Sharpening their skills

Now that large companies of all kinds have begun to restructure their often very lucrative real estate portfolios, the golden age has begun for Facility Management (FM) firms. Institutional investment banks who lack experience in property management, have been turning eagerly to specialist firms, the number of whom has been increasing steadily Facility Management is a relatively new concept which sprang up in Poland around 1997, along with modern office buildings and retail centres. Its relative novelty in Poland is reflected in its rather ambiguous definition and the lack of a concrete translation into the Polish language. "Facility Management is one of the constituents of Property Management," says Grzegorz Pytkowski, President of GP Bis. "The term embraces all types of property services which ensure the efficient functioning of buildings." Bogdan Zasada, Head of the FM Division for EC Harris, advocates a wider definition of the term, as is accepted b