Sustainable facilities management in Malaysia: Adoption challenges and the way-forward for improvements

Abstract

One of the most important issues the world is currently facing is climate change. The sustainability agenda needs to be incorporated into the built environment in order to address this issue. Facilities management (FM) is regarded as having the greatest potential to drive and incorporate the sustainability agenda into the built environment. There can be a significant environmental impact from FM services provided in buildings. This resulted in the combination of FM activities and sustainability principles, giving rise to the idea of sustainable facilities management (SFM). In the context of Malaysia, this paper identifies the issues with SFM and potential solutions. The research used a quantitative approach to gather data through a questionnaire survey, and the Relative Importance Index (RII) was used for data analysis. The results show that, energy consumption reduction is the widely implemented practice, while legislation is the most important driver of SFM in Malaysia. Financial constraints and a lack of knowledge and understanding of SFM are the least significant barriers to SFM implementation. Participation in SFM workshops or training is the most crucial improvement that should be made, while investing in building information modelling or other pertinent technologies for FM purposes is the least crucial improvement. Overall, the results show that Malaysia’s rate of SFM adoption and implementation is still low.