Handing a Building to a Facilities Management Company: Mobilisation Done Properly

The first ninety days of an FM contract decide the next three years. The sequence for transferring a building without losing control of it.

Mobilisation is where an owner either keeps control of their building or quietly transfers it along with the service. The difference comes down to who holds the asset register, the access credentials and the system documentation at the end of the process, and whether performance is measured against a document both parties agreed before the provider started.

Before stage one

Begin mobilisation planning before the contract is signed, not after. The information the incoming provider needs is the same information you should already hold: the asset register, the maintenance history, the system documentation, warranty positions and the statutory inspection record. If you cannot produce these, the first task is building them, and that work belongs to you rather than to the incoming provider.

• Confirm the asset register exists and reflects what is physically installed.
• Collect statutory inspection records and identify any that are out of date.
• List every system with proprietary access and establish who holds the credentials.
• Identify warranties still in force and what the provider must do to preserve them.
• Agree the mobilisation period and the point at which the provider assumes responsibility.

Stage 1: Verify the asset register against the building

Walk the building with the incoming provider and check the register item by item. Equipment is frequently different from the record: substituted during construction, replaced after a failure, or added without documentation. Verification before the contract starts prevents the common dispute in which a failed item is claimed to be outside the agreed scope because it was never on the list.

• Deliverable: A verified asset register signed by both parties as the contractual baseline.
• Owner: Owner and incoming provider jointly.
• Approval gate: Both parties sign the register before the service commencement date.

Stage 2: Transfer documentation and access

Hand over manuals, as built drawings, commissioning records, test certificates, warranty documents and the previous maintenance history. Separately, deal with system access: building management system logins, fire panel access, lift controller arrangements, access control administration and the energy monitoring platform. Administrator rights stay with the owner, with the provider given operator level access.

• Deliverable: A documented handover index and an access register naming every credential and its holder.
• Owner: Owner, retaining administrator rights throughout.
• Approval gate: The owner can still log into every system without the provider.

Stage 3: Agree the planned maintenance schedule in detail

The contract names frequencies; mobilisation turns them into a dated schedule with task lists per visit. Review it against the manufacturer requirements and against the local operating conditions, since a generic schedule will under service equipment in a dusty environment. Agree what each visit produces as a record, because a report recording attendance rather than measurement is worth very little.

• Deliverable: A twelve month schedule with task lists and the report format agreed.
• Owner: Provider preparing, owner approving.
• Approval gate: Every item on the verified register appears in the schedule.

Stage 4: Close the statutory and warranty gaps before transfer

Identify inspections that are overdue, certificates that have expired and warranties whose conditions are not being met. Decide explicitly who closes each gap and by when. Transferring a building with open statutory items simply moves the problem, and when it surfaces later the two parties will each produce a reading of the contract that places it with the other.

• Deliverable: A gap list with an owner and a date against every item.
• Owner: Owner, with the provider advising on what is required.
• Approval gate: No item transfers with an unassigned statutory gap.

Stage 5: Set the performance measures and the reporting

Agree a small number of measures that genuinely describe performance: planned tasks completed on time, response times achieved by fault category, statutory compliance currency, energy consumption against the same period last year, and open defects by age. A long list of measures nobody reviews is weaker than five that are examined monthly in a meeting with the right people present.

• Deliverable: A one page monthly report format agreed before the first month ends.
• Owner: Owner defining, provider producing.
• Approval gate: The first monthly report matches the agreed format exactly.

Stage 6: Run the first ninety days actively

Attend site during the early visits, read the first reports in full, and challenge anything vague. Mobilisation sets expectations: a provider who learns in the first month that reports are read carefully behaves differently for the rest of the contract. Record issues as they arise rather than saving them for a quarterly review, when the detail has faded.

• Deliverable: A log of mobilisation issues raised, with responses and resolution dates.
• Owner: Owner or asset manager, present and visible.
• Approval gate: A formal ninety day review held with the provider senior management.

Stage 7: Plan the exit from the first day

Agree now what happens at the end: the records that return to you, the access credentials that are revoked, the notice period, and the handover obligations to an incoming provider. Exit terms negotiated at the start are reasonable, and exit terms negotiated during an unhappy termination are not. Keep taking copies of records throughout, rather than relying on a clause.

• Deliverable: Documented exit obligations plus a routine of monthly record copies held by the owner.
• Owner: Owner, supported by a licensed adviser on the contract wording.
• Approval gate: A copy of the current maintenance record sits with the owner every month.

Handovers between stages

The crucial joint is between the outgoing arrangement and the incoming provider, where history is lost. Insist that records transfer in a usable form and take your own copies before the outgoing party leaves. The second joint is between the contract and the schedule, because a contract naming frequencies without task lists allows a visit to be recorded as complete when very little was done. Both are closed by documents agreed during mobilisation rather than by goodwill afterwards.

How you know it is finished

Mobilisation is complete when the asset register is signed by both parties, the documentation and access position is recorded with administrator rights retained by you, the schedule covers every registered item, statutory gaps are closed and the first monthly report arrives in the agreed format. Obligations around workforce, safety and statutory inspections are set by the relevant authorities and change from time to time, so confirm the current position during mobilisation and have a licensed adviser review the contract before it is signed rather than after the first dispute.

Domira works on buildings that already exist: surveying what is installed, specifying the systems that have to be replaced, and running maintenance and refurbishment work around the people using the property. Tell Domira which asset you are responsible for and we will say what we would inspect first.