Facilities keeps landing on your desk as a problem you did not create and cannot seem to put down. Costs climb, service slips, and the same issues return no matter who is in charge.

The reason is rarely effort or competence. It is how the institution set the function up: the decision rights, governance, and accountability that were never designed to let FM perform.

Executive FM finds that upstream design flaw and fixes it, so the function runs on design rather than heroics and the decisions the institution makes about FM become defensible.

Most FM leaders know this pattern. You raise the same concerns and very little changes. The urgent crowds out the important. Priorities that shape FM are set elsewhere, then arrive as decisions already made. The department is held accountable for outcomes it did not meaningfully help define.

Underneath that frustration is a quieter problem: FM has lost structural control over its own future and the institution can no longer depend on FM to operate predictably.

FM leadership lacks the authority and capacity to correct the conditions producing the instability without the support and active engagement of the executive responsible for the function.

Facilities management consulting for universities, colleges, and polytechnics.

When Facilities Management Keeps Becoming a Problem, the Cause Is Rarely Facilities Management.

Persistent FM Strain Is a Design Problem, Not an FM Problem.

Executive FM helps FM leaders see where they stand, make a case the institution can actually hear, and build an executable plan to restore the mandate, governance, and decision authority the FM function needs to lead its work rather than merely absorb it.

Executive FM establishes three things leadership needs to move forward:

🍁 What is actually driving the instability

🍁 Which conditions FM can correct and which require institutional decisions

🍁 What must change, in what order and under whose authority

Outcomes we have delivered to our post-secondary clients include:

🍁 leadership can distinguish capacity constraints from structural failures

🍁 institutional priorities enter FM through defined decision pathways

🍁 authority is aligned with the outcomes FM is expected to deliver

🍁 work can be prioritized without repeated executive escalation

🍁 capital, operations and institutional planning operate as a connected system

🍁 leadership has an evidence-based case for investment, restructuring or governance change

🍁 the improvement agenda is sequenced around available capacity

🍁 performance depends less on individual intervention and institutional memory

Build an FM Function You Can Lead, Not One You Must Constantly Rescue

How We Work: Relief, Reset, and Legacy

The approach can be outlined in three phases. Thoroughly understand the current situation with an unbiased and evidence-based perspective. Tackle enough quick wins to generate operational relief that reduces immediate pressures. Use this respite to redesign only what needs to be redesigned. Leave a legacy and operate the department in a manner that sustains the changes and embeds a continuous improvement mindset.

When To Engage

The right entry point depends on whether you need immediate diagnosis or an objective baseline.

When something is clearly not working

Leadership has changed, pressure is building, or something is clearly not working. You need to understand what is driving instability before deciding what to do about it.

austerity measures
leadership transition
chronic firefighting, burnout, and exhaustion
escalating costs and service pressure

When you need to know where FM actually stands

Operations may appear stable, but the institution lacks an objective view of FM capability, structural health and readiness for future demands. The immediate need is a credible baseline before problems become crises.

strategic planning or restructuring
new institutional demands
uncertainty about FM maturity or capacity

When Leaders Engage Executive FM

For universities, colleges and polytechnics where facilities instability is affecting institutional performance while driving burnout, escalation, rework and budget pressure inside FM.

Associate Vice President or Director of Facilities Management

You can see that the problems are structural, but the demands of daily operations leave little capacity to diagnose and redesign the system from within.

You need an experienced partner who understands both institutional dynamics and FM operations.

Vice President of Finance and Administration

You are accountable for FM performance but do not have enough visibility into the operating conditions driving the results.

You need an independent, evidence-based assessment that clarifies the problem, the institutional risks and the decisions required.

Incoming Facilities Management Leader

You have inherited a function under pressure and need to understand its structural condition before changing the organization, strategy or improvement agenda.

An objective baseline helps distinguish immediate priorities from deeper operating model issues.

Why Executive FM

Grant Sommerfeld, President and Founder of Executive FM Consulting Ltd., has served 17 years as a Chief Facilities Officer in health care, municipal government, and post-secondary. He holds an MBA and three professional certifications in facilities management and one in management consulting. He has certified executive training credentials in executive leadership and strategic planning from Cornell, the London School of Economics, HEC Paris. INSEAD, and the Columbia School of Business.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, President of the IFMA Facilities Management Consultants Council, and a published author.

This is not advisory from the outside looking in. We are grounded in the operational and executive reality of running large, complex FM functions.

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