Good Facilities Management is Good Risk Management

Facility Managers should Recognize that they are Risk Managers

Why It Matters: Facilities management (FM) performance significantly impacts an institution’s ability to manage risk. You know this to be TRUE if you’ve ever described your daily activities as “fighting one fire after another”. It is why risk management is considered a core competency of Facilities Management professionals, according to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA).

 “The responsibility for emergency preparedness, facility resilience and business continuity is central to the role of facility managers, who have the primary concern for the health and safety of the built environment and who serve as stewards of the built environment.” IFMA – “11 Core Competencies of Facilities Management”.

Risk Management Framework (Overview)

The American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM) has defined a framework for documenting and managing risk that is very useful for discussing FM impact on risk. ASHRM’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework defines eight risk domains.

How Facilities Management Impacts Risk Management

 
• The Operational Risk domain covers many top-of-mind elements of FM, including Equipment Maintenance and Adverse Event Management.
 
• Facility management performance can impact all eight risk domains.
 
• Some events, such as a work-related employee injury, fall into more than one risk category (Financial, Human Capital).

Next Steps

IFMA and ASHRM have many resources available to help you grow your risk management competency.

When you are ready to put it into practice, consider reaching out to Virtual Facility. We can help you identify your critical assets, spaces, and alarms by considering potential risk. Our platform curates your alarm data to build you a view focused on critical events / issues (as defined by you). Awareness, prioritization, and mitigation of high-risk facility issues…this is Real-Time Risk Management.