Collaboration between researchers and practitioners on developing facilities management standards and guidelines

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the collaboration between researchers and practitioners on developing standards and guidelines for Facilities Management (FM). Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on a longitudinal case study on research on FM value adding and its impact on FM standardization and development of a FM Value Guide. The sources used are literature and documents on FM value adding and standardization, published and planned FM standards, the FM Value Guide, internal documents and participant observations and experiences. All authors of this paper have both research and practical background. Two of them have been – and one still is – actively involved in developing European and international FM standards, and all three have been involved in developing the FM Value Guide. The research methodology can be characterized as retrospective action research. Findings: The literature review shows that even though there are many references to standards in research papers, particularly in relation to definitions of concepts, there are only few studies on how research influences standardization and how researchers collaborate with practitioners on developing standards and guidelines. This paper presents a case study showing how research can contribute to standardization and development of guidelines in collaboration with practitioners and makes suggestions on how such collaboration can be improved. Practical implications: The results of this paper provide understanding and inspiration for how researchers and practitioners can collaborate in the development of standards and guidelines. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first study on collaboration between researchers and practitioners on developing FM standards and guidelines.