“Facility Management” is as like as to “Property Management” but usually applied to sizeable or commercial properties where the management and operation is more complicated. The International Facility Management Association defines facility management as a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the buit environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.

The facility Management responsibilities are covering a wide range of function and support services likes security, property or building management, engineering services, accounting, postal, computing, information technology system,, staff safety and other supportive duties. Therefore, in business, Facility Management means the management of managing both buildings and services.

The services are divided into “hard services” and “soft services”.

Hard services including those things like to ensure the building air conditioning is operating in safe and stable mode. For examples, Plumbing and water-works, Spatial planning, Civil and Structural engineering. On the one hand, Soft services including those things like to ensure the building is cleaned and have a regular repair checking with the service contractors says Team-building, Time management.

Facility Management is basically a property-based discipline, the objective is to achieve the following operation efficiency. For examples:

(i) Property – Maximize the value and minimize risks for those Swire properties (ii) Communications – communication system liked email, fax, internet, postal arrangement (iii) Workplace facilities – How to lower the cost by equipment improvement and motivate the staff, for example, purchase new office furniture and select the most suitable lighting (iv) Space management – how to maximize the space and determine the working place for each staff

Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) as defined is “the support of facilities management by information technology.” The providing of information about the facilities is the center. CAFM evolved in the late 1980s leveraging the PC to automate the collection and maintenance of facilities management information. A tools to track and report on facilities situation can be provided by CAFM regarding the following information:-

· Floor plans
· Building and property information
· Space characteristics and usage
· Employee and occupancy data
· Workplace assets (furniture and equipment)
· Business continuity and safety information
· LAN and telecom information

CAFM – Pros and Cons

Pros: save Significant Costs with Standardization
As a sizeable company – Swire. CAFM can help to manage the data including: PaperDrawings, CAD Drawings, Spreadsheets, Database Files etc among all the area like Hong Kong, Mainland China, United Kingdom. Normally, many facilities do not have accurate records to manage their space, people and assets especially if CAD drawings exist, only limited users are allowed to view the file. In order words, different people is manages different version of these files but with the same data.

Therefore, combining information act as a center database can help to standardize the data input and output. And also, it able to block someone who access the information without consent.

Fewer Contracts and Invoices to Process
Besides, implement of CAFM can reduce licence costs for multiple systems in each regions as well as increase the response times. Furthermore, data is easy to edit or change as well.

Faster Specification
Once the data are standardized, the workload for each party is significantly less difficult and time consuming.

However, the implementation of CAFM may also lead to another risk of which very real and need to be considered.

Cons: Standardization Risk
“Putting all your eggs in one basket” by standardizing could result in down system if no electric. If someone hacks the system, all the data will be extracted easily including employee and occupancy data.

Time consume of installation
Time / Cost incurred for data migration (both export and import) from existing systems and also involve high initial setup costs as well.

In conclude, CAFM is suitable for Swire House as a sizeable company.