The European facility management market is growing at a rapid pace. ROFMA is an important part of this trend by its influence on the local market, being the fourth FM association in Europe that has been awarded the official recognition of the occupation of the facility manager after those in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.
Following the evolution of the real estate sector in this part of Europe, the administration, maintenance and operation of buildings - which correspond to the current and specific meaning of the facility management industry in Romania - carried out by specialized firms appeared relatively late , after 1992, but registered a strong development since 2000.
It is important to mention that at international level, the FM field tends to include a wider range of activities and services, extending to almost the whole universe of support services related to the built environment.
The facility management market in Romania
In order to outline the primary characteristics of the Romanian market, we are considering the main parameters regarding the number of active companies in
the field, the turnover of the companies and the labor force volume in the year 2015 and their evolution compared to the previous period. We talk about 6500 specialized companies, with almost 4% more than 2014 and 71% over 2010, representing over 1% of the total active companies in the national economy in December 2015.
Regarding the growth dynamics in the number of active companies in the facility management market, the sectors that recorded the highest growth in 2015
compared to 2014 are maintenance / operating, with 8.3%, and services support, by 7.8%. The territorial distribution, taken into account according to the ssocial headquarters, indicates the preponderance of these activities in the Bucharest, which, together with the Ilfov county, comprises about 33% of the companies registered in the FM sector, followed by the Cluj counties (5.6%), Timis (4.5%) and Constanta (3.4%).
Another important indicator for this study is the turnover of FM firms, highlighting the value of this sector in the national economy. At the end of 2015,
the total value of the business assets in the entire facility management industry was almost 6.2 billion lei (about 1.4 billion euros), representing 0.85% of Romania's GDP. Comparing to the EU as a whole, where the FM service sector is between 4-5% of GDP, the figure clearly highlights the great potential for
market development in our country.
Looking in-depth, we observe a new series of issues relevant to the Romanian FM sector. For example, compared with 2014, the increase in FM businesses is
5.1%, while compared to 2010, this growth is 48%. As for the market segments, the service support had in 2015 the highest percentage growth of the total
turnover, of 19.2%, followed by the maintenance / operation of buildings, with an increase of 11.5 %. In 2015, about 710 (11%) of companies reported
turnovers of over one million lei, of which almost 200 (3.3% of the total) exceeded five million lei.
The workforce dimension in the FM field shows a total of 130,000 people, which represents about 1.4% of the labor force available in Romania. It is interesting that, compared to 2014, there is a slight decrease of the total number of employees, by about 4.4%, a decrease determined by personnel cuts in security and security (-6.1%) and cleaning (-5.5%), the largest employers in the field. This trend was largely determined by the technology and professional level increase in the domains, which turned to the latest equipment and solutions and benefited from more efficient management. At the same time, the increase of 2.9% in the area of administration / operation of the buildings and 2.3% in the support services segment demonstrates the need for specialized workforce and education in the field.
Other relevant aspects that characterize the Romanian facility management market concern the level of productivity in this field, which stands at 47,670
lei / employee / year in 2015, which is almost 10% higher than in 2014. However, there are notable differences in productivity between segments Of activity
analyzed: for example, the administration / operation of buildings is the most productive segment, with 142,550 lei / employee / year, followed by the support services, with 89,800 lei / employee / year. Unlike these, security services have the lowest productivity, more than four times smaller than building administration / operation services.
The study's data outlines an industry in full swing, with the potential to offer a range of business opportunities, both locally and internationally. Romanian FM now focuses on quality, efficiency and added value, demanding a skilled and qualified workforce, and thus emphasizing the importance of education in the field.
