Trust the talent: the case for engineer-led facilities management

Give engineers the autonomy they crave, and you’ll reap the benefits, says Joss Rennocks, Transformation Director at Bellrock

It’s a paradox that engineers are usually the smartest people in the room, but often effectively treated like the dumbest: told where to go, what to do, when to do it. The only thing they’re not told is how to do it, because this is where their specialist knowledge and training kicks in. And that is why they are such a crucial part of any facilities management operation, even in the AI era.

For certain, a sensor or a dashboard can tell you that a fault occurred, and the fault history can show frequency. But neither replaces the physical inspection and system-level thinking that an engineer delivers.

So how did we get to a place where engineers are ad-hoc troubleshooters, rather than empowered thinkers and strategic leaders? In essence, it’s all about control and utilisation, which has taken away the time engineers need to be creative and solve more complex problems. Instead, the tendency is to stack engineers’ diaries so that their productivity level is as high as it can be.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, there’s a growing movement to turn back the clock to the days when engineers would be challenged to provide an engineering solution, rather than just a quick fix. It’s about giving engineers the ability to challenge the norm, ask questions, be curious about what’s happening and why – and think outside the box when it comes to a solution.

Give engineers more control over their schedule

There are clear client benefits here. When engineers are given the freedom to think this way, clients and occupiers can quickly tell that you’re not just sitting on a problem, or firefighting it when it breaks down entirely, but actively trying to create a long-term solution.

This extends to the engineer’s diary management. There is a certain logic in strictly scheduling an engineer’s time, but there should be some wiggle room built in, especially given the sophistication of modern building management systems.

If you give engineers the autonomy to say: “I’m booked to do a PPM at Building A today, but in our team chat this morning, I learned that there’s an issue at Building B, so I’ll drop in there first and then head to Building A afterwards”, then everybody wins. The engineer enjoys the freedom to follow their instincts and manage their time, and all clients benefit from this less rigid approach to diary management.

It also makes for better interactions between engineers and clients, who recognise an engineer’s willingness to be proactive and stave off future down-time. Indeed, some of the relationships that I’ve seen our engineers build with occupiers in recent years are unlike anything I’d seen previously in my career. Proactive engineers almost become a part of the client’s own team. Each visit carried out on the engineer’s own initiative builds momentum, and builds the relationship.

Engineers benefit from autonomy

The engineers, and the companies that employ them, benefit as well: engineers like a challenge. They’re competitive too, in a good way – they like to be the one that comes up with the solution that has eluded everyone else, and they like to share what they learned in doing so.

As with any specialist, when you awaken engineers’ curiosity and independence, and restore their ability to think outside the box, their productivity increases. With this comes reduced energy costs, fewer breakdowns, and increased job satisfaction. We have certainly seen an increase in the number of engineers looking to work with us since we started on our own journey of engineer empowerment in late 2019.

Since then, we have trained our engineers to think laterally when it comes to identifying the root cause of a problem, the wider effects it might have, and the possible solutions. We’ve invested heavily in peer review and peer learning, encouraging our engineers to share problems with each other, and collaborate on solutions, without involving “management”.

We have also developed tools like Symphony, which takes a proactive approach to delivering M&E maintenance, ushering in a data-led era of predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring that puts power back in the hands of engineers.

Finally, we’ve changed the attitude towards failure from one of dread to one of opportunity; we value the opportunity to learn from a bad experience and let it inform what we do going forward.And what we’ve found is that, in addition to benefitting our engineers, it’s had a positive impact on the wider team: on how facilities managers, building managers and service delivery managers interact with each other; the freedom they have to make decisions, change priorities – whatever is going to serve the client best.

In short, when we empower our best, brightest and most skilled staff, everyone wins – not least the engineers, without whom none of our lights would stay on for long.

Also published in: Facilities Management Journal