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Facilities managers' attitudes towards adaptation and mitigation

Facilities managers' attitudes towards adaptation and mitigation

Desai, Apeksha and Jones, Keith (2012) Facilities managers' attitudes towards adaptation and mitigation. In: Proceedings of CIB W070,W092 and TG 72 International Conference: Delivering Value to The Community. Department of Construction Economics and Management, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, pp. 410-415. ISBN 978-0-620-50759-2

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Abstract

Climate change poses a significant challenge to existing built assets and facilities managers will play an important role in addressing the mitigation and adaptation agenda for these assets. Facilities managers’ actions will in turn be informed by their attitudes to climate change uncertainties and risks and on how these are integrated in built asset management plans. This paper presents research findings from an extensive questionnaire survey of UK facilities managers’ attitudes towards climate change risk and the mitigation and adaptation solutions available to them. The paper also examines the usefulness of existing built asset management tool kits to support strategic mitigation and adaptation plans as part of a coherent built asset management strategy. The paper concludes that there is a statistically significant relationship between an individual facilities manager’s environmental inclination and their belief in anthropogenic climate change, and with their perception of climate risks, which are enhanced if they have previous experience of a climate related extreme weather event. The paper also concludes that mitigation is strategically driven through Corporate Social Responsibility strategies whilst adaptation remains reactive and occurs in response to already experienced extreme events. Finally the paper examines the ability of backcasting (as compared to forecasting) to support built asset management planning. Although a number of operational and managerial barriers were identified, including: facilities managers’ attitudes to risk and uncertainty; limited confidence in the future needs analysis; the ability to project a built asset adaptation and mitigation journey; corporate perception and attitude to environmental issues; and personal characteristics and beliefs, the results suggest that facilities managers’ demonstrate the fundamental characteristics and beliefs that would support such an approach.

Item Type: Conference Proceedings
Title of Proceedings: Proceedings of CIB W070,W092 and TG 72 International Conference: Delivering Value to The Community
Additional Information: [1] In Proceedings of the conference was held in Cape Town, South Africa, 23-25 January 2012. It was the first time Working Commission W070 has joined with W092 (Working Commission for Procurement) and TG72 (Task Group for PPP).
Uncontrolled Keywords: climate change adaptation, facilities management, risk perception
Subjects: N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
Pre-2014 Departments: School of Architecture, Design & Construction
School of Architecture, Design & Construction > Sustainable Built Environments Research Group
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 14 Oct 2016 09:23
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/9552

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