Editorial

Citation

Finch, E. (2002), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 20 No. 11/12. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2002.06920kaa.001

Editorial

Just how old is facilities management? This is a question that has challenged me for some time in an attempt to clarify its origins. Another question that arises from this is whether we can rediscover some useful approaches adopted in earlier eras. To this end I have chosen just one example of a historic perspective that is both revealing and challenging.

Facilities management has undoubtedly drawn on many of the principles of factory automation. Ideas of division of labour and accompanying division of functional space are fundamental to the factory concept. Each functional space is designed and operated according to the specific activities in the space. However unlike industrial applications where physical products are moulded and crafted, information is the key resource in most modern day commercial facilities. The radical paper by Stone and Luchetti (1985) in the 1980s proposed the concept of "activity settings" that have now become so familiar in modern office environments as to almost go unnoticed. At the time when the paper was written, designers were busily trying to perfect the perfect workstation that could support every type of business activity. The paper by Stone and Luchetti rejected this approach arguing that no one workplace would ever satisfy all the needs of the modern business environment.

On a recent visit to Hampton Court, one of the UK's royal palaces, I was struck by evidence of facilities management in the sixteenth-century kitchens. The kitchens at Hampton Court were extended by Cardinal Wolsey in 1514 and were increased by Henry VIII 15 years later to provide 3,350m2 of food production capacity. This would provide sustenance for a household of 1,200 people. The Tudor kitchens consist of a complex of around 50 rooms approached by a separate gatehouse to the main entrance. Above this entrance the Board of the Greencloth met to administer the operations of the kitchens and monitor supplies coming into and out of the palace. The kitchens were divided into 15 separate offices or sub-departments such as the spicery (which stored spices), the confectory (for sweets and pastries) and the pastry (which made pastry cases and crusts). Each of these offices was arranged around numerous kitchen courtyards. Downstairs the staff undertook their duties and upstairs they had their sleeping quarters. Assembly of the food took place in the Great Kitchens before being passed out through the hatches and carried upstairs to waiting courtiers. Today you can still see the kitchens loyally reproducing what it looked like at the time.

What is most striking about this kitchen is the extent of "process engineering" involved in the various specialised offices. The juxtaposition of rooms is carefully arranged to enable the various specialists to move conveniently between spaces and to allow the efficient carriage of food through the preparation stages.

So I am left with the impression that the Fordist revolution is predated by the royal kitchen which no doubt was reproduced across many European palaces. One might say that the industrial revolution stole many of the ideas from facilities management in the royal courts.

(Details about Hampton Court and other Royal Palaces in the UK can be found at: http://www.hrp.org.uk/)

Edward Finch

ReferenceStone, P.J. and Luchetti, R. (1985), "Your office is where you are", Harvard Business Review, Vol. 63 No. 2, March/April, p. 102.