Looking back, moving forward

This year, IWFM is celebrating 30 years of the Institute. As 2023 progresses, and with help from our community of volunteering members, we will be exploring the evolution of our profession and predicting its future. However, some members may not be familiar with the Institute’s history, so here is a brief introduction.

In 1993, the Association of Facilities Managers and Institute of Facilities Management merged to become the British Institute of Facilities Management. The FM profession has evolved in the decades since, with the Institute maturing alongside as a membership body, standards setter and professional community.

In 2016, the profession’s workplace opportunity arrived with The Workplace Advantage report. Where once the productivity debate had ignored the workplace, this report quantified the contribution a well-designed workplace could make to organisational performance. It identified workplace and facilities management as the organisational super connector. Ever the champion of the sector’s advancement, we set out to embrace the emerging workplace function as a strand of the profession, foregrounding FM’s impact where it can be recognised for its ability to transform organisations and enhance experience.

In 2018, we rebranded to the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management and set out to reposition FM as a value creator with even greater potential to support business success. Ensuring leaders fully appreciate the crucial contributions FM makes and optimising its impact will remain at the heart of our mission into the next decade and beyond.

Linda Hausmanis is CEO of the IWFM 

To read the full March/April 2023 edition, click here.