$134$

$$ Nigel Slack and Michael Lewis $2008$

Ontario Facilities Equity Management $($OFEM$)$

Facilities management now is a multi$-$billion dollar business in most developed economies.

Facilities management companies offer a range of property management services including

basic maintenance, cleaning, fitting and supplying office equipment, heating and environmental

services, $$disaster recovery$$ services and increasingly, information technology equipment

hosting and leasing.

$$Facilities management is the basic housekeeping of business. It may not be glamorous

but it is vital. It has always been done of course, usually in$-$house by people who often

had other responsibilities. As buildings and services became more sophisticated, the

provision of even standard office services required more cash and more expertise.

Most large companies soon found that companies like OFEM could provide these

services better and cheaper. That is what we have to keep in mind as we move into

providing more $($and more varied$)$ services $$ we have to be better and cheaper than

our customers could do it themselves. If we ever forget that, we will be in trouble$($Guy

Presson, CEO OFEM$).$

The Security Division

Within OFEM, the Security Division looked after the development and installation of security

equipment and systems in client$$s property. These included alarm and intrusion systems,

security enclosures $($safes$),$ surveillance and monitoring systems, and entry security systems. In

fact, entry security systems were becoming particularly important for the company. Many firms

were increasingly security conscious. As companies became more information$-$based they felt

themselves vulnerable to industrial espionage or threats from individuals and groups dedicated

to causing disruption, either for its own sake or to pursue political ends. Entry security systems

had the purpose of permitting entry into various parts of a building only those individuals who

were authorised to be there. Traditionally this had been done using swipe cards or various kinds

of security PIN numbers and codes.

$$Entry security systems are now in routine use. There are very few of our clients who

do not want some kind of personnel security system, and they expect us to be able to

provide it$.$ Financial services companies have been in the forefront of our customers

demanding increasingly tight security. More recently it has been IT$-$based companies

who have made the running in demanding security. Some of our most demanding

clients now are those with large web$-$hosting operations. They demand several levels of

security, as a minimum at the $$building$,$department$$ and $$machine$$ levels. In other

words, individuals need to be checked for access authorization as they enter the

building, when they enter a particular part of the building, and before they can use an

individual terminal to access computer systems. Machine level security has

traditionally been provided using encrypted security passwords. However, passwords

are particularly problematic because they are forgotten, written down or even shared.

In fact it is not difficult to guess many people$$s passwords$($Mirella Freni, Head of

Security Division$).$

Slack and Lewis, Operations Strategy, $2$nd Edition, Instructor$$s Manual

$135$

$$ Nigel Slack and Michael Lewis $2008$

Technological developments

The Security Division was facing a period of technological change in so much as several new

developments in security technology were starting to emerge. These were affecting both what

was known as $$front$-$end$$ and $$back$-$end$$ elements of security systems.

Back$-$end technologies were the systems which record, analyse and interpret the data from frontend

technology such as swipe cards etc. These systems enabled companies to know exactly who

was where, and when. In addition to the use of such information for security purposes, it could

also be used for monitoring employee working hours and so on$.$ Systems were now becoming

available which could detect $$abnormal$$ behaviour in staff. For example, if the same swipe card

was used to enter a building within minutes of it being used to leave the building, this could

prompt an investigation to check that it had not been lost and picked up by an unauthorised

individual. OFEM were considering adopting this type of technology. It would mean working

closely with systems developers to provide a generic system which could be customised to the

needs of individual clients. This would be expensive but the company felt that they could

probably charge clients for the extra services this technology would provide. The systems

themselves were very similar to those used by credit card companies to detect unusual

behaviour but would need some modification. It was estimated that OFEM would need to invest

between C$$2\mathrm{.}5$ million and C$$3$ million over the next two years to have these systems up and

running. The revenues from such an enhanced service were difficult to estimate but