Ask ten people how facilities management should be delivered and you'll get ten different answers.
But there's one assumption I hear again and again from businesses considering a full FM provider: that if you're paying someone to look after your buildings, the person who actually turns up should work for them. In-house engineers, in-house teams, one company, top to bottom.
I understand the appeal. But here's the honest version of how this usually plays out: most full FM providers are promising something that, in practice, isn't quite how the work gets done. When it comes to it, a large share of the actual jobs, especially anything specialist gets delivered through a supply chain.
And to be clear: I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's often the right thing, done properly.
A brilliant supply chain gives you depth that a purely in-house team never can. If one engineer is off sick, or already on another job, or simply doesn't cover the specialism you need this time, a strong network of trusted partners means someone can still get to you urgently, you're not stuck waiting on one person's diary. It usually means people genuinely local to the site too, rather than someone driving two hours to get to you, which is faster for you and a smaller footprint for everyone, which matters more every year.
There's another advantage that gets overlooked too: accreditations and specialisms. No in-house team, however good, can hold every certification and cover every niche trade a building might throw up - fire suppression, lift engineering, BMS controls, high-voltage electrical, and plenty of others most businesses never think about until they need them. A well-built supply chain means you're not limited to what your own team happens to be qualified in, you're bringing in a genuine specialist for the job in front of you, not the closest generalist. That's a better outcome, not a compromise. And provided you can procure at reasonable rate; which, with real relationships and trust built up over time, tends to be far easier than people expect you end up with the best person for the job, not just whoever was available.
So, I don't think "we use a supply chain" should ever be the awkward thing a provider avoids saying out loud. The problem isn't the model. It's when businesses are told, implicitly or otherwise, that everything is in-house when it isn't, and find out the honest version later.
A hybrid approach - a strong in-house core, backed by a genuinely excellent supply chain is, in my opinion, the best model going. But it only works if it's built on transparency from day one. Tell people honestly how the work actually gets delivered. Set the expectation properly at the start, so there's nothing to walk back later. That one decision, being upfront rather than letting the sales conversation oversell it is the difference between a supply chain that reassures a client and one that quietly erodes trust the first time it's noticed.
What people don't always appreciate is that building a supply chain you can actually rely on takes a long time. It's not a procurement exercise you finish in a quarter… It's relationships, built with people you trust, over years, through the jobs that went well and the ones that tested everyone. You can't buy that overnight, and you definitely can't fake it in a sales deck.
None of this works without proper management behind it, either. A great supply chain still needs a robust way of managing performance, a system, regular reviews, and honest check-ins rather than a relationship you only revisit when something's gone wrong. That means genuinely tracking the detail for every attending engineer: insurances, accreditations, RAMS, and DBS checks - non-negotiable in plenty of settings, and absolutely critical anywhere near a school or vulnerable people. And feedback has to flow both ways. Sharing real client feedback back with your supply chain, the good and the difficult, is one of the simplest things that gets skipped, and one of the most important; a supplier who never hears how they're actually doing can't improve, and you lose the chance to fix a small problem long before it becomes the reason the whole relationship breaks down.
It's funny… Every conversation I have about FM and building maintenance seems to circle back to the same thing, whatever angle we start from. Employees, clients, colleagues, supply chain partners - it's all about the people, and the outcome always comes down to whether everyone's genuinely working as one team rather than a set of separate contracts pointed at each other. Get that right, and the rest of it, whether its in-house, outsourced, hybrid or otherwise - tends to sort itself out.