Impact of New European Facility Management Standards on Building Cost Structures

Abstract

There are a large number of different cost structures available for building construction and building operation both in standards and in guidelines. Changes in these structures have far reaching consequences as they are often used for a wide range of activities from cost calculation and tendering to benchmarking in the country of origin. The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) is currently developing standards in the field of Facility management (FM). It is now working on the topics processes, quality, taxonomy (classification, products and structures), space measurement and benchmarking in FM. To overcome the problem of differing national cost structures, it has defined requirements for a harmonized support cost structure. No single structure was found to meet these requirements. What is needed is a system of interlocked structures for e.g. costs codes, facilities, activities/processes, etc. Central in this system is the new facility product structure. The new European standards in FM mark a shift from a building perspective to an organization perspective and from construction phase thinking to life cycle analysis. The consequences are new requirements for the building construction industry and new opportunities towards the sustainability of buildings. The paper reviews existing cost structures and explores the question if the facility product structure is compatible with the different existing construction cost structures.