Executive FM helps post-secondary institutions diagnose why recurring Facilities Management strain persists and redesign the governance, decision rights, workflows, priorities, and accountability systems shaping performance. The environment around FM is moving faster than the function can adapt. Demand rises, resources tighten, and firefighting becomes the operating model.

The result is predictable: firefighting becomes the operating model.

Regain Control, Lead Proactively, and Build a Facilities Management Function That Does Not Depend on Heroics, Luck, or Constant Intervention

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.

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

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.

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.

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.