Procurement

Procurement studies the general process of acquiring goods and services: specifying, selecting, negotiating and contracting, regardless of sector.

FM procurement is the applied form of this, with ISO 41012 as the facility-specific framework linking sourcing strategy, market approach and contract form to the particular nature of facility services (labour-intensive, locally delivered, hard to specify on output alone).

• Is the market approach matched to the type of service (commodity versus specialist), or is there one standard process for everything?
• Where does procurement end and contract management begin — is that handover explicitly assigned?

• ISO 41012:2017 — facility management, guidance on strategic sourcing and the development of agreements.
• General procurement literature (Kraljic matrix, category management).

• A procurement process applying category management blindly to FM services misses the specific labour-market dynamics of, say, cleaning or security.

• Sourcing & Contracting

• Market approach and tender design

• Regieorganisatie — managing organisation / intelligent client function

  Procurement fixes the contract form within which the regieorganisatie must later operate.

• ISO 41012:2017.

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• Lowest price used as the sole selection criterion for services where quality depends heavily on frontline staff.

Limited research exists on the effectiveness of ISO 41012-conformant sourcing processes versus informal, relationship-driven procurement practice in smaller organisations.

• ISO 41012:2017, full text and commentary.