenance being done, you know, like how, and being told, you know, this is what we need to prioritise versus this, is that a factor in why a maintenance backlog has become so significant in some sectors?

Ian Giles: Yeah, I mean, I think it is. I mean, I think it's like everything, it's where budgets get cut, and we all know that the maintenance budget is one of the first ones to go. I think we've also seen in the last few years, you know, the price of energy. So revenue budgets that are there are all being pinched because, you know, the energy part of the revenue has gone up through the roof.

But the difficulty you get is if you're not careful, you get caught in the sort of reactive maintenance cycle. But I think also when you are aware of what assets you've got and you know, the condition of those assets, then you've got to know you've got a backlog issue. And I think that the thing being is within all central government buildings, there's a requirement that they issued a document, the Facilities Management Standard 002 Asset Data, and I think that was issued in 2022. There's a requirement in there that all government departments need to have had an asset register, undertaken a condition survey and a risk assessment of all their buildings. Well, when you've done that, you can't ignore the fact that you've got a backlog issue. And I believe, you know, within the, from the most recent records within the health service, that backlog at the moment is £11.6 billion.

It's a big number. It's a huge number, but in some ways at least, you know, is it the correct number? Is it, you know, we can all ask that question, but at least it's known. And I think, you know, lack of investment in any organisation and anything is going to lead to backlog. Getting into a reactive cycle, you can, all you are doing is you are taking your people away from doing preventive maintenance because they're just doing reactive stuff. You know, the difficulty is when you're not doing proper maintenance, sometimes energy costs go up because poorly maintained machinery probably doesn't run as efficiently as maintained machinery. Similarly, you know, your economic life, if you maintain something is far longer than if you don't maintain something.

And I think, you know, we've all seen this with buildings. You know, we look at CIBSE Guide M and we start looking, we look at an air handling unit, something, you know, probably between 15 and 20 years, probably economic life, but actually, you know, you see stuff that goes back probably in, you know, from the seventies that's still there. You know, it must be very inefficient, you know, and because of that, you know, you'd really count that within your backlog.

Liam Sandford: And Ian, I would be very interested in your perspective on, you know, what the first steps are into conducting a good condition survey of your assets and then maybe think a little bit more broadly. You know, how does that fit into building the right foundations to be able to manage risks effectively within your building?

Ian Giles: Well, I think, you know, my thoughts on it are really, you should be looking at condition yearly. I mean, with any asset survey, it's a dynamic document or a dynamic thing. So as bits get changed, you should be changing stuff within that document. So you need to keep the asset register up to date at all times. And that is the foundation of anything really. It's, you know, the condition is to, you then need to have a common language within the asset register because, you know, far too often you, you know, when you get a lot of people inputting into the same asset register. So if you've got multiple buildings on a site, so you've got multiple, you've got surveyors going out, you've got to use a common language because if you're not careful, I've seen not that many years ago, but 370 odd lines of asset register and for air conditioning sort of split type units, there were seven different titles used to describe the same asset in different parts. Well, you know, that's crazy because then they, you know, if you've mapped those against SFG20 or some industry standard, the chances of you getting it every time, you know, it is not going to happen.

So I mean, I think the one thing is, you know, making sure your asset register is right, and then using a condition ranking that is, you know, an industry standard. So that, I mean, CIBSE do them, BRE do them. BS 8544 has them in. But you, you need a condition. Now, the NHS Estates did a document, which is a risk-based methodology for establishing and managing backlog. And they actually do condition not only for assets, well, they're all assets, but mechanical and electrical assets, but they also do a condition survey for fire safety as well, which is another one to look at. And at least then you would know, you know, far more on the fire safety part of your building.

But you know, you need to understand what you've got in your building. Look at the condition of it. Keep an eye on the condition, certainly yearly, and that's going to change more if you are not maintaining as well. And again, it's looking at the assets that matter to you. What are going to have more impact on your building, what's going to have more impact on the energy within your building? Because you know, things like air handling units, you know, it may be that you look at not replacing the whole of the air handling unit, but these things, at some point, you know, you might look at the controls and I think things like retro-commissioning are so important because, you know, you set up a building to a set of design standards 20 years ago.

We all know that weather patterns are changing and things need to be re-looked at. You know, are those design temperatures still correct? Are things being done slightly differently? And I think, you know, we look in places like Hong Kong where it's a legal requirement every five years to do a retro-commission within the building. We've got to change and think about that for ourselves here because, you know, things are changing and rather than, you know, guessing at it, look at how other people, you know, do these things. Because, you know, the running costs of buildings, you know, are going up through the roof. So again, it's looking at the assets that are going to dictate that and work on those, make sure their condition is right and you know, there are going to be lots of other assets that maybe you don't spend as much time on.

But it's knowing it and by, you know, from your condition survey is look at the risk assessment. Undertake a risk assessment. You know, what's going to happen if that does fail, you know, is anyone going to get hurt? Is anyone going to be disadvantaged in any way? You know what goes on. And by doing that, you've got information that allows you then to make a judgement. And if you don't have that information, you can't make that judgement.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. And impact feels like a key word in there. What's the impact if the risk does become a reality? I think that's always a good question to think about.

Ian Giles: It can really, you know, it affects everything from, you know, you don't want someone knocking on the door from the HSE telling you you've done something, you know, or you are doing something incorrectly. You know, it's finding what you can and what you can't do and managing it properly.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. If we move now to think about FM audits, how would you suggest that somebody can get the best preparation in place to be able to handle an FM audit?

Ian Giles: Well, I think with most of them nowadays, we know there's going to be an FM audit and we know when it's going to be because, you know, it's announced, it's not normally a surprise sort of audit. And you're probably also going to understand what you are going to be audited on. And whether that's, you know, compliance with the contracts, whether it's the equipment condition, whether it's compliance with legislation, making sure that the equipment has been maintained, you know, how it's been maintained or, you know, whether it's staff training for things like, you know, F-Gas or whatever it would be.

So I think the first thing is, you know, it's going to happen, you know. What people have come to look for. And I think the biggest thing to get ready is the information, because you know what, you know people are going to want to see that you, you are maintaining your emergency lighting. So you have your log book and you have any certificates for that system. What we find often when you go to site to do an FM audit is you can't always get to the information because it's not held on site. You know, I mean, it's great. You've got cloud-based systems and that's terrific as long as the person on site has access to that system so that he can pull out or she can pull out the information that you're looking for.

But you need to, you know, one of the things we'd want to look at is what are you actually doing on your emergency lighting and, you know, can you prove that that particular light fitting, you know, in the lift lobby, it's had its monthly, it's had its 12 monthly, whatever it is. So, you know, it's going in there and being able to give the auditor the information that he's likely to request, I think is it. You know, you don't want to be told when you go on site doing an audit that, well, I can't give it to you for two or three weeks. Cynically, you could start to think, well, hang on a minute, you know, within two or three weeks you can make an awful lot of this up.

So I think it's, you know, I think the thing is, don't, you can't, don't try and fool the auditor because they're going to find out probably if they're worth their salt, that there's an issue. So I think that, you know, the main thing is having that information ready.

Liam Sandford: So someone's asking what are the key factors to consider when developing facilities management risk assessment, aside from equipment maintenance?

Ian Giles: Well, you've got to look at the consequences of anything. You are, you know, you're going, you know, so there's a consequence score you're going to look at and a likelihood score. But things that you, you know, you look at are, apart from actually maintaining the equipment is impact on the environment. You could look at health and safety issues, you know, injury to people, injury to the building, the system, whatever it is, what it's going to do to the business in terms of business continuity. You know, if you suddenly lose power for the whole, you know, how are you going to continue to run that business? And the operational impacts that has.

I think, you know, the one thing with any risk assessment is being able to make it bespoke to you and exactly what that is. And you know, the more you know your business, the more you realise what's important within that business. And those are the facts that you can then risk assess. Because it will be different for everybody. And you know, you will highly rate some things and you know, you'll go through and do your risk assessment and an analysis of the consequences. If you don't do something, you will, you know, put in the consequential scores. You look at the likelihoods, and you'll give yourself, that will generate a score. That's typically the way risk assessments work. And then what you can do is you can understand from where that score is, how you can manage that risk.

You know, is it, you know, if it's fairly low, you might be able to just add it into what you normally do. Similarly, if it's something that's going to potentially fail in say, less than four years, you, you know, you're going to have to put some capital aside or go for capital to replace something or do something else.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for answering that. Some great questions in from the audience. If you could give people just one message about managing their FM risks, what is that one message and why is it that?

Ian Giles: I think the recurring thing that comes back through the whole thing is you've got to know what assets you've got. I think the most important thing is that you need an asset register that isn't stuck in time, that is dynamic, that changes. You need to know the condition of your assets, whatever they are. You need to know the risk. You know, so you've got the condition, you need to know the risk and what the implication is to your business, building, whatever, whatever it is you are running, you need to know that if you lost that, what was going to happen. And I think, yeah, I mean, I think the underlying thing is you need to know it's there before you can do anything. And that to me is the most important thing for people to do, is to know exactly what they've got, what condition it's in, what the risk is. And if you know all of those, then you can manage and you can decide with, you know, either yourself or with colleagues, however it is what you're going to do. But you know, ignorance is certainly no answer in any of this any longer.

Liam Sandford: Absolutely. And I've got one final question that is coming from the audience just before we finish. So, what are the ideal customer feedback mechanisms that we can effectively use in FM?

Ian Giles: If it's feedback to the auditor then, you know, it would be information, proof of what's done. Too often, you know, you see work orders, you know, carry out maintenance for 12 months. Well, you know, there's not enough detail there to tell you, you know, you need something like, you know, maintain to SFG20 or maintain to manufacturer's instructions. Even that's a bit woolly, you know, because it's not pointing you into what SFG20 task is it? Or, you know, what manufacturer's instructions are we talking about? You know, it's, I think it's having, you know, having the knowledge of what that person is doing and can you prove that it's been done. I think, you know, so those are the feedback.

I think the other thing that with feedback that we don't often get is if you go in to do an audit and you find something has been or is down and needs repaired, it's getting that feedback loop to say, oh, it's been done, or it's been replaced. And actually it's, you know, the asset register has changed to reflect that new piece of equipment in it. Equally, I never take any of the old stuff off. I might score through it in an asset register, but again, if you've got multiple pumps of a certain type, it's quite useful to see which ones are failing as opposed to ones that don't fail as often. Because if you are going to be replacing stuff you want to know what's the most reliable.