MSc. Facility Management

The MSc Facility Management is designed to provide an integrated, coherent, stimulating and challenging curriculum of study in the theory, concepts, methods, tools and techniques of Facility Management, resulting in the development of postgraduates who will be able to lead, champion and develop facility management practices through the application of multi-disciplinary skills and knowledge.

The curriculum offers the appropriate type and level of support as students build their knowledge, understanding and skills to become independent learners for the future.

The curriculum is designed to develop in students a systematic understanding of knowledge and a critical awareness of current issues and/or new insights in relation to facility management. In addition, it will develop a comprehensive understanding of techniques applicable to advanced scholarship. The curriculum is structured to take account of the potentially diverse background of students and the organizations they work.

The overall aim of the curriculum is to produce postgraduates who are able to play a significant role in the development of approaches for applying a contemporary, relevant and meaningful approach to the practice of facility management in their own organisation and the modern business environment in general. This will be achieved through a stimulating and challenging study of theory, concepts and developments in facility management. Students using this knowledge to research and experiment the value inside their organisations. Bringing questions and problems back into the classroom to deepen the concepts in relation to the experience of other students and supervised by professors.

The MSc Facility Management delivers a framework to how the discipline should function through delivering business support services that are strategically applied and integrated with the core priorities of an organisation. The curriculum addresses both macro and micro business drivers of facility management and illustrates the diverse and changing demands put on the contemporary Facility Manager. At the heart of this is the need for Facility Managers to operate within a strategic business environment that addresses the core business needs and changes of organisations.

The workplace is no longer viewed as the epicentre of an organisation. Yet physical workplaces are essential to create and support organizational culture, enables organizational strategy and support business performance. To do so effectively the physical frameworks combined with human-centre services must provide a holistic workplace experience where the end-users can be productive and thrive.

This requires creating environments that support collaborative and concentrative work, while ensuring the end-users well-being and engagement. To do so successfully organizations will need a dedicated resource that can orchestrate these value-adding activities. Those Facility Managers who,
together with HR/IT and CRE, can balance and deliver these requirements will be key to creating innovation and high-performance organizations.

Source: P. Ankertjerne, J. Saunders: the future of outsourcing and perspectives for the Corporate Real Estate and Facility Management Industries

Teaching and assessment

The teaching method is blended learning. The teaching materials are accessible through an online learning environment. Lectures are pre-recorded for download by participants and assignments are set by professors for completion prior to either online or face-to-face sessions where participants will engage with other students on the curriculum.

Each module has multiple online sessions such as pre-recorded lectures, digital classrooms or discussion groups, and one face-to-face session which encounters two days. The face-to-face session will be organised in France or The Netherlands.

During the face-to-face sessions professors offer assignments such as case studies and exercises where participants will be asked to bring in current issues from their own organisation. The assignments will be deepened and discussed during these two days.

The curriculum is assessed solely by coursework assignments for each module including essays and reports. In an essay you have to write on your vision and argument around a particular theme and a report is a research or policy document on a specific topic, mostly of value for the organization the student works for.

The course will be completed with a thesis. A lot of time is spent on personal development throughout the curriculum. To facilitate this, the groups consist of seven to fourteen participants who will be coached by Ifmec during the entire course.

Teaching language

The teaching language will be mainly English as it is an international course. However, with a large group of participants, for each country meetings will be hosted in the native language.