Outsourced Facilities Management: 9 Duties That Stay With You
Outsourcing facilities management is sensible for most office-based organisations. A provider brings specialists, buying power and coverage that a two-person internal team cannot.
What it does not bring is relief from the duties. The contract moves the work and, if it is well written, a share of the commercial risk. It does not move the legal obligation, and it does not move the consequence of nobody noticing that something stopped happening.
This is the same conclusion reached elsewhere in this series about agency workers, contractors and employers of record, applied to buildings. Nine duties.
1. The duty does not transfer with the contract
Start with the principle, because everything else follows.
Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 places duties on the employer toward its employees. Section 4 places duties on those with control of premises, to any extent, made available as a place of work for people who are not their employees.
Both attach to control and to the employment relationship. Neither is discharged by procuring a service.
What a contract can do is allocate performance and liability between the parties. What it cannot do is remove your obligation to the people in your building.
2. Know what the contract actually covers
Obvious, and routinely not done by the people who need to know.
Most organisations have an FM contract negotiated by procurement and property, and a safety function that has never read it. The result is confident assumptions in both directions.
Establish, in writing: which statutory inspections and tests the provider performs, which they arrange but do not perform, which sit with the landlord, and which are excluded entirely. The last category is the one that matters, and it is frequently larger than expected.
3. Fire: the responsible person follows control, not the contract
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The duty most often assumed to have moved.
Article 3 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 defines the responsible person as the employer where the workplace is under its control, and otherwise the person in control of the premises. Article 5 extends duties to any person with control to any extent, so far as the requirements relate to matters within their control.
An FM provider with control over maintenance may pick up duties under article 5. That does not remove yours as the employer. In a typical arrangement there are several duty holders: you, the landlord, the managing agent and the provider.
Article 22 requires responsible persons sharing premises to cooperate and coordinate, and since October 2023 to take reasonably practicable steps to identify each other and share contact details. A provider is not a substitute for knowing who the others are.
4. Performed and owned are different things
The distinction that prevents most failures.
For every statutory check, two questions: who performs it, and who owns the outcome? A provider can carry out an inspection perfectly and the finding can sit unactioned for a year because nobody on your side was watching.
The specific failure to look for is remedial work. Inspections frequently sit inside the contract and remedials fall outside it, requiring separate approval. That gap is where unsatisfactory reports go to die.
5. Their subcontractors are still working in your building
Providers subcontract, which is normal and changes nothing about your position.
People you have never met will work on your fire alarm, your electrical installation and your air conditioning, and they are people affected by your undertaking. Section 4 duties attach to your control of the premises regardless of whose payroll they are on.
Two practical points. Ask how the provider assures the competence of its supply chain, and satisfy yourself the answer is real. And make sure your building induction and permit arrangements apply to everybody, not only to contractors you engaged directly.
6. Information has to flow both ways
The failure with the highest consequence and the lowest cost to fix.
Downwards: regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 requires information about asbestos to be given to anybody liable to disturb it. If your provider's electrician drills a wall, they need that information, and it needs to reach the person holding the drill rather than an account manager.
Upwards: what the provider finds is information you need. Damage, defects, failed tests, near misses in your building. Establish what gets reported to you, how quickly, and to whom, rather than discovering the position at the quarterly review.
7. The specification is the compliance
Where the real decisions get made.
A provider delivers what was specified and priced. If the specification omits something, it will not happen, and it will not be the provider's fault.
Two consequences. Somebody with safety competence should review the specification before it goes out, not after the contract is signed. And where a competitive process has driven price down, the scope has usually moved with it, so re-read what was actually bought.
8. How you know it is happening
The assurance question, and most organisations rely entirely on the provider's own reporting.
Three things make assurance real. A register of statutory checks, held by you, showing what is due and when, rather than depending on the provider's system alone. Sight of the actual certificates and reports, not a compliance dashboard showing green. And independent verification periodically, which is the function that independent health and safety audits perform.
A dashboard reports what was entered into it. An audit establishes whether it happened.
9. Transitions are where things fall through
The highest-risk period, and it is predictable.
At mobilisation and demobilisation, records move, systems change, people leave and knowledge disappears. Asset registers arrive incomplete, historic certificates are lost, and the schedule quietly resets.
Three things to insist on: a documented handover of the statutory compliance register and all historic records, a verification that nothing is overdue at the point of transfer, and clarity about who is responsible during the overlap period. Where staff transfer between providers, the people who knew the building informally are the ones most likely to be lost.
The nine, in short
| Duty | Common assumption | Position |
|---|---|---|
| The duty | Transferred with the contract | Attaches to control and employment |
| Scope | Understood | Frequently unread by safety |
| Fire responsibility | Now the provider's | Several duty holders, including you |
| Checks | Performed equals discharged | Performed and owned are different |
| Subcontractors | The provider's problem | In your building, under your control |
| Information | Flows automatically | Needs to be specified both ways |
| Specification | A procurement document | It determines what gets done |
| Assurance | The dashboard is green | Certificates and independent checks |
| Transitions | Administrative | Where records and knowledge are lost |
Rows four and seven are where most failures originate. One is about who watches; the other is about what was bought in the first place.
A short quarterly routine
Four things, taking about an hour.
Open three certificates at random and check the dates, the scope and whether anything was raised.
Ask for the open remedial list and the age of the oldest item.
Walk one area with the checks in mind: extinguisher in place, escape route clear, emergency lighting not in fault.
Ask what the provider found that you have not been told about. The answer, or the pause before it, is informative.
Holding your own statutory register alongside the provider's is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone.
For international groups
Two considerations.
Provider capability varies by country. A global FM contract rarely delivers uniform capability across every market, particularly in smaller offices where the provider subcontracts locally to a firm you have never assessed.
Requirements differ underneath the contract. Several jurisdictions covered in this series prescribe who may perform equipment examinations, on what cycle, and what records must be retained. A contract written to a British schedule will not automatically satisfy them, and the gap usually appears in the smallest entities where nobody is checking.
Our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current as your estate changes.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite acts for the occupier rather than the provider, which is the perspective that matters when the question is whether what was specified is what is happening. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years.
Our health and safety consultants work extensively with legal, insurance, finance and banking and IT and software organisations, most of which occupy buildings they do not own and manage them through a provider.
Our fire risk assessment and asbestos work covers two of the duties above directly, and both are areas where the split between occupier, landlord and provider is most often undocumented.
If your provider reports full compliance and you have not seen a certificate this year, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
