Building and Facilities Engineering

Building and Facilities Engineering is a multidisciplinary field of engineering concerned with the physical infrastructure of industrial, commercial, institutional, healthcare, and business facilities. The services are sometimes considered to be divided into "hard services" and "soft services." Hard services include such things as ensuring that a building's air conditioning is operating efficiently, reliably, safely and legally. Soft services include such things as ensuring that the building is cleaned properly and regularly or monitoring the performance of contractors (e.g. builders, electricians).

It is the role of building / facilities engineering to ensure that everything is available and operating properly for building occupants to do their work. The building engineering / facility manager generally has the most influence upon the quality of life within a facility.

One definition provided by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) is:

"A profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology."

This course looks at the principles of operation of the various “hard services” like Air-Conditioning, Pump and Plumbing system, Fire Protection Systems, and Electrical Installation. You will learn some basics and some mediums to advance good practices of Plant Engineering.

We will also look at two “soft services” like Project Management and Preventive Maintenance. These two soft services have always been a subset of Building and Facilities Engineering.