Facilities Management
Sponsored by: 
This category recognises and celebrates the achievements of a facilities management team or project, whether in-house or outsourced, that delivers outstanding building performance from an individual building, a site with several buildings or a portfolio of assets.
Winner: Legal & General Investment Management TBPE – Hoare Lea
Hoare Lea and Legal & General Investment Management’s (LGIM’s) fresh approach to facilitating communication between landlords and engineers made it a clear standout among entries in the Facilities Management Award.
The judges were looking for an entry that went above and beyond standard facilities management practices, improving building performance and challenging the status quo.
The winning facilities management project began with a vision to revitalise relationships between building owners, tenants, property managers and contractors, and, in turn, reach higher levels of tenant and landlord satisfaction. This would require a different, more proactive approach to building performance consultancy.
In collaboration with Hilson Moran, Hoare Lea appointed a technical building performance engineer (TBPE) within each building’s FM team. They provide engineering expertise when required, thereby bridging the gap between landlords and technical teams. The vision took shape in 2019 and, since then, it has gone from strength to strength, with TBPEs being appointed in approximately 60 buildings in 2020.
The award judges were especially impressed with how information was shared between different parties within the LGIM-TBPE network, and how this encouraged a planning approach that connected the processes of design, commissioning and construction.
Hoare Lea and Hilson Moran addressed issues relating to communication and consistency of output between different engineers, largely by developing strong relationships between the core team members of each company. Regular discussions between those on all sides of the FM process allowed the project to respond promptly to issues facing the building sector, including the impact of COVID-19 and the drive to net zero carbon.
The TBPE initiative has innovation at its core and several new techniques and approaches were developed to ensure it worked as smoothly as possible, with core team members acting as a hub for transferring knowledge and ideas. Most of these new techniques centred on performance and quality tracking, including a new building performance log (BPL) – completed monthly by TBPEs – and a red/amber/green system assigned to buildings based on data gathered in the BPL.
As a result of this new approach to quality tracking, employee satisfaction remained consistently high and the project has enjoyed continued success throughout 2020-21. The judges described the project as ‘true facilities management work’ and applauded the team’s drive to improve the building performance sector – a commendable achievement all around.