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The experiment introduces nutritional labelling, healthier products and product placement designs to the hospital vending machines, to promote healthy lifestyles.

The site where this experiment happens is a major London hospital, serving over a million patients every year. In the experiment, the hospital’s snack and drink vending machines are redesigned. The impact on product sales are then analysed using robust statistical methods.

Nutritional labelling has a statistically significant impact on product sales. Less of the unhealthiest products are sold. Healthier products and product placement designs have a larger impact but with less statistical significance. They require further testing.

Experts in service operations can use this experiment’s regression modelling methods. The methods are ideal for measuring change over time in counting data sets in complex real world environments.

There are suggestions for practical vending service change in this research. They are in line and add a practical example to Government policy guidance.

People using the redesigned vending machines have more opportunity for healthy lifestyle choices.

The experiment provides statistical evidence in support of catering for healthier lifestyles.

In the office sector, facility management serves two divergent concerns: the needs of the customer as the facility owner/investor and the needs of the customer as the facility user. This places FM in a potentially powerful position. It should exploit its intellectual capital, realising the unique strategic value of the FM knowledge base, linking, as it does, the knowledge of physical facility performance with the knowledge of business objectives, operations and support services. The generic knowledge chain that links these two divergent areas of concern is described, highlighting the critical importance of the business brief, the operational brief and the design brief in the future exploitation of the facility knowledge base.

The purpose of this paper is to address the need for further development of tools that could be used to mitigate obsolescence within the built environment. Literature reviewed within this paper indicates a distinct gap in research, allowing for rising obsolescence-driven investments within asset systems. In addition to further conceptual development, case study testing is required to validate the use of certain existing methods.

This paper has developed a Boolean obsolescence assessment tool, which was then tested within a case study environment. This year-long case study provided real world data across three asset systems within an operational building.

The findings from this preliminary case study indicate that a Boolean tool of this type has the potential to provide significant insight into obsolescence mitigation. Such a tool, implemented in accordance with onsite asset management processes, has the ability to mitigate and avoid obsolescence-driven investments.

This case study is limited because of its length and size. To mitigate the effects that may have been captured, this research project has been developed and continued.

The model featured within this paper originated from an untested obsolescence indexing technique. This model was adapted and extended to improve its accuracy and functionality, which also involved adding weighting mechanisms, resulting in not only an original model but a novel set of results because of the current lack of explicit testing of similar models.

Proposes a research initiative for facilities management. Outlines the essential questions that facilities research should be involved in answering and following a general discussion of current research approaches. Develops a model to illustrate these questions. Places the potential areas of facility management research within a framework of training, practice and education. Concludes that facilities management should develop an application research approach to ensure a problem‐oriented, multi‐aspect and collaborative focus around real management problems related to the performance of buildings and use of facilities over time.

This paper focuses on providing a conceptual model for facility management, which has seen sustained economic growth and market development in the past ten years and that it has been one of the more robust service sector employers. It notes that facility management needs to be more closely aligned to a management discipline to enable it to differentiate itself as it develops within the service sector. There are a number of market segments which are brought together by facility management operations: property, built environment, catering, cleaning, security and engineering services are but a few. In order to provide more coherence to the facility management sector, these activities would benefit from being placed within the context of a mainstream management discipline. This paper states that the lack of conceptual or theoretical management framework is perhaps in part the reason why facility management remains misunderstood in the general business sector.

Offers an interpretation of results of a recent study on sick building syndrome and their implications for facilities managers. Demonstrates the need for facilities managers to take a disciplined approach to analysing health problems and invites the use of a model for assessing possible causes. Provides a basic framework for understanding environmental conditions, buildings, work practices, and workers for investigating complaints and causes of sick building syndrome.

A descriptive survey of the journey to work is used to investigate the facilities manager’s scope for addressing the use of public transport as a workplace together with the health and well‐being implications of commuting. The results from a self‐administered descriptive survey of a random sample comprising 127 employees are the data used to explore these issues with a 83 per cent response rate (106/127). The results indicate that 87 per cent used an automobile to commute and 32 per cent reported the journey was stressful. This later finding is consistent with other commuting studies and suggests that facilities managers should consider more fully the impact that commuting has on employee health and well‐being.

This paper introduces the special issue, which includes some papers originally presented at the “Futures in Property and Facility Management II” conference in March 2004. Focuses on the themes of this and a previous conference, several years ago – “Futures in Property and Facility Management”, at University College London in June 1999. The conferences considered the strategic opportunities for property and facility management worldwide, bringing together senior facility professionals, service providers, property clients and academics to debate alternative futures. The first conference focused on four themes; new strategic directions, new performance imperatives, policy and investment and the promotion of knowledge exchange. The second “Futures” conference had four interrelated themes: possibilities for new alignments in the future, real estate dilemmas, work, time and place, and a reform debate.