Office
With the increased importance of office interiors, property management and facility management are seen as needing to adapt to new and enhanced requirements to meet the changing demands of building users, real estate editor Gary J. Morrell writes.
Increased health and safety standards and a growing number of operation and maintenance procedures necessitate a systematic FM/PM approach. Further, in order to comply with sustainability and ESG requirements and the possibility of an exit strategy for building owners, additional capacities are needed to meet new and increased expectations from office users, along with improved benchmarking techniques.
Valter Kalaus, managing director of Newmark VLK Hungary, argues that it is not only the individual office space that has to adapt to the new requirements; the entire building has to undergo changes to incorporate such critical elements as touchless entry, increased air ventilation and filtration, less crowded public
areas and so on.
“PM/FM will have to play a significant role to not only create but maintain these elements to ensure a more desirable and safer environment,” he says. Both PM and FM have enhanced roles in the post-pandemic office environment and with further sustainability and ESG regulations and expectations from tenants and office staff. PM can be seen as the operation, maintenance and oversight of real estate.
A property manager is responsible for the daily operation of a building and, in this role, acts as a middleman between the owners and tenants. Meanwhile, FM, integrating people, location, procedures, and technologies, is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality, comfort, safety and efficiency of the built environment. Both fields embrace employee engagement, sustainability and environmental impact, and health and wellbeing.
Read more in the Budapest Business Journal – May 6th 2022 edition. https://bbj.hu/
