FM status in South-Eastern Europe
This issue of Facilities is the first special issue about the status of facilities management (FM) in South East Europe. The issue highlights the current situation in several countries in the region: Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. A collection of five papers on various research topics is presented: a sustainability assessment at early design phase in Macedonia; a perception about sustainability of building materials in Kosovo; the impact of maintenance on participants’ satisfaction in Slovenia; the impact of public investments in facilities in the housing market for elderly people in Slovenia; and FM at the university hospital in Albania. We can learn from these papers that professional FM associations do not exist in those countries, except in Slovenia, where there is the Association of Managers of Real Estate established by the Chamber of Commerce, which partly covers the topics of FM fields. Also, formal education programs in FM are established only in Slovenia and Kosovo.
A paper by Zileska, Petrusheva and Petrovski, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, aims to identify the factors that are important for the sustainability assessment of a preliminary design to support the decision-making process. A survey was conducted, where a questionnaire was distributed to 112 project managers in construction companies in the Republic of Macedonia. Findings in the study reveal that six factors strongly influence the sustainability assessment of the preliminary design for facilities: work experience, work on several outline design proposals, resolving issues between stakeholders, prioritization of participants in the design phase, procurement management and defining projects program and goals.
Grum, from the European Faculty of Law, discusses a study concerning the link of the degree of participants’ satisfaction regarding the living conditions and the level of maintenance of facilities in Slovenia and Serbia. The study involved 1,006 Slovenian and 385 Serbian participants. The paper shows that regulations in Slovenia and Serbia exist regarding housing maintenance and management, but in practice, the quality varies depending on the particular company and owner. The paper shows that the quality of housing maintenance has an impact on participants’ satisfaction and perception of safety. Slovenian and Serbian participants express a statistically significant difference in the degree of satisfaction regarding the level of maintenance of the living environment, and especially with regard to the location of the real estate, the size of housing units, central heating and a sense of social belonging to the neighborhood.
Drobne from the University of Ljubljana, and Bogataj from Medifas, demonstrate the model to analyze the impact of investments in public facilities and their management on elderly population migrants. The problem of neglecting public investments in facilities for elderly population is seen from the ageing of population challenges for Europe. With Lowry’s model of analytic forecasting techniques for forecasting migration, they showed the differences in aging population needs and the influence of public revenue and maintenance on attractiveness, stickiness and beds migration.
A sustainability of building materials is the topic of a paper by Hoxha from Kolegji ESLG, Haugen and Bjørberg from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The authors analyzed the main criteria of selection of sustainable materials that can be used as guidelines for sustainable real estate developers in Kosovo during the materials selection process. The quantitative and qualitative research was conducted among the users, experts from construction industry and facility managers. The findings show that users’ perception that embodied energy, energy efficiency, durability and low energy consumption are the most important elements in measuring the sustainability of building materials. In addition, construction industry and facility managers perceive energy efficiency and durability as the most important elements with which the sustainability of building materials in Kosovo is measured.
A paper by Boge from the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, and Aliaj from Kolegji ESLG, studied the topic of recognition of FM organization in Albania and the status of FM in the case of Albanian University Hospital (AUH). The investigation covered the development of FM that affects provision of cleaning and food and catering services at the AUH. The findings show that AUH has hardly started development and implementation of FM; almost every facility service is provided in-house, except food and catering. The AUH’s facilities services are only partially integrated with the core activities. It is recommended to improve the hospitals’ food and catering services significantly through implementation of FM-measures, such as service level agreements and key performance indicators for cleaning and for food and catering services, as well as national guidelines for nutrition and prevention of malnutrition of patients.
