If the idea of reading a whole book on facilities management filled the reviewer with gloom, spirits were quickly raised. This is a well-organised well-written text covering a wide field. If you are a facilities manager tasked with aligning your services to a client professing commitment to the principles of sustainable development, this book will tell you what you need to set about doing it.
The case studies and the argument are at an appropriate strategic level. The book makes no pretensions to tell you how to rebalance a badly commissioned HVAC system, but it will introduce you to all the main issues in UK practice. This is a rapidly changing field. For example, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive is now ready to roll in the UK.
For my taste there might be just slightly too much of the rhetoric of ‘sustainable construction’ and not quite enough on how facilities management interests can elbow their way into the design meeting or make sure that the commissioning engineers did their job properly. These are, however, small quibbles and ones that can be addressed in the next edition.
