One of the biggest challenges that facility managers reported to us was the struggle in finding a management system for their daily activities. However, the gap that was left open for a long time by the lack of a standard or a list for best practices regarding Facility Management, was filled with ISO 41001.

The complete designation of ISO 41001 is “ISO 41001: 2018 Facility Management — Management Systems — requirements with guidance for use”. These are the industry’s best practices and its best bet to meet the challenges of a future whose only certainty is increased competitiveness.

Background

The Asset Management standard is the norm ISO 55001, which was launched in 2014 and revised in 2016. (In 2018, ISO 55002 brought some complementary information, but did not invalidate its predecessor). But the first ISO on Facility Management (FM) only appeared in 2017, when they appeared in a triple form:

The 2018 norm 41001 refers to all the previous ones but has a more practical view of Facility Management. ISO 41001 establishes out the requirements, with specific instructions, for your company to adopt and maintain a Facility Management system that enables sustainable growth.

Moreover, when implemented in tandem with ISO 55001, they make an unstoppable team that links the value of assets to the company’s overall goals.

Which companies can use ISO41001?

ISO 41001 can be used by companies in any sector — including factories, hotel industry, retail, technical assistance, and others that are using a CMMS. The only requirement is to have an infrastructure to manage! But above all, it is recommended for companies that want:

  • to follow effective and efficient FM techniques that support the sustained growth of the organization;
  • to meet the expectations of employees, partners, and third parties;
  • to be sustainable in a globally competitive environment.

What are the main goals of ISO 41001?

Basically, the great objective of ISO 41001 is to prepare the company to meet the challenges of our time, which happens through three axes:

  • improving employees’ experience by providing a healthier and safer working environment (which, we recall, is one of the Facility Management’s major challenges);
  • reducing the impact of economic activities on the environment;
  • increase the efficiency of maintenance and management tasks to reduce waste and costs.

How does ISO 41001 work?

The great starting point of ISO 41001 is the company’s goals, which must be realized in each of the internal processes. To do this, we follow a logic that goes from global to particular:

                 Goals → Missions → Strategy → System → Processes

Which, in day-to-day life, will roughly correspond to:

                Organization → Leadership → Planning → Support → Operation

This is followed by an assessment phase, which allows for ongoing improvement — or in other words, an increasing approximation of working methods to the company’s goals.

ISO 41001 addresses all these phases. But, as the name itself indicates, it focuses on management systems and how to use them, which means it focuses especially on the support phase, which in FM includes human, technological, and financial resources; skills and knowledge to be acquired; communication and organized internal documents.

So, we can say that ISO 41001 structures Facility Management through good organizational management practices properly coordinated and integrated — which are always evaluated with the company’s global goals in mind.

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