ISO 41001:2018 Facility Management System — Three years on — Problem solved or just another standard?
In late 2018, the long-awaited International Standard Organization published ISO 41001:2018 — Facility Management system — Requirements with guidance for use. Some two and a half years later, we look at whether it has been a success story or whether it has failed to live up to its pre-launch expectation.
Introduction
The questions I will answer are:
- Should we pursue ISO 41001 and become certified?
- What is the certification process and the stages involved?
- What are the benefits of certification and will it add value?
In Part 1, dated June 2019, I looked at early indicators of how the standard was received by the profession and industry, less than a year after it was launched. At the time, I experienced varying opinions from around the Globe. It was evident however that the ‘FM Mature’ countries were not adopting the standard as quickly as its pre-launch expectation suggested. There were numerous reasons for this, mainly due to a) a lack of awareness of the standard; or b) organisations were already certified to any one of several other associated ISO Management System Standards (MSS), notably ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 and that until they felt a need or were being persuaded that ISO 41001 was a must, they would refrain for the time being. It should be noted that pursuing any ISO MSS is a resource intensive and time-consuming process that also involves business disruption and a great degree of business process re-engineering. Regardless of this fact, less ‘FM Mature’ frontier countries have been quicker to embrace this w standard and have viewed it as a way of demonstrating compliance and projecting themselves as ‘exemplar’ within the FM space.
