How did we get here: an overview of the history of FM in the UK
We are not just tracing history; we are spotlighting a profession that leads, adapts and inspires. From the professionalisation of our practice to the dynamic service delivery ecosystem that supports it, our journey reflects resilience, creativity and an unwavering focus on solving complex business problems and enabling organisations and their people to thrive.
Author: Sarah Hodge, Global Workplace Experience Director, London Stock Exchange Group
How did we get here? That’s a huge question.
If we look purely at the size of the FM market from the 1970s when the term ‘facilities management’ was first established in common business language use to where we are now, it paints an extraordinary picture. Facilities management has been over that time one of the fastest growing professions and important markets in terms of GDP, and is predicted to grow further by 3-4% into the next decade.
But how did this happen?
I found this excerpt from a ‘Dear Guru’ column by Martin Pickard in FMX magazine from May 2007:
Origin of the Species
It’s an interesting history that nobody seems to have fully documented. The practice of facilities management has, of course, been around since our ancestors first took shelter in a cave. Someone had to take responsibility for the care and upkeep of the place. Over the centuries, the function appears in many forms - the Roman Praefectus Castrorum, the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household, the traditional English butler - each one, a professional manager in charge of buildings and services. There are even references in mid19th Century public records to a Department of Facilities responsible for the newly created State of Wisconsin.
The first use of the actual phrase ‘facilities management’ is generally credited to Ross Perot in the ‘sixties when describing his new business Electronic Data Systems. EDS is regarded by many as the first genuine outsourced service provider, and ‘facilities management’ became a generic term for third-party management of IT services. Mostly a US thing, but I certainly remember the IT guys from BT talking about FM in those terms during the 1970s.
So, let’s bring the story to life.
It is amazing to reflect on where we are, what has been achieved since the 1970s when facilities management emerged as a discipline. I couldn’t possibly include everything in a 20-minute presentation. I spent hours in lovely meetings, reminiscing, chatting with key people who shaped the industry - the evangelists, the advocates and the pioneers! There was much laughter and a few tears along the way, for those no longer with us. It was a lovely stroll down memory lane. However, fitting it into 20 minutes felt like a mad dash through the decades.
The material gathered for this paper doesn’t just fill pages; it pulses with the kind of insight and energy that could power an entire day’s conference. That’s because the story of facilities management is a story of transformation, purpose and unstoppable progress. FM hasn’t merely evolved; it has ignited - growing from the behind‑the‑scenes function to a structured, standards‑driven discipline powered by innovation, adaptability and an ever‑growing commitment to excellence and its purpose.
We are not just tracing history; we are spotlighting a profession that leads, adapts and inspires. We celebrate more than processes and systems; we celebrate people, progress and the powerful shift that has elevated FM into the forward‑thinking strategic discipline that it is today.
From the professionalisation of our practice to the dynamic service delivery ecosystem that supports it, our journey reflects resilience, creativity and an unwavering focus on solving complex business problems and enabling organisations and their people to thrive.
And of course there are some long-running debates that persist. I will highlight these through the paper, for consideration when looking to the future.
1970s: The Accidental FM
The 1970s may have been a decade when facilities management didn’t exist as a job title, but the work absolutely did. It was carried out by the fixers, the solvers, the people keeping organisations running without ever being recognised for it. They sat in admin, office services, engineering, building management. Each doing pieces of what would later become a global profession.
To understand the ‘70s, let’s hear from some of the key FM people who lived it.
Marilyn Standley, who would later become the first chair of BIFM, dreamed of running operations as a station manager for British Rail. But in the ‘70s, women weren’t even allowed to apply. So, she was pushed into personnel instead, and that’s where she discovered the people doing what we now call FM: managing moves, the post rooms and the day‑to‑day running of office life.
She fell in love with this work. FM found her by accident - just like it did for so many.
Debatably this is still the case – and something that we need to solve? Interestingly, this is not the case in many other countries globally. What needs to be done to rectify this in the UK and for FM to become a career of choice, not chance?
Then Jane Wiggins. Jane was already a member of IAM (the Institute of Administrative Management). The administration sector already had well-established qualifications and structured pathways that had been in place for nearly 100 years. These people were carrying out the administrative processes of running buildings, but nobody called it FM. Jane became a powerhouse in shaping early FM professionalisation. She used these established frameworks to create the foundations of FM training and qualifications that were to become ultimately the IWFM qualification and competency framework.
Jane later published the go-to book for facilities managers, the Facilities Managers Desk Reference, which is still in publication today.
She went on to head up BA’s iconic HQ, the Waterside building near Heathrow, designed as a ‘city within a city’ around streets and cafes, facilitating socialising intentionally to drive collaboration and enable people to do their best work.
Jane represented the shift from ‘just get it done’ to ‘let’s define how it should be done and teach it’.
And of course, ‘the guru’ - Martin Pickard, a guru long before he added the FM to the title. Martin came on the scene in the ‘70s working as an accommodation officer for the Post Office and then building manager for BT. He remembers the BT leadership formally writing to the team, stating that “There is and never will be a place for facilities management in BT or the UK. It’s a made‑up American thing.”
Meanwhile, Martin and his colleagues were already doing it - keeping complex telecoms systems and buildings such as the BT Tower running around the clock and adapting workspace to accommodate newly launched systems furniture.
Martin’s story shows just how misunderstood the profession was, right up until organisations realised they couldn’t function without it.
The 1970s brought bigger, more complex buildings, the first workplace technologies, economic pressure with a recession, the energy crisis, inflation and the three‑day week. Large in‑house teams ran everything. Driven by economic efficiencies, organisations started questioning what ‘core’ meant in their business. This triggered the first wave of single-service outsourcing: cleaning, catering, office services.
Early CAFM systems emerged from primitive mainframes and punch cards, mainly for energy monitoring. It was the quiet beginning of data-driven FM even then!
Professional communities existed, and some new ones emerged and began to form alliances, one example being the IOM (the Institute of Office Management). The Office of the Year awards were launched, celebrating great office design and how this supports the people working in those environments.
Internationally, specifically the US, furniture company Herman Miller held a conference in 1979 in Michigan, where the term ‘facilities management’ came to life. It was the focus of the discussion for the conference and looked forward to what it meant for the future of work. It inspired the founding of the Herman Miller FM research institute and what was to become IFMA (the International Facility Management Association) in 1980.
So, by the end of the decade, even though no one used the title, every ingredient of FM was already there. Complex workplaces, early technology, economic pressure, outsourcing and passionate pioneers like Marilyn, Jane and Martin building a profession from the ground up.
The 1970s didn’t give FM its name, but it gave us the momentum that made FM unstoppable.
The 1980s: Pioneers
At this point, facilities management was becoming ‘a thing’ - if the ‘70s gave FM its roots, the ‘80s gave it a name and an identity.
This opens the door to another debated topic: identity vs purpose. Does FM have a strong enough Identity, and is that critical to its success? In the debate between facilities management identity and purpose, purpose is generally considered more critical for long-term strategic success, while identity is foundational for professional and organisational recognition.
The 1980s started with the newly formed IFMA - which had recently renamed itself from the original NFMA to reflect the international reach of the new facilities management ‘thing’.
Frank Duffy of architects DEGW was designing buildings with activities and organisational culture at their heart, buildings to enable people to thrive. He was for the first time talking about how accommodation would be run and managed in operational use and through time. Frank and DEGW are often cited as establishing the use of the term facilities management in common business language in the UK. Frank, who died in late February 2026, is widely considered the original pioneer of FM. He certainly inspired me and many others, and will be greatly missed.
DEGW went to launch the Facilities Management Journal, a title still published today.
Martin Pickard remembers being excited when he read FMJ. One article argued: “It’s time the occupiers had a voice”, championing a clear role for the building manager in the design and operation of the workplace. Duffy was there reporting on a speech by Sir Monty Finiston at the Manchester Society of Architects, referring to this role as “what I believe the Americans call facilities management”.
Stan Mitchel was another leading light in those early days. Stan has been a constant evangelist for FM and would become chair of BIFM, as well as making many other significant contributions to the profession and the progression of FM to where we are today.
Stan had left the merchant navy. Recalling those days, he says: “On board ship, you had to solve all the problems and fix everything.” He adds that all he had was “common sense and logic” as the route to finding solutions - key attributes of FM, of course. Later, Stan landed a job with Wang Computers, helping to build and run their new factory in the then nicknamed ‘Silicon Glen’ in Scotland.
He remembers thinking “there must be a better way. Other people must be doing this – how can I connected and network beyond this location?”
At the same time, others such as Derrick Paxman, Derrick Butcher, Marilyn Standley, Jane Wiggins, Martin Pickard, Geoff Gidley, Graham Brisco and Barry Varcoe had also read Duffy’s article and were starting to connect, network and discuss facilities management. These connections would eventually come together to form the AFM (the Association of Facilities Management) in 1986.
The purpose of the AFM was to:
- Connect likeminded people
- Develop a unified identity and brand for FM
- Give a voice, credibility and standards.
AFM established an early education committee which brought forward the established IAM framework. On that basis, AFM started to build the frameworks for FM education and professional standards. Martin recalls them knocking on university doors to establish a facilities management degree, but to no avail at the time.
The ‘80s saw a significant boom in the UK in construction of corporate real estate, with marble and glass filled buildings and lavishly expensive interiors with designer furniture reflecting the wider Thatcherite boom and the ‘work hard, play hard’ culture of the time.
Canary Wharf was the largest development in Europe in those days. I started as a hard service installation project manager, working for Olympia and York who were leading the construction.
It was a fascinating time being on-site as the only woman on the largest site in Europe with 4000+ construction workers. Interestingly, given the trend, today this would only have risen to 440 females and at that rate it would take 200 years to get parity. Gender parity in FM senior management is not expected to be reached until 2053. While progress has been made, there remains a significant gap, with females making up 36% of the workforce in FM. At senior leadership level, this figure is reduced to estimate 32%.
I learned a huge amount about buildings and running them in occupation at Canary Wharf. The operations and use of the buildings had been considered throughout the design process, which was unusual for the time. We set up Canary Wharf Limited to manage the estate, one of the first total facilities management companies. Keith Glenester and John Delucy headed up the operations - an early example of unified, strategic, focused management of buildings and service delivery long before integrated FM appeared.
In contrast to the hedonistic money-fuelled days of the early and mid1980s, the late 1980s saw the financial crash and recession, triggering organisations to focus on cost and efficiency.
Bernard Williams Associates, the first FM consultancy, published Facilities Economics which documented cost of service and established the business language of benchmarking and value. BWA worked with organisations to ensure cost of delivery was right-sized, and they continue to do so today.
We also saw a shift away from in-house and single-service delivery, as bundled services started to emerge with the service delivery market responding to client demand for efficiency - as FM began to focus on cost of delivery and value.
M&A starts to happen in the market about now in response to finding more joined-up delivery solutions - and this trend certainly continues today.
So FM was a now definitely ‘a thing’: we had a name, networks, a voice and a purpose. The FM profession had started to be built not by policy or accident, but because a group of people - the pioneers - saw a problem and set about fixing it.
The pioneers in the ‘80s didn’t just manage facilities; they started to build a profession.
1990s: Taking off
In the 1990s, FM is cited as the fastest growing profession. FM shifted from a fragmented set of responsibilities toward a structured, recognised professional discipline. This was driven by workplace change, technology and more complex business issues, and the need for a more strategic approach to managing buildings and services.
The decade saw the first real generation of outsourcing. A Key feature was a management buyout at IBM, created Procord (which later to evolved into Johnson Controls). This was a group of real facilities powerhouses who drove FM as a strategic discipline, pioneering delivery of new service models and ultimately transforming many individual service providers into comprehensive management operations. Th drive was led by John Jack and David Burnett, along with others such as outsourcing pioneer Oliver Jones. (Incidentally, Frank Duffy had worked with this group at IBM.)
This became a defining moment. These ‘godfathers of outsourcing’ reshaped the UK market and showed how FM could be delivered differently. This was the start of the early TFM models and growing contracts in the private sector.
At the same time, the Conservative government launched the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), starting in 1992, primarily to fund public infrastructure such as hospitals, schools and roads. These were designed to bypass public borrowing constraints and looked to improve efficiency and leverage expertise from the private sector, transfer risk and bring a structured approach to whole-life cost and long-term maintenance and management of assets.
Figures such as Oliver Jones and John Jack were deeply involved in shaping these models. Compulsory Competitive Tendering quickly followed, cementing outsourcing as the primary method for delivering public sector services. New service companies emerged to meet the moment. Trailblazer organisations such as Charter Services, led by Lucy Jeynes and Mike Cant, formed an early joint venture with outsourcing company Simmonds FM to bid for the first large‑scale outsourced contracts.
Th PFI model was later expanded by the Labour government and would grow and evolve over years. Indeed, it is still evolving today with new schemes being launched in 2026. FM consultant Mark Griffiths has been involved in PFIs for some years. He says: “They get bad press, but there have been some real success stories from those early deals.” At this point, it is interesting to ask if the industry as a whole missed a trick in learning from the model of whole-life costs and cost in use? Have those concepts been embedded throughout the industry?
The ‘90s also marked a major milestone - the formation of BIFM, the British Institute of Facilities Management. This saw the two boards of precursor organisations IFM and AFM come together, uniting pioneers including Derrick Butcher, Geoff Giddily, John Crawshaw, Martin Pickard, Graham Biscoe and Marilyn Standly, who became the first BIFM chair. This was the moment the profession gained identity, structure and a unified voice.
When the BIFM (now IWFM) was created, a long-running debate began, and it’s still going on today. The question is, is facilities management a profession, a management discipline, or is it a service delivery industry?
Many people, including Stan Mitchell, believe strongly that FM is a management discipline, not just the delivery of cleaning, maintenance, security, catering and other services.
This leads to another long-running debate: chartership. It also leaves open the question - If IWFM represents the FM profession, who represents the FM industry?
Achieving Chartered status would elevate the profession’s status, provide a ‘trusted voice’ and create a distinct professional identity on a par with other established professions. The IWFM remains committed to building its case to become a Chartered body, describing the aspiration as “fundamentally important” to the institute: “IWFM always have Chartership at the forefront of our mind, and when we developed the 2023-25 strategy it was with Chartership absolutely front and centre.”
This is still to be realised.
There was also in the ‘90s an active trade body called the FMA (Facilities Management Association), but it has disappeared. So, now people wonder whether the whole sector is properly represented at all.
During the late 1990s the big service companies such as JLL, CBRE and Sodexo grew massively. These sorts of service providers employ most of the UK’s FM workforce, and they now shape:
- Careers and career pathways
- Training and qualifications
- Research
- Innovation
- Thought leadership.
However, these companies are service delivery providers, not organisations of facilities manager necessarily carrying out the management discipline. This adds even more fuel to the debate.
Also late in the 1990s major corporates such as Shell, BP and the BBC began recognising the workplace as a driver of culture, talent attraction and retention. FM started to embrace service culture, customer experience and brand expression. The impact of frontline teams, skills development and labour shortages became central themes and highlighted how much the industry still underestimated the value of its people.
Education also accelerated. Training courses expanded, and UCL launched the first FM Master’s degree, led by two former Procord team members. (There is some debate about this as a ‘first’ as some have pointed out that Masters degrees did exist earlier, for example under the surveying label.)
I was on the first cohort at UCL. My dissertation focused on people, to some extent in response to discussion at the time. This was something Oliver Jones has always been passionate about: “Do we have leaders in FM or good operators/managers who can’t lead and won’t be able to lead the sector forward with strength to meet its growth demand? Where are our leaders going to come from?” We still have this challenge today, of course.
My second topic was a mission that has always been close to my heart and always will be. This explored the impact of our front-line teams on the bottom-line of the organisation. This is not just about customer service, upskilling and enabling our people to progress and thrive in FM, but about labour shortages, talent shortages and again a missed opportunity for the industry - in valuing people so they are proud and want to build a career in, and become champions for, FM whatever their background.
The origins of educational structures in FM were multiple. Simon Ball offers some insight on the impact of the Centre for Facilities Management. CFM launched in 1992 and was led by Keith Alexander. In the mid-1990s, you could do an MSc in FM via the CFM. Was this the first? They wrote and published many papers and books, organised events and undertook research projects. Working with many of the early influencers, Simon created one of the first FM websites for the CFM, which led him to meet with David Emanuel, contributing to David’s launch of i-FM. CFM was also an active member of EuroFM, which connects national associations, organisations and universities to advance FM research. Simon served as the secretariat, and Keith was acknowledged as one of the founders of FM as a profession from an academic point of view.
The profession’s structure and education resources were beginning to build. But what about the standards - how did the development of standards start and why?
Stan Mitchell shared a fabulous story. He went to a conference in Madrid organised by a group called The Real Estate Fraternity. They were trying to claim facilities management as their own at the time. There was much debate then about ‘the convergence of property and corporate real estate and FM’.
Stan was the only FM in the room at this event - all the other delegates were CRE professionals. One speaker, a real estate director, stated that FM was just a subset of property. But Stan replied: “No. Property is a subset of facilities management.” As the debate continued, the first speaker declared: “You will never be taken seriously as a profession until you have certified qualifications and auditable standards - and you don’t.”
Stan’s personal mission became to prove that speaker wrong. This was the start of his epic dedication to developing FM standards – first, European standards and then ISO. Stan became chair of the BSI FM committee and later chair of the FM ISO committee - years of dedication to prove a point!
Knowledge‑sharing also found a new platform with the launch of FM World, the forerunner to today’s Facilitate magazine, championing the profession through journalism - reporting on the key issues and people in the industry and sharing the news and stories that bring FM to life.
By the end of the decade, we had laid the foundations for outsourcing, professionalism and an academic grounding. This was the decade in which FM found its position and began shaping the profession that we know today, with an identity and a voice.
FM had shifted from disparate service delivery to business-critical management. FM was no longer about ‘running things’ but about enabling organisations to function. It was part of the strategic conversation. In essence, the ‘90s didn’t just grow FM - it launched it.
The 2000’s: Orchestrating
At this point, we see the facilities management sector move from operational delivery into a more coordinated, integrated model. This decade is best understood as the period where FM became intentional, global and strategically aligned.
During this period, FM providers and clients shifted away from managing individual services separately. Integrated FM (IFM) and Total FM (TFM) models became more common, a move from simply delivering tasks to orchestrating how services connected to each other to drive organisational outcomes.
Outsourcing also became more strategic. Agreements focused increasingly on solving problems collaboratively and generating combined value rather than purchasing standalone services.
In addition, global contracts started to emerge, driven by multinational organisations.
In 2004, the Institute for Collaborative Working was formed, and in 2007 the ISO 44001 standard for Collaborative Business Relationship Management was launched. This had been developed to help organisations formalise how to drive more value together, rather than apart!
Globally, Steve Gladwin and colleagues in Australia were observing similar evolution in the FM sector. Construction firms were beginning to add ‘FM’ after their names as service integration and diversity increased. Steve was a member of the FMAA (Facilities Management Association Australia), and members visited the UK to learn from what they considered a more mature market, forming strong international links that supported FM’s global development.
There was still a common and universal confusion over FM’s identity, though. A perfect example is this: Steve was then working at Haydens FM in Australia. They regularly received demo tapes from bands and artists who assumed the organisation was a radio station. Even in the 2000s, FM was still clarifying its brand.
Steve frequently connected with UK colleagues, attending BIFM conferences and collaborating with BIFM members to learn and share from each other. He felt the UK was a more advanced sector. However, was this the case? The FMAA were outward thinking and looking, not just talking to the local FM fraternity. They lobbied government in Australia with a facilities management action plan. This was well advanced to anything happening elsewhere. This leads me to recall Martin Pickard’s comment where he expressed some regret and reflected on whether we all spent too much time and effort talking to ourselves and debating internally. Should we have been more focused and placed our efforts outwardly to government and the wider business community to get the FM mantra and messages out there into the world?
The early 2000s saw continued growth in professionalisation. BIFM training matured, and in 2001 the launch of the first BIFM Awards helped showcase, celebrate and recognise excellence across the sector.
In addition, a global collaboration had emerged from earlier cooperation between BIFM, IFMA and FMAA. A tri‑party excellence agreement that helped connect FM communities across the UK, US and Australia, saw the formation of Global FM and led to the launch of World FM Day, which continues today. Steve is very proud of his role as a driving force behind Global FM and a former chair. Stan Mitchell was also chair of Global FM.
The decade also saw the realisation of Stan’s campaign to prove his point as BSI EN Standards were launched, further strengthening FM’s credibility and influence. These were later to evolve from a European standard into the ISO international standard of today.
Talking to Stan provides great insight into the contribution and impact made by the early volunteers and pioneers who were dedicated to advancing the profession of FM. Stan shared that 50% of his working lifetime has been dedicated voluntarily to FM chairing organisations, Standards committees and advancing knowledge. This kind of dedication and commitment has had a profound impact on facilities management.
Throughout the decade, FM and corporate real estate functions began to merge. Major firms such as CBRE and JLL moved decisively into FM service delivery, creating the global integrated providers that dominate a large part of the market today. This convergence blurred lines between property management, real estate strategy and FM delivery, forming the multidisciplinary landscape familiar to us now.
People and experience also stepped forward. The 2000s marked a shift from building‑first thinking to people‑first thinking. The question guiding FM changed from ‘what assets do we manage?’ to ‘who are we enabling?’.
The focus extended not only to building occupants but also to the workers who worked within FM supply chains. The sector increasingly understood FM as a value‑creating function rather than a cost‑driven one. Although convincing clients of this is still a challenge!
Sustainability became mainstream and embedded in our thinking following the Kyoto Protocol and was to dominate from that point forward.
Technology began embedding itself more visibly into FM processes. Organisations adopted early digital platforms for contract management and service alignment. Interest in sustainability and energy management increased, and FM started using data to shape decisions - an early form of today’s digital FM.
The outsourcing market grew steadily at around 4–5% per year. This growth was matched by consolidation; M&A activity was commonplace in the market as service delivery companies shifted to meet demand.
By the end of the 2000s, FM had moved well beyond basic service delivery. It had become Intentional, coordinated and globally connected.
As we looked forward to the coming decade, FM was coming of age, growing up. The 2000s was the decade that we moved to service orchestration and full professionalisation, underpinned by standards, formal qualifications and clearer definitions of what excellence in FM looks like. FM was becoming intentionally integrated and strategically aligned to business outcomes. Post-recession environments drove a focus on efficiency, risk management and long-term strategic partnerships. IFM was evolving beyond TFM into flexible, pillar-based bundles with outcome-based contracts.
The 2010s, Professionalising and Standards
In the 2010s, organisations realised FM wasn’t just delivering services — FM was delivering business value.
It was a busy decade. Following the introduction of the SIC Code 81.10 in 2008, by 2010 the FM market is valued at £85bn in the UK - driven by increasing demand for complex technical services. And the trend of M&A activity continued.
The Leesman Index, founded in 2010 by Tim Oldman, would become the world's largest independent database of employee workplace experience insights, featuring data from over 1.35 million employees across 91 countries. It was developed to measure how the design and management of the workplace impact employee performance and is used by many organisations as a global benchmark.
And then, of course, cam the London Olympics in 2012. The significance of this in the story of FM is the stance taken by Mayor Ken Livingstone, who led the bid and the effort to get the Olympic sites, infrastructure and the whole of London ready to deliver the best Games ever. Livingstone famously said when asked what he was most worried about was that he had no doubt that we would provide the infrastructure, deliver the buildings and mobilise the services on time – but our biggest challenge was to get everyone to smile everywhere across London. Thus the ‘games maker programme’ was born. This had a profound impact on FM and its drive to become customer-focused – ‘how do we get our security guards and engineers to understand and deliver great customer service?’ In other words, a shift in focus from not just what we deliver, but how we deliver it.
The same year Britvic (led by me as programme director) won the IWFM Impact on organisation award for their new headquarters building. Significantly, this was not an award for the building and its design, although that was award-winning too; but for the impact it had on the strategic direction, culture, organisational redesign and change to drive collaboration across the organisation. The award recognised how the building enabled that. The project was also recognised by the City and regulators which reflected in the company’s share price, noting the impact it had on the way the company responded to risk and organisational resilience and transforming the whole operating model.
Workplace had become a strategic asset shaping culture, performance and collaboration, and wholly aligned to strategic outcomes.
In parallel we see a rising awareness of wellbeing. The term appears widely only after 2013. Martin Reed in our chat about the history of FM reminded me that ‘wellbeing’ appeared for the first time in corporate language at about this date - it really doesn’t seem that long ago, does it? Now it’s a critical outcome and firmly embedded in our FM business-as-usual language.
Martin Pickard developed his well-known mind map, mapping what FMs do - again voluntarily dedicating time and sharing knowledge for the industry and further advancing the profession. This is still used in training in FM today.
The importance and impact of the workplace impact was brought to the fore by the Stoddart Review in 2016, The Workplace Advantage. This review highlighted that workplace is a critical lever for increasing UK productivity. It argues for shifting focus from cost-cutting (density) to performance (employee experience).
The second half of the 2010s also saw professional frameworks maturing, with the BIFM (IWFM) qualifications framework and clearer definitions of FM competencies set out in the Professional Standards Framework.
In addition, RICS launched its certified FM professional pathway to membership.
And certainly ISO 41000 was a major milestone, giving FM for the first time in its history an international language.
In 2018, the BIFM rebranded and became IWFM, signalling a shift from pure facilities to the broader workplace experience.
This came against an expanding legislative landscape for FM: governance, regulations, ethics and sustainability are all key themes of the late 2010s.
Then also in 2018 came the collapse of Carillion, one of the largest service delivery providers in the sector. A real seismic moment for the industry, it exposed the dangers of race‑to‑the‑bottom procurement, unsustainable debt, risky contracting and governance failures. This event forced the industry to redefine what value really means. And more immediately, of course, there was a severe impact on thousands of employees.
On another challenging note, amid the progress of the sector and growth of the 2010s, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission's first annual State of the Nation report (2013) reminded us of the tough truth and highlighted deep-seated inequalities, noting that prospects for the disadvantaged were not improving. The report emphasised the need for new policy and wholesale change in sectors and fair access to professions. The UK was far behind many western European jurisdictions and had a long way to go, it said. This remains a missed, huge opportunity for FM to significantly contribute to GDP by improving social mobility. The 2025 updated report shows little progress on this. Too many people in FM are still stuck in low‑pay, low‑progression trap.
The 2010s highlighted FM’s responsibility, and the opportunity, to unlock talent and impact social mobility. There has been some progress, but much more could be done.
By the end of the decade, FM had a professional backbone: an identity, global standards, qualifications frameworks and career pathways. There was recognition of workplace as a strategic asset. We were no longer the hidden profession.
The decade marked a shift from operational FM to intentional business‑aligned FM. Organisations weren’t looking for service delivery they wanted strategic value, cultural alignment and outcomes that supported their business strategy.
FM stopped being the back-room engine and became an indispensable strategic partner at the heart of organisational success.
2020s: All about Experience
As we entered the 2020s, none of us could have predicted just how dramatically the world and the world of work was about to change
The 2020s opened with probably the single biggest shock the world has faced in living memory: the global pandemic. Buildings emptied almost overnight. FM teams were thrust into crisis mode, ensuring safety, maintaining essential assets and rethinking operations in real-time. This wasn’t a temporary deviation. It was the start of a new era.
‘Workplace experience’ has become a competitive advantage. As the world reopened, work didn’t go ‘back’ — it moved forward. Hybrid work cemented itself as a long-term reality. Organisations worldwide are now operating with persistent hybrid schedules, fluctuating occupancy patterns and a renewed expectation for workplaces to be ‘worth the commute’.
FM became the architect of purposeful, high-value, in-office experiences. This is about the physical, digital and cultural experience brought together in a holistic, seamless way - enabling people to have their best day and do their best work.
Employee expectations soared, and FM rose to meet them. FM isn’t just maintaining space; we are now shaping holistic experience across wellbeing, engagement, culture, collaboration and performance
After experiencing global disruption, organisations recognised the need for stronger resilience. Risk has become part of everyday activity. The message of the decade is that resilience isn’t optional - it’s foundational.
Supply chain fragility, inflation, climate events and geopolitical pressures have become everyday realities for business and for FM. Climate impact is being felt daily; geo-political threats are increasingly mainstream.
This all emphasises the criticality of a shift to integrated risk management and enterprise resilience as top strategic priorities.
The 2020s brought something profound: recognition. CoreNet Global noted that “FM demonstrated extraordinary agility during the pandemic - often being the only professionals on-site, protecting assets, ensuring safety and sustaining operations during crisis. This elevated the profession’s profile and brought new respect, influence and strategic visibility”.
FM stepped out of the background and into the spotlight. This is a profession that proved its value. This was the decade in which FM didn’t just support the organisation. It kept the organisation standing. It helped it adapt. It helped it thrive.
The 2020s proved, without question, that FM is a strategic powerhouse.
So, what for the rest of the decade? What are my top priorities and focus areas at LSEG? What are the hot topics for the global roundtable that I sit on?
Many of these topics are on the agenda at Workplace Futures.
My focus areas with a 130-building global portfolio, include:
- Optimisation of our assets; rationalising and consolidation of our footprint
- Every day geo-political threats; Ukraine, Middle East, India and Pakistan
- Climate impact is now; it’s not in the future! Yes, we have net zero and CSRD reporting targets. But what are our strategies to deal with impact to business and our people now? Climate resilience and action need to be considered daily as BAU.
- Energy loading, restrictions and interruptions in countries.
- Technology, data and AI – realisation of real operation benefit
- Dynamic flexible and on-demand servicing; how we flex and scale operations globally to realise benefits and optimise experience aligned to our hybrid patterns.
It really is all about the people
Our industry didn’t evolve by accident. It grew because people cared enough to push boundaries, connect dots, challenge norms and drive meaningful change.
People who, yes, had a bit of logic, commonsense and problem-solving skills. But more importantly, people who were outward looking, who hunted down and found connections with likeminded people beyond their locations, who explored solutions to ‘there must be a better way’ and who had a vision to build a profession. Maybe there was a bit of serendipity along the way, and certainly a lot of fun. We didn’t have a collective identity or a brand, but we did have a profound sense of purpose, passion, dedication and belief in facilities management.
Today, as we think about defining the roadmap of the future, I ask what are you doing about advancing the profession? Do we still have the people today who will dedicate themselves so purposefully? How will the profession keep evolving?
Facilities management has evolved into a complex strategic discipline integral to organisational success. With workplace, or as I put it ‘the experience of work’, enabling people in the organisations to perform at their best, it’s grown and adapted to external forces, regulation and legislation to solve ever more complex business and global problems.
But we need to remember it shouldn’t just be about the organisations we serve and enabling them and their people to succeed. It needs also to be about our people - the people who work in FM
The growth predicted in the FM market is about 4%, with labour shortages and margin pressures cited as restraining factors to achieving this growth.
The labour and skill gap is significant, and it is vital that we work together at speed across private and public sectors to address the problem and enable and develop talent from all social economic backgrounds.
Additionally, we know we have an ageing workforce, with something like 50% of those in FM reaching retirement age in next eight years.
We have a huge pool of untapped talent in and around the sector. We need to intentionally remove barriers to employment and progression. Enabling anyone from any background to enter and thrive within FM.
So, let’s commit - intentionally, boldly, unapologetically - to removing barriers.
Let’s spot potential where others might overlook it. Talent is everywhere; opportunities are not. If we do that, together, we won’t just shape the future of facilities management. We will enable our people to thrive, our organisations to thrive and society to thrive.
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