APPA Library

"Does PDC Belong in Facilities Management?"
Author: Dessoff, Alan,
Published In: Facilities Manager
Date: July/August 2012

Whether planning, design, and construction (PDC) of buildings should be part of facilities management, with its traditional operations and maintenance functions, or separated from it, has been a divisive question on many campuses for a long time. Now, although it is not happening everywhere, facilities managers at a number of institutions, public and private, large and small, see a growing impetus to combine the two under the oversight of a single senior administrative officer. The consensus is that that is how facilities management works best. While separation of the functions sometimes works well, it also can cause frictions between the different departments and personnel responsible for undertaking them, leading to expensive inefficiencies and bruised relationships. Accordingly, facilities managers are hailing initiatives to bring them together under a single leader, usually but not always at the vice presidential level, with responsibility to make sure they collaborate in the best interests of their institution.

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