BETTER BY DESIGN
Whether facility managers are coming to grips with something as basic as a faulty elevator, right up to strategising and implementing an organisation’s desire for a new way of working, their only constant is meeting the challenge.
With a vastly varying degree of complexity involved, workplace issues old and new require facility managers to use a new lens. One tool that could prove to be of immense value is design thinking.
Arising out of industrial and product design, the process of design thinking is now being widely applied through corporate life. Essentially, it’s a set of practices that helps organisations and individuals see problems from a new perspective and potentially find atypical solutions.
But, most importantly, according to those encouraging its use within the built environment, the principle underpinning design thinking is to be ‘human centric’. Maureen Thurston, chair of Good Design Australia and global director of Design to Innovate at Aurecon, says facility managers by definition are design thinkers.
“In their stewardship of the building(s) within their portfolio, facility managers are not only accountable to deliver good business practices but, at the end of the day, their ultimate responsibility is to ensure the safety, comfort and well-being of the people within,” Thurston says. “The decisions they make should be on behalf of people – with the goal of making their work environment a great place to be.”
Essentially, Thurston believes: “A facilities manager should be designing backwards from the needs and expectations of the people interacting with the space, not simply following a prescriptive formula.
