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in today's video we'll be separating facilities management into three categories hard soft and specialist fm welcome everyone and thanks for watching as always if you find these videos useful don't forget to subscribe to the channel turn on your notifications so you don't miss a single episode so today we're looking at the three different types of facilities management services broadly speaking we can separate fm into hard services soft services and specialist or technical services hard services usually cover the more hands-on technical sides of fm this would include engineering maintenance and building fabrics some obvious examples would be lighting heating air conditioning plumbing lifts and escalators and so on and so forth of course there are some less obvious examples as well building management systems or bms could be one example our bms systems are usually used to monitor the performance of your assets but of course they do need maintaining in their own right soft services then are less technical and more people focused examples include cleaning catering or waste management generally speaking soft services are provided by people for people whereas hard services are more concerned with keeping a building physically maintained soft services are more about providing services that directly impact the building's users there's an old saying in fm that if you took a building and turn it upside down everything that fell out would be related to soft services with everything that stayed put will be nailed down an integral part of the building and therefore related to hard services you get the idea of course there are some gray areas some services have aspects that cover both categories security for example manned guarding is provided by people for people therefore will be clustered as a soft service but cctv and access control also elements of security those are hardwired into the building and therefore they come under the heading of hard services i like to think of it like this if something went wrong how would you fix it if you can fix it with a spanner it's probably a hard service if you need to fix it with a conversation it's probably a soft service generally speaking both hard and soft services can be delivered by in-house teams or they can be outsourced the decision on which of these to go for will very much depend on the needs of the business now we've already covered this in another video in depth so if you want to find out more there should be a card popping up at the top of the screen right now click on that and find out more and i'll post a link in the description below but there is one other type of fm service generally speaking this can only be delivered by an outside organization these are known as specialist services specialist services are those which are either used so rarely that it's not worth having an in-house team on site to deliver them or whether the knowledge and expertise required to deliver them is so specialized that it's just not feasible for a generalist fm to manage an example of the former would be asbestos removal you don't need a permanent asbestos removal team on site you'll only need to use them if you discover asbestos on your site and even then only if it's likely to be disturbed such as during a refurb project another example would be pest control hopefully this is something you'll only need to deal with very occasionally if you have such a problem that you need a permanent pest control team on site you may want to consider whether your buildings are even fit for purpose at all as for the latter an example would be a staff nursery or a crash for visitors yes this would be a permanent feature of the building however the specialist knowledge required to run it is well beyond the scope of the facilities manager you consider safeguarding and education curriculum and so on so you get a third party to run it for you now facilities managers come in all shapes and sizes some will be responsible just for hard services some just for soft services and others will oversee both so which category do you fall into leave a comment below let us know whichever category you fall into you need to know the difference between hard soft and specialist services and that leads us on to today's takeaway understanding the difference between hard and soft services is one of the core fundamentals of facilities management now in truth there's not so much of a practical application to this knowledge but in order to be a great fm you need to have a really solid foundation on which to build you need to understand the terminology and be able to speak on the same level as other people within the industry the concept of hard and soft services is very often spoken about and if you understand them you have a much greater chance of coming across as credible knowledgeable and competent this is especially important when dealing with contractors or more experienced members of the facilities management team additionally if you're responsible for just one side of the equation there's likely somebody else in your team who's responsible for the other so for example if you're a soft services facilities manager there's probably a hard services facilities manager within your team as well understanding what comes under your remit as opposed to what they are responsible for can help to build a better working relationship with that person which leads to a more effective more productive fm operation overall similarly if you're in a more senior role and you have fms reporting to you you need to have a good understanding of what their responsibilities are you may even find yourself in a position where you have to decide should you employ two fms one for hard services one for soft services or just the one to cover everything as always this decision will largely depend on the needs of the business and the overall business and fm strategy okay that's all for today don't forget to like the video share the video and subscribe to the channel and as always if you'd like to know more about facilities management qualifications training recruitment or consultancy head on over to .xenongroup.com or look us up on linkedin we'll be happy to talk to you but for now thank you very much for watching i'll see you next time you