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The facility management (FM) industry’s ambition for 2015 and beyond is to reverse the supply chain. "The new order will be social – virtual – physical," summarized Wim Pullen (Center for People and Buildings, The Netherlands) and David Martinez (3G-Office, Spain) at the "EFMC – European Facility Management Conference 2009" on 16th and 17th June in Amsterdam. Almost 500 attendees from 40 countries discussed current and future challenges such as sustainability, energy management, demographics, business paradigms and the economic downturn as well as space use and space levels. Most of the delegates came from the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and German-speaking countries, but there were also FM professionals from Africa, Asia, North America and down under. Hosted by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) and the European Facility Management Network (EuroFM), the EFMC featured a Business Conference and Research Symposium integrated into one event. Programme highlights were the vivid and controversial "FM Debate of the Year" on sourcing strategies, the key note speeches by Slovenian Cultural Ambassador Miha Pogacnik and Dutch trend analyst Rob Creemers as well as the European FM Award Ceremony and the Student Poster Session.
Being the chair of the Scientific Committee, Wim Pullen conceptualized three crucial questions with regard to the future FM knowledge demands: "Do we know? Does it matter? And: How much does it cost to be cheap?" Joint forces of business and research plus long-term knowledge investment programmes were the FM knowledge base being set on the agenda of the EFMC 2010 in Madrid. "The new role of the Facility Manager could be that of a Corporate Sustainability Manager," Pullen stated. David Martinez alluded to the option of a Chief Facility Management Officer (CFMO).
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
