by Rebecca Walker — September 24, 2010—The economy may be improving, but the majority of facilities managers fear more corporate failures are on the horizon, according to the latest FM 100 Poll from the British Institute of Facilities Management.
Two out of three FMs thought more facilities firms would collapse in the next year or two, in the wake of the recent failure of the social housing repair business Connaught.
More firms will go bust with good reason, according to several respondents. In the past several years, there has been a history of low-margin bidding especially for public sector contracts—that will return to haunt those winning firms after October’s Whitehall Spending Review.
However, there is some blame to be placed on the client who admittedly is even now before the review under pressure to cut costs, up to 40 percent in some cases. The problem from the client side is that they are not questioning the bids that come in significantly lower than the competition. “Clients are accepting prices that any reasonable person should be questioning,” said an FM provider. “None of our operating costs have gone down over the past few years and yet bids are going down.”
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