Soft facilities management: what it covers, how it is bought, how it is measured

01

What soft facilities management is

Facility management is usually split into two halves. Hard facilities management, sometimes called hard facility management, looks after the physical aspects of a building, its fabric and systems: heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), electrical and water systems, lifts, fire alarms and the structure itself. Soft facilities management covers the services delivered by people, in and around the building, that keep it clean, safe, welcoming and pleasant to use. Most facilities management services contracts in the UK use this vocabulary, and most facility management teams are organised around it.

The split is a convention, not a legal definition, and organisations draw the line differently. The international standard for facility management systems, BS EN ISO 41001, does not divide services into hard and soft; it sets out how an organisation should manage its facilities as a whole. In the UK the professional body is the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM).

Soft services are not optional extras. Many carry duties that are required by law, whoever delivers them:

• Cleaning: in Great Britain, the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require every workplace, and its furniture, furnishings and fittings, to be kept sufficiently clean (regulation 9), and toilets and washing facilities to be kept in a clean and orderly condition (regulations 20 and 21); COSHH governs the chemicals used.
• Contract security: under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, contracted security officers must hold the appropriate Security Industry Authority licence.
• Waste: the waste duty of care under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 requires waste to be stored safely, passed only to authorised carriers and documented.
• Catering: food hygiene law applies to every staff restaurant, café and hospitality kitchen.

02

What soft FM services include

The core soft FM services in most buildings are:

• Cleaning services: commercial cleaning of offices, washrooms and common areas – daily cleaning, washroom checks and consumables, periodic and deep cleans, window cleaning.
• Security: officers on site, patrols, access control at reception, key holding and alarm response.
• Front of house: reception, visitor management, switchboard and meeting room services.
• Catering and hospitality: staff restaurants, vending and meeting refreshments.
• Waste management: collection, segregation, recycling and waste reduction targets, with the paperwork the duty of care requires.
• Grounds maintenance and landscaping: green spaces, landscape planting, paths and car parks, and winter gritting.
• Pest control: prevention, monitoring and treatment.
• Post and logistics: mailroom, deliveries, porterage and office moves.
• The helpdesk: taking requests and fault reports from occupants and routing them, which sits between soft and hard FM.

Hard FM services, by contrast, cover planned preventive maintenance of plant and systems, reactive repairs, statutory testing and inspection, and building fabric. Some items move between the two depending on the contract: pest control, window cleaning, washroom services and minor works are all classed as soft in some buildings and hard in others. What matters is that the contract says which is which, so nothing falls between two providers.

03

The difference between hard and soft FM in practice

Beyond what is done, hard and soft services differ in how they are specified, staffed and checked:

• Specification. Hard FM is specified largely by asset and task, often using a standard maintenance library such as SFG20 and manufacturers' schedules. Soft FM is specified by area, frequency and outcome: what clean, secure or welcoming looks like, and how often.
• Workforce. Soft services are labour-intensive, often delivered by large teams on early, late or night shifts, with many staff employed by contractors and transferring between them under TUPE when a contract changes hands. Hard FM relies more on qualified engineers and specialist subcontractors.
• Evidence. Hard FM has well-established records: maintenance job sheets, test certificates and log books, often held in a CAFM system. Soft FM's record is thinner and more scattered: check sheets on doors, patrol logs, audit scores and complaints.
• Visibility. Occupants rarely notice hard FM until something breaks. They notice soft FM every day: the state of the washrooms, the welcome at reception, the queue at the café. It shapes the occupant experience, wellbeing and, many organisations believe, productivity, even though that is hard to measure directly.

Neither half works alone, and in good facility management the FM team treats them as one service. A cleaner who reports a leaking tap, or a security officer who notices a failed light on patrol, is soft FM feeding hard FM. The handover between the two, and whether reported problems are closed, is one of the best tests of a facilities team.

04

How soft FM is contracted

There are four common models, and many organisations mix them:

1. In-house: the organisation employs its own cleaners, officers or reception staff. Direct control and loyalty, but the organisation carries the management load, recruitment and cover.
2. Single service contracts: a separate specialist contractor for each service, such as one cleaning contractor, one provider of security services and one of catering services. Specialist expertise and competition on each service, but more contracts for the facilities manager to run and more boundaries between providers.
3. Bundled services: two or more soft services with one provider, such as cleaning and security, or cleaning, waste and washroom services. Fewer contracts and some shared supervision, while keeping the scope manageable.
4. Integrated or total facilities management: one provider responsible for hard and soft services together, delivering some itself and managing subcontractors for the rest. The terms integrated FM (IFM) and total FM (TFM) are used in different ways, so define the scope rather than relying on the label. One point of accountability, but a single large contract is harder to change and the client depends on the provider's weakest service.

There is no universally best model. Single service contracts suit buildings with a strong client-side facilities manager; bundled and integrated contracts suit estates that want fewer suppliers and a single report. Whatever the model, write down the scope, the interfaces between providers, and who owns each type of reported problem. Our guides to the facilities management contract and the facilities management SLA cover the documents in more detail.

05

How soft FM performance is shown

Soft FM performance is usually managed through a service level agreement and a handful of key performance indicators for each service, reviewed at a monthly meeting. The measures that work best combine three kinds of evidence:

• Delivery: did the scheduled on-site work happen? Cleaning checks completed against those scheduled, patrols completed, reception opened on time, waste collections made.
• Quality: was it done well? Cleanliness audit scores, mystery visits, inspection findings, and occupant satisfaction surveys.
• Response: were problems put right? Helpdesk requests and reported issues closed within the agreed time, and repeat faults.

Many contracts measure quality well and delivery poorly, because audits are scheduled and scored while daily work is recorded on paper, if at all. The monthly report then relies on audit scores and complaint counts, and a service can look fine on paper while the day-to-day operations slip between audits. Payment mechanisms that deduct for failures only work if failures can be shown. For the measures themselves, see facilities management KPIs and the facilities management monthly report.

06

Where the soft FM record fails, and where SiteClara fits

Soft FM is visible every day and evidenced once a month. The washroom that ran out of paper at 11am, the patrol point nobody reached, the spill reported to whoever happened to be passing: these rarely reach the monthly report except as a complaint.

SiteClara records the daily delivery of soft services at the location. A printed QR poster at each place, with an optional NFC tag behind it, lets cleaning staff or security officers confirm a scheduled check with a scan or a tap on their own phone, with no app to install. Staff see what is due there and mark it done, or explain what stopped them, record jobs, and report issues with a photo; a reported issue goes onto the team's list of jobs until someone closes it, and a supervisor can escalate a job to the building manager, who can answer it. Two companies can share a site, for example a cleaning contractor and a security provider, each with its own staff, forms and approval. Each morning at 8am the approved report for the previous day goes to nominated management or client contacts, showing what was reported, completed and still open, and how scheduled checks went.

07

Further reading, and a list to take away

The Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM) publishes professional guidance and qualifications for facility managers. BS EN ISO 41001 and its companion vocabulary standard are available from the British Standards Institution. The Health and Safety Executive covers workplace welfare and COSHH, the Security Industry Authority covers licensing for contract security, and GOV.UK publishes the waste duty of care code of practice. For the hard FM side, see our guides to planned preventative maintenance and the CAFM system.

Before you buy or review soft FM services, check that:

• every service is listed, and the line between hard and soft is written down;
• the legal duties behind each service are known and owned;
• the contracting model fits the strength of your client-side team;
• interfaces between providers, and who owns each reported problem, are clear;
• each service has a few KPIs, covering delivery, quality and response;
• daily delivery is recorded as it happens, not reconstructed for the monthly meeting;
• reported problems from soft services reach hard FM, and are closed.