The FM Consultant’s dual responsibility:FMCC President’s message

Friday, August 7th, 2026

The FM consultant has two responsibilities

Facilities management consultants are often engaged to improve a specific part of the asset lifecycle: planning, design, construction, commissioning, operations, renewal, repurposing, or retirement.

That work matters. But it is only one level of the assignment.

The second responsibility is to understand the institutional operating system surrounding the lifecycle:

• FM’s mandate
• Governance relationships
• Decision rights
• Information flows
• Performance measures
• Authority and accountability

These two levels cannot be separated.

The institutional operating system determines whether sound asset management practices can actually work. It determines when FM becomes involved, whose knowledge informs decisions, how lifecycle consequences are evaluated, and whether accountability is matched with the authority to act.

Without those conditions, an FM organization can possess excellent people, sound processes, capable technology, and well-developed technical practices and still be positioned to fail.

FM may be brought into decisions too late. It may inherit facilities that are difficult or expensive to operate. It may be expected to absorb unresolved complexity created elsewhere. It may then be held accountable for outcomes it did not create and lacks the authority to correct.

A consultant who addresses only the visible process may improve the immediate practice while leaving the conditions that undermined it intact.

Our responsibility is therefore broader than delivering a technically correct answer. We must also determine whether the surrounding governance, authority, information, and accountability arrangements will allow that answer to succeed.

Sometimes the problem is within the asset lifecycle.

Sometimes the lifecycle is revealing a problem in the institution around it.

The value of an FM consultant lies partly in knowing the difference and helping the client address both.

Grant Sommerfeld MBA, CMC, CFM, CEFP, FRICS
President, IFMA FM Consultants Council
presidentfmconsultantscouncil@gmail.com

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