Integration of sustainability into facilities management practice in healthcare sector

Abstract

Built environment is recognised as one of the least sustainable industries in the world. Health Care (HC) sector is recognised as the second energy intensive sector in the built environment and is identified as one of the most vulnerable sectors and a potential threat in harming the environment. As Facilities Management (FM) is recognised as a “key actor” in addressing sustainability practices in the built environment, it has become a major concern to deliver FM practice in a sustainable manner. However, integrating sustainability is challenging as sustainable FM practice is firm specific and need consideration of economic, environment and social pillars of sustainability. Thus, this paper investigates how sustainability practices can be integrated in to the FM services and practices in the HC sector. A Delphi survey was conducted among 10 experts to identify the significant FM services and FM practices to integrate sustainability in the health care sector. The first round of Delphi survey revealed that building services (BS), quality management (Q) and space planning (SP) are the top three FM services for integrating sustainability with RII values of 0.94, 0.9 and 0.9 respectively. In addition, 28 FM practices were identified significant, amongst, educating the work force on related standards, procedures, Strategic Facility Planning (SFP) for HC and deploy quality control and assurance practices with proper standards was identified as three top most FM practices with receiving an RII of 0.96, 0.96 and 0.94 respectively. A conceptual framework was developed for effective integration of sustainability into FM practice comprising of 8 FM services, 28 FM practices and 78 sustainable practices. This will further to be taken to the subsequent rounds of the Delphi survey to refine the conceptual integration of FM services, practices and sustainable practices for effective integration of sustainable practice into the FM practice in the HC sector.