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Baachu Talk FM Podcast

A Podcast For Facilities & Workplace Service Professionals

Episode 2: Martin Pickard

Baachu Talk FM is a new show produced by Baachu Rain and hosted by Baskar Sundaram where top FM leaders discuss their work journeys to success. My podcast brings fascinating conversations with some of the most experienced insightful facilities services people in the world straight to listeners all over the world!

Join me, Baskar Sundaram on Baachu Talk FM as I explore the world of Facilities and Workplace services thru human stories.

You have the potential for even greater impact and a more satisfying legacy. Listen Now

Today's Guest is Martin Pickard

Martin’s career in facilities began as a mailroom assistant in 1970. For nearly 50 years he has worked as Facilities Manager, Service Provider, Trainer and Consultant in operational, strategic and leadership roles. He has been CEO, Director and a Non-Executive Director of many facilities related businesses and organisations.

Known to many as The FM Guru, he was involved in the creation of many of the building blocks of modern facilities management including the AFM, IFMA UK and the BIFM. Martin was twice President of the IFMA UK Chapter and is a Fellow of both the IWFM and the RICS.

Martin has been a regular speaker and facilitator at FM conferences around the world since the 1980s and a prolific writer of articles and white papers on facilities management. His “What FM’s Do” mindmap has been used by FM organisations, magazines and educational establishments all over the world.

Awards include seven from the British Institute of Facilities Management including two for FM Journalism and being named by FM World as one of the 20 FM Pioneers. In 2015 he received the BIFM Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the FM profession. In 2016 PFM Magazine gave him their Lifetime Achievement award for his contribution to the Facilities industry.

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019 Martin is now semi-retired, dividing his time between consultancy work for selected clients, charitable activities and creating new poetry and art.

In this episode, we will discuss Martin’s,

Beginning of career in the mail room.
Post Office Safety Department work was the next step from Mail room with a lot of paper work.
Move to Suffolk and back to London.
Role with Cellnet where he later became Facilities Manager and worked for 12 years.
Entry to the Citex Company where he managed all of the services for clients like Cisco and Microsoft.
Move to Reliance Integrated Services and work in setting up their Facilities business and became CEO.
Role in setting up FM Guru and where they did training and consultancy.
First-hand experience in watching the changing trends and sophistication of FM industry by the decades.
Various roles with IFMA and IWFM and the growth of the organization
Experience and ideas on pattern makers and workplace futures.
Encounter with Parkinson’s Disease.
Influences in his fifty year long career.
Life during the pandemic.

Few random questions

• What’s the best and worst purchases you made in life?
• If you could create one rule that everyone in the world should follow, what will it be?
• If you could visit any place in the world right now, where would you go?
• What takes you out of your comfort zone?
• What was your favourite toy as a child?
• Do you have any favourite book and do you relate to a book character?
• Who haven’t you seen or met in a long while and hope they are doing okay?
• Do you have a favourite sport?
• If you are asked to make a dish for a person, what would you cook?
• What pop group or music group would you give a perfect ten?
• If you could live a life in the past, which period would you choose and why?

Key Nuggets

Facilities is a career where ordinary people, without a degree, work their way into leadership roles and management roles.
Before iPad I used to have an Encyclopaedia to find what things mean.
My boos at the time told me to not to throw away my career on a crazy idea like telephones with no wires.
For me the best place in the world is in the Bedfordshire country side with my wife and dog on a sunny day.
I got the idea that operating all of these as separate services was silly and I need to bring together as a single team.
You need to be your own marketing department. Don’t let yourself be invisible, it is a waste of time.
I strongly advice anybody in FM who’s a supplier to spend some time as a customer and if you are a customer, spend some time as a supplier. You need to know both the sides of this job.
Remember the people. Technology supplements the services we can provide, enhances it, but it’s still the people that matter.
If I am not the FM Guru, if I’m not doing FM for umpteen hours a day, I didn’t quite know who I was.
She said people who look after the buildings and the services, that’s just where we put people who are not good at anything. But I said I’d like to do that job.
Although there’s evolution, somethings remain the same.
2010 to 2020, the eleven-year period without a recession, was the longest peacetime period without a recession since the Napoleonic war.
We don’t have a voice. FM is a 120-billion-pound industry, employing around 3.5 million people, 8% of GDP, doesn’t have a voice in Parliament.
The profession with the 2^nd highest mortality rate during covid were security guards.
Parkinson’s disease does not change who I am, just what I can do.
We have moved on from earlier social evils, and yet, every now and then, we seem to step back and seem to forget to be kind.

Contact Martin Pickard

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