Facility Management Research in the Netherlands
June 2012 | Thomas Thijssen, Theo van der Voordt, Mark Mobach
This article provides a brief overview of the history and development of facility management research in the Netherlands and indicates future directions. Facility management as a profession has developed from single service to multi-services and integral services over the past 15 years. Furthermore, the traditional one-sided focus on efficiency and costs has shifted to a more balanced approach that also takes into account effectiveness, quality and added value. Nowadays, facility management increasingly enables the strategic development of businesses and organizations at the intersection between real estate, provision of workspace and management of value adding services. In the Dutch FM market of almost 63 billion euro, with over 310.000 employees, outsourcing as a percentage of total sales has increased from 57% (2000) to 63% (2009).