March 2024 marks the five year anniversary of Cadaema Consulting Services… how time flies! We're incredibly proud to have worked with some of the most amazing customers on step-changing projects that have had positive impacts on end service users. Our Director, David Parrett, has been reflecting on the last five years, the growth of Cadaema, and the five most noticeable ways that our sector has changed in the context of some of the most seismic macro geo-political challenges the world has faced in many generations.

01 COVID

This is an obvious starter, but we can’t ignore its impact on how organisations use their space. Increased and improved technologies were reducing organisational need for space in any case – Covid only acted as a catalyst for change. Organisations are now coming to terms with how they organise themselves spatially around a workforce who don’t need to be in the office as much, and don’t need to defend their own desk space… it’s much more fluid. In parallel, the profile of effective facilities management (especially cleaning) ‘enjoyed’ a boost in our post-Covid need to protect the integrity of our space and hygiene. It must now defend this position to ensure it doesn’t return to a race for the cheapest price, and suppliers must anticipate this with new technologies and clear demonstration of the benefits of the best solutions.

02 BREXIT

Equally obvious but, again, has had such a massive impact. According to the British Cleaning Council, in 2019 in London alone, there were 129,000 people employed as cleaners, with 52% of them born outside of the UK. This statistic is likely to be repeated across the country and across the various different FM disciplines. The initial impact has been – especially in the public sector – to create enormous recruitment challenges whilst we wait for the remuneration forces to react appropriately. Ultimately, it will drive costs higher (above local Living Wage allowances) for service delivery organisations. How the supply sector will react to this will be key to its success – it shouldn’t be allowed to just eat into already wafer thin margins.

03 Risk Appetite

In January 2018, the property and FM world received an enormous shock with the collapse of Carillion. Principally driven by cash (or lack of it), due to a high proportion of sub-contractors, it has caused a shift in suppliers looking to stick more closely to service contracts where they can evidence self-delivery credibility. Clients are also wary of procuring multi-disciplinary property partnerships, and we are now seeing a disaggregation of procurement activity – and even some insourcing where it can provide value. Overall, however, there is a noticeable (and welcomed) shift, with client organisations becoming much more aware of the risk profile of procurement activities and structuring them appropriately. This includes sensible performance mechanisms, removing cost deflators, and an inherent understanding that the private sector needs to make an appropriate profit. Long may it continue.

04 FM Maturity

Outsourcing of FM services used to be a sure fire way to make very quick revenue savings, as efficiencies could be generated by private sector organisations. As a service fundamentally founded on people delivering services, these efficiencies are increasingly harder to find. Outsourcing (if it remains the right answer), therefore, needs to come up with a different set of deliverable benefits and a way to clearly articulate them. In return, client organisations should spend more time considering what they want to achieve from the delivery of FM services – this will allow them to effectively evaluate the best way of achieving them.

05 Political Ambivalence

We’re going to go through a general election within the next 10 months and, whatever your political leaning, it’s a fair bet that it will result in a change in government – whatever that means. Historically, this may have meant a slow down in appetite for outsourcing, but I’m not so sure that a Labour government in 2025 would be quite as keen to pursue a nationalisation project as they’d conceptually like to be. Firstly, they’re not going to be able to afford it; the strain on public sector pensions alone would see to that. But I do believe there is a softening of the perception of outsourcing amongst national and local politicians, and that it doesn’t hold the same sense of danger as it once did. Suppliers need to grasp this nettle and (linked to the above point) develop strategies and processes that visibly protects these characteristics and allows everyone, wherever they are on the political spectrum or not, to enjoy the results of these projects.

So much has changed in the world since 2019, and it’s likely that things will continue to evolve at pace over the next five years, whatever the world has in store for our sector. At Cadaema Consulting Services, our breadth of coverage and appreciation of supply and demand side requirements, risk appetites, and challenges puts us in an ideal place to advise on your property and facilities management strategies .