Facilities Management Risk Assessment: Best Practices for FM Professionals

Facilities management is one of those jobs where you're responsible for everything but in charge of almost nothing.

Think about it. The HVAC contractor shows up to service the air handling units - that's your problem. The cleaning team uses chemicals that need COSHH assessments - your problem. Someone trips on a wet floor in the lobby - definitely your problem. A fire breaks out because of faulty wiring installed years before you started - still somehow your problem.

It's a lot. I know.

But risk assessment doesn't have to be the nightmare it often becomes. Let's talk about how to do it properly without it taking over your life.

The Unique FM Challenge

FM is weird because you're managing risks across disciplines that have almost nothing in common. Legionella prevention in cooling towers has nothing to do with fire safety. Electrical maintenance has nothing to do with cleaning chemicals. Lift servicing has nothing to do with grounds maintenance.

And yet all of it falls under your remit.

Add to that the fact that most of the actual work is done by contractors you didn't hire, using methods you didn't specify, to standards that vary wildly depending on who won the tender.

Your job isn't to do all the assessments yourself. It's to make sure everything's covered - and to prove it's covered when someone asks.

The Big Risk Categories

Building Services

HVAC systems are probably your biggest headache. They sit on roofs (working at height), they contain refrigerants (environmental hazards), and they need regular maintenance that involves electrical work, mechanical components, and sometimes some fairly unpleasant cleaning.

Then there's Legionella. Nobody thinks about it until there's an outbreak, and then everyone thinks about nothing else. Your water systems need proper risk assessment and ongoing monitoring - this isn't optional, it's legal requirement.

Lifts, electrical systems, gas installations... each one has its own regulations, its own inspection regimes, and its own ways of going wrong.

Fire Safety

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. If you're an FM, you probably know it better than you'd like. As the "responsible person" for your buildings, you need fire risk assessments that are actually up to date and actually reflect reality.

Not the assessment that was done three years ago and hasn't been touched since. Not the one that was done before the tenants changed the floor layout. The current one. The accurate one.

And when the fire service asks to see it - and they will, eventually - you need to be able to produce it quickly and explain it clearly.

Contractor Management

Here's where it gets complicated. Your contractors should have their own risk assessments for their activities. But you need to see them. Review them. Make sure they make sense for your specific site.

A generic "working at height" assessment might be perfectly adequate for most situations, but is it adequate for your roof with its specific access arrangements and particular hazards? Maybe. Maybe not. You need to check.

And when contractors turn up without proper documentation - which happens more often than anyone likes to admit - you need a process for handling that. Do they get turned away? Do you issue a permit anyway? These decisions should be made in advance, not on the spot.

Cleaning and General Operations

Cleaning seems straightforward until you start thinking about it properly. Chemical handling (COSHH assessments needed). Slip hazards from wet floors (more incidents than you'd think). Manual handling of equipment. Lone working during out-of-hours shifts.

Your cleaning contractor probably has their own assessments. But do they cover your building specifically? Your particular chemical stores? Your specific floor surfaces?

Permits to Work: Your Best Friend

If there's one thing that separates well-run FM operations from chaotic ones, it's the permit to work system. Hot works. Electrical isolation. Confined space entry. Working at height. These are the activities that can kill people if they go wrong.

A proper permit system forces everyone to stop and think before starting high-risk work. Is the risk assessment in place? Are the control measures adequate? Has the area been properly prepared? Has the right person authorised this?

Paper permits work, but they're slow and they create paperwork nightmares. Digital permits are faster, create automatic audit trails, and can't be "accidentally" lost. Something to think about.

Multi-Site Management

If you're managing a portfolio - and most FM professionals are these days - you've got the added joy of trying to maintain consistent standards across multiple buildings.

Each building has its own quirks. Different systems, different ages, different tenant requirements. But your approach to risk assessment should be consistent. Same methodology. Same templates. Same review cycles.

Otherwise you end up with Building A having excellent documentation and Building B having... well, whatever the previous site manager left behind in a box somewhere.

The Documentation Problem

Let's be honest. FM documentation is a mess in most organisations.

Risk assessments are scattered across shared drives, email attachments, filing cabinets, and someone's desk drawer. Contractor documents are... somewhere. Maybe. Fire risk assessments are probably in that folder, unless they're in the other folder.

When someone needs a document urgently - and it's always urgent - finding it takes longer than it should. And sometimes you find an outdated version and don't realise until it's too late.

Digital systems fix this. Not perfectly - nothing's perfect - but properly. Everything in one place. Searchable. Version controlled. Accessible from wherever you are.

Proving Compliance

FM professionals answer to a lot of people. Building owners. Tenants. Insurers. HSE inspectors. Fire services. Sometimes all of them in the same week.

Each of them wants to see documentation. And they want to see it now, not in three days when you've had time to dig through the archives.

Having well-organised, easily accessible documentation isn't about being neat and tidy. It's about being able to prove - quickly and confidently - that you're managing risks properly. That protects the building. That protects the occupants. And frankly, it protects you.

Making It Sustainable

Here's the thing about risk assessment: it's never "done". Buildings change. Tenants change. Regulations change. Contractors change. Your assessments need to keep up.

Build review cycles into your calendar. Set reminders. Make it systematic rather than hoping you'll remember. Because you won't remember - you've got too much else going on.

And when something changes - new equipment installed, new hazard identified, near miss incident - update the relevant assessments then. Not next week. Not when you get a chance. Now.

The best FM professionals I know treat risk assessment as part of operations, not as separate paperwork to be done when there's time. Because there's never time. You have to make it part of how you work.

The Bottom Line

FM risk assessment isn't glamorous. It doesn't get you promoted or win you awards. But it keeps people safe, keeps buildings operational, and keeps you out of trouble when things go wrong.

Get your systems sorted. Get your documentation organised. Make it a habit rather than a burden.

Because the alternative is finding out at the worst possible moment that something wasn't properly assessed. And that's a situation nobody wants to be in.