Joanna Lloyd-Davies interviews architect-turned-artist Terry Trickett about his involvement in the early days of the facilities management profession.
19 July 2012
Joanna Lloyd-Davies (JLD): Terry, where did you first hear the term 'facilities management'?
Terry Trickett (TT): When I was working as an architect in New York for a firm called Interior Space Designers. At the time, New York was the centre of the interior and office design industry. I brought back to the UK my first knowledge of FM - that there were these professional people who, although not involved in a building's creation, were certainly involved in running them.
A year after I came back to the UK, I set up my own architectural practice, Trickett Associates, at just the time when the problems that were being solved in New York and the wider US were just becoming paramount in the UK.
I'll define what those problems were: management losing control of their buildings; not knowing how to define a brief for a new building; and having no idea why people were so unhappy working in the premises they had. All those problems were absolutely paramount in the 1970s when I came back to the UK.
JLD: So how did your experience of this term 'facilities management' reflect in the work that you were doing? What was the extra dimension?
TT: I was this rather strange beast - an architect who appeared to understand how companies worked. In the 1970s and 1980s, that was unusual. Trickett Associates had been going for six months when I got a call from George Young, who'd heard on the grapevine that I was beginning to get jobs with IBM and companies like that.
George wanted me to join the Office Design Committee of the Institute of Administrative Management, for which he was chair.
That was the start of me getting involved in what we now call FM. I was the only architect on that committee and it was a good way for me to evaluate the state of the market in the UK and compare notes with colleagues around the table.
It was also good for networking. During that time, companies were employing me for the same reason: they had tried every possible way to sort themselves out in the premises they had and failed. The managing director would say to his office manager, whatever the problem was: "Can you get somebody to improve that?" And the office manager would call in a contractor, expert or whatever, then sit back and say: "Well, we've solved it". Yet everybody was still grossly unhappy. The managing directors of these companies were intelligent people. They knew something was missing, they just didn't know how to find it.
A friend of a friend introduced me to the joint managing director of the Financial Times. I told him what I did and he said: "You're the person we need - why don't you come in?" So we ended up producing an innovative scheme for embracing new technology in the FT office in Bracken House, City of London. I interviewed FT people from top to bottom and then put to the board a three-dimensional model on how the FT could operate in the future.
JLD: You mean its processes, or the building?
TT: Both: the way that the building could accommodate people, as well as the FT's
working processes. In the end that plan didn't go ahead, but the work we did on it got me the work when the FT set up its Frankfurt edition. I designed a new editorial floor, totally re-thinking it. There was a review in one of the papers comparing the various newsrooms in Fleet Street and the comment on our revised newsroom was that it was one of "the most well-considered and well-designed places in London".
JLD: What's been your involvement with the BIFM and its predecessors?
TT: In the 1980s, there was this interim stage between the IAM committee's existence and the BIFM's existence. I remember a group of people wanted to set up something concerned professionally with this arm of administrative management.
Without saying the word facilities, that is what they were getting at. There was concern that the word 'facilities' was American, and that no one would understand what it meant. My view was the opposite - that facilities was actually the only word that really described what it was and the fact it was already used by our American colleagues was actually a very good reason for using it.
So I was not involved in the setting up of the Institute of Facilities Management {one of two forerunners to the BIFM], because I needed to spend more time running my company. Although those networking opportunities are valuable, when they take up too much time, they can become counter-productive.
I was also getting intimately involved in the 'big bang', setting up new dealing floors for companies such as Schroder Securities in the City of London, designing new furniture for them so they could operate in the way the big bang compelled them to.
That was an extremely interesting time and one job was particularly important. I'd developed a relationship with Greycoat Estates, developers of the Cutlers Gardens estate in the City of London. Up until that time, all the professional property activities - property development, property management, architecture, surveying - took place in their own separate compartments and it wasn't doing anybody any good.
It meant that with a place like Cutlers Gardens there wouldn't have been any forethought on how that building was actually going to be used by potential clients. But Greycoat was ahead
of the game and I was asked to do a very unusual job. I was employed to provide an initial space-planning service for any potential tenants taking an interest in Cutlers Gardens.
The reason Greycoat did this is that Cutlers Gardens was seen as being on the edge of the City, just outside the square mile and thus not as desirable.
The idea was that when a company came to look at the area to look for workspace cheaper then that in the square mile, the agent would have a response if the client subsequently said: "I don't see how we can fit in here - the windows aren't right, the lighting's not very good," and so on.
The agent would say: "Why don't you let Trickett come along, find out about your business and then match what he suggests against the space available at Cutlers Gardens?"
Now that was a brilliant idea, and it worked. On nearly every occasion we provided that planning service, the tenant took up the space. Greycoat was happy, the agents were happy and, of course, we did the follow-on work in moving that tenant into the space and doing the planning and design for them.
That was the first time that service offer had happened in London, so far as I know.
JLD: How has your career progressed since?
TT: I was on the outside of the IFM, too busy working with my City clients. But I didn't stop working with the IAM, and I put on a conference in the 1980s at the Holland Park Hilton, on the theme of 'Facilities management - coming out of the woodwork'.
By then, the concept of there being these 'facilities managers' doing a full-time job had become accepted and the conference was very well attended. I sent off invitations to a lot of people I knew in the US, asking them to speak, because we knew that we could learn a lot from the American examples.
The various managers and professors we'd only heard about by name all came and talked, mainly because nobody had asked them before!
They weren't paid for taking part, didn't even get expenses - yet they were happy to come and, in fact, they wanted to. For instance, the chief facilities manager of the World Bank came. He was the first person to use the phrase: "We have emerged from the boiler room and we are now close to the boardroom."
The keynote, entitled 'Coming out from the woodwork' was presented by Frank Duffy.
As an architect, he has done more in this country to facilitate the facilities management movement than anybody else; he's always talked at a high level about the importance of making FM a professional activity, and he's been a very effective spokesman for a long time.
In a way, that conference was a turning point. There were 200 attendees and it was at that point that I realised this thing called FM had arrived. When questions started coming from the audience I said to myself: "We've arrived, haven't we?" It was a natural progression from there for the BIFM to be able to set up and draw on that event to gather membership.
JLD: How long have you been judging in the BIFM Awards?
TT: David Hogg, who basically created the award system, wrote to all BIFM fellows explaining that the institute was looking for judges. I'd been out of BIFM activity for quite some time and thought maybe it was time to get back in, so I replied saying I would be interested. I'm currently lead judge in the major projects category, having judged now for the last eight years.
JLD: I've experienced your tenacity and know how you persist with your questioning until you're satisfied. What are the entries you've found of most significance to the FM industry?
TT: Prior to major projects, I'd created the 'Impact on organisation and workplace' award. Various companies had begun to do really good work for accountancy firms and banks, getting to the nub of a particular facilities problem and making it work in terms of space and design. This activity, which had been so amateurish in the past, was becoming more professional.
As for major projects, the BIFM awards used to include both a fit-out and a major building category, but both were being confused with architecture awards. People used to submit on the assumption that they were going to be judged purely on a piece of architectural design, and of course I wasn't going to judge them like that.
So we gathered those two existing awards together and made them into the major project award. It's been ongoing for three years and what's good is that we've started to get submissions for all types of buildings. It's particularly significant that last year a hospital won because, as you know, hospital design tends to be despised.
But we found this lovely hospital, Forth Valley Royal, where everything seemed to be right. When you interview these people, you get to find out what lies between the lines of their submissions. In the Royal Forth Valley submission, they spent far too long talking about robots - let me assure you that they didn't get the award for using robots, they got it for having a very good FM.
There's been a big change - FMs now instigate major projects. In the past, facilities was brought in only after a major project had been instigated. This is significant; the winner of the major award is always one where that has been the case. It's not the architect or the developer taking the lead, it's the in-house facilities manager who's been proactive enough to set their priorities in order from the beginning.
JLD: Do you enjoy your role as a judge?
TT: It's hard work, but of course I enjoy it. You go to a meeting and there will be a group of people including possibly the FM, the architect, the person responsible for sustainability and someone from the client responsible for initiating the project. As a judge, you're in a position of huge privilege - you can ask them anything you like and you know from the look in their eyes whether that answer is true or not - and they know that you know!
JLD: What impact do you think the awards' process has had on the FM profession?
TT: It's been a continuous lineage of increasing influence, I'm happy to say. For example,
the fact that Forth Valley Royal won last year means it will now get a constant stream of visitors from other NHS organisations and trusts wanting to know why this accolade was given. They'll go away knowing how much the company analysed itself and re-thought its requirements before the building came out of the ground, and engineered its new building to suit its requirements.
JLD: Finally, can you possibly sum up FM in three words?
TT: Yes: "doing it better"
Career:
Qualifications: FBIFM
2007 - present: Acting as a Client Design Advisor (CDA) for the Royal Institute of British Architects
2004 - present: Lead Judge for the BIFM Awards, Major Projects Category
1974 (approx): Member of the Office Design Committee of the Institute of Administrative Management (IAM)
1972: Set up Trickett Associates
1969: Joined Interior Space Designers in New York as Project Manager
1965: Joined Planning Unit as Project Architect, designing office installations for US companies
1959 - 1965: Architect with Dyson and Haebler, Leslie Creed & Partners, Peter Harland Associates