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Facility Management vs. Asset Management
Introduction
Facility management and Asset management are often used interchangeably, their scope has converged over the decade when it comes to their professional functions. While their core concepts may be similar, the difference arises in the types of assets managed, objectives and daily duties.
Let’s explore the differences between Facility and Asset Management, and get a clearer picture of the two disciplines.
Facility Management
Facility management focuses on the maintenance of infrastructure, buildings, office spaces and equipment. This includes both hard services like plumbing, energy management and soft services like maintenance, and cleaning. The primary objective of facility management is to create a comfortable and productive environment for the people or organisations who use it.
Asset Management
Asset management overlooks the processes like acquisition, maintenance and disposal of facility equipment or assets.
Its main objective is to track and maintain the reliability of the life cycles of assets.
Facility Management vs. Asset Management
I. Scope
Facility management is responsible for monitoring and maintaining the physical environment around the workplace. Here the focus is on space utilisation and facility upkeep. Internal systems like lighting, plumbing fall under the scope of facilities management. It is also responsible for the safety and comfort of people within the space.
Asset management focuses on ensuring the assets perform effectively and preserving the long-term value of these assets. Maintenance of manufacturing equipment and vehicles fall under the scope of asset management.
II. Primary Objective
The main goal of an asset manager is to maximise ROI on the businesses assets and the long-term value of an organisation’s assets. Their priority is to optimise the assets for productivity and ensure proper maintenance.
Facility management on the other hand ensures the physical environment is optimal for productive work and is comfortable for the people who use it. The Facility Manager focuses on the needs of the employees while optimising operational expenses.
III. Assets vs. Facilities
The term facilities is usually used to refer to physical spaces and structures like office buildings and warehouses. Facility managers supervise processes like structural repairs, utility management, safety standards, and security measures to ensure that processes run smoothly throughout a facility.
Assets are valuable items like machinery, equipment, or workstations
IV. Track and Measure
Facility management involves tracking the metrics that impact buildings and their structures like asset condition, energy consumption, maintenance, space usage and cleaning schedules.
Asset managers track and monitor conditions related to facility assets, like return on investment, the total cost of ownership (TCO), maintenance costs, asset utilisation, and equipment mean time between failures (MTBF).
V. Roles & Responsibility
Asset management is responsible for the effectiveness and efficiency of the physical assets, and their performance. The asset manager is not responsible for managing employees, customers, occupants or end users.
Facilities Managers provide a variety of support services to their clients, and customers including suppliers, contractors, and the Client’s customers. This means that inherently, a major chunk of an facilities manager’s job requires people skills and ensuring a pleasant work environment
Conclusion
Both facility management and asset management are vital to the functioning of businesses, together these processes and tools can improve operational efficiencies and uncover cost savings. Both disciplines strive to improve the company’s return on capital, they differ in the way they achieve these goals. While asset management focuses on maintenance of assets, the facility manager focuses on overall facility management.
