Universities are crumbling, has FM failed them?

16 February, 2010

A week after the government announced that university grants for capital projects would be cut by 14.9% the Guardian has discovered that scores of university halls of residences and lecture theatres in the UK are "at serious risk of major failure or breakdown" and "unfit for purpose”.

The Guardian reports that a database compiled by the Higher Education Funding Council for England indicates that some of the most popular, high-ranking institutions, such as the London School of Economics, had 41% of their lecture theatres and classrooms deemed unsuitable for current use, while Imperial ¬College London had 12% of its non-residential buildings branded "inoperable". At City University, 41% of the student digs were judged unfit for purpose.

Universities argue they have spent hundreds of millions in refurbishment since the judgments were made two years ago and use some of the buildings for storage purposes only. That might be true. But from an FM perspective the amount of buildings listed as being unfit or inoperable begs the question – what’s been going on?

‘Surveyors’ are employed by the institutions to assess the condition of their estate according to four categories: as new; sound and operationally safe; operational but in need of major repair and inoperable; posing a serious risk of major failure and breakdown. But where was the planning and operational management – where was the link with the assessments, planned and reactive maintenance, capital works and so on? How much did the client know; how involved was the FM team?

The story has already been uploaded to Twitter and the ‘fail’ word used. It is not a good advertisement for the reputation and brand of the FM profession.

We will be watching out for a response from the HEFC – who allegedly tried to stop the Guardian running the story – and it might be good to see some comment from the FMA and or BIFM; let alone the firms working alongside some of the universities and colleges in question.