The transition to virtual: The impact of changes in business operations on facilities management

The development of virtual working practices heralds a technology led revolution in the way of working for some types of business. For those which adapt successfully, this appears to offer the potential of a virtuous circle of process effectiveness and efficiency. For the laggard business, there could be risks of an increasingly unbridgeable technology gap leading to rapidly outdated business processes plus the prospect of cavernous re‐engineering tasks. This paper considers some of the more immediate potential implications of this development for the facilities management role.