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magine it’s 2004. Prime Minister Tony Blair is visiting Libya’s President Gaddafi; the iPhone is no more than a pile of sketches on Jonathan Ive’s desk; London is mounting an ill-conceived bid for the 2012 Paris Olympics and David Beckham is regretting a European championships penalty struck so poorly that, eight years later, it’s still no nearer a return to earth. The words ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter,’ mean an actual book containing pictures of people’s faces and the sound that birds make, while of a more direct professional interest, the first plans to ban smoking in the workplace are announced. Oh yes, and April sees the publication of the first edition of FM World. So now, all of a sudden, we’re approaching our 200th issue. Of course, we do publish a daily online newsletter (you didn’t know? See the bottom of this column), but still, 200 issues in print is a bit of a milestone. We celebrated our 100th with a ‘state of the nation’ piece, so we’ll be doing something similar for our 200th. It’ll be published in October. If a year is a lifetime in politics, the eight years since 2004 should have represented an entire epoch in facilities management. After all, it’s not as if the stars haven’t aligned in our favour. An unprecedented global recession putting extraordinary pressure on property performance, an increasingly compliance-orientated business landscape and a jaw-dropping increase in energy prices. If you’d predicted back in 2004 that 2012 would have seen all that, you’d have surely concluded that FM would now be up front and centre in the political and business landscape. Certainly, there’s been plenty of change in those 3,288 days, but has it really had the effect of elevating the profession? Have the eight years since our first edition seen a significant shift in the status of FM, or are we still engaged in the same old struggle for awareness, acceptance and status? We’ll be asking commentators from across the sector, and some from outside, to cut to the chase: has FM truly advanced since 2004? If you ask me, it’s not a question of whether the profession has changed. It most certainly has, and pretty much all for the good. But what has stayed resolutely the same is the external perception of it – something that’s still pretty much just as it was back in 2004. If there’s one thing I know it’s that the good FMs of all types are really, really good – as managers, as communicators and as business people. The problem is that this expertise is not necessarily recognised at the highest level by the organisations that benefit from their presence. Perhaps it should be the aim of those within FM to concentrate our message on those without. We talk a lot about educating young people about the profession, not enough about educating those in senior, influential roles in other sectors and the national media. Maybe it’s time to do something about that.
I
“IF A YEAR IS A LIFETIME IN POLITICS, THE EIGHT SINCE 2004 SHOULD HAVE REPRESENTED AN ENTIRE EPOCH IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENT”
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FM WORLD | 6 SEPTEMBER 2012 | 05
30/08/2012 17:30