The Shared Building Portfolio: an exploration and typology

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore shared-use of facilities as a concept that can help organizations to make better, more sustainable use of their building portfolios. The practical aim is to present a typology to help classify, describe and evaluate the different options for sharing facilities from a facility manager’s point of view.

Background (State of the Art) : Space management literature provides examples and concepts for sharing space, such as ‘hot-desking’, within a given organisational and physical setting. However, this literature rarely deals with sharing on a building level or between organisations.Literature on the so-called ‘sharing economy’ deals with sharing itself, but not on buildings and the management of these.

The shared building portfolio, the topic of this paper, draws from both of these. Approach : The paper is the result of a first, explorative study of the topic. Its contents are based on a literature review, a mapping of 20 examples from Europe, USA and Australia, and on primary data from interviews with selected key players in Denmark.

The study has been cross sectional, the approach inductive and the overall research philosophy pragmatism. Results : The typology classifies 4 types of sharing and illustrates ways of organizing and managing the sharing of facilities between different people, building owners and organisations.  Practical Implications: The presented typology is intended for both researchers and practitioners such as property managers of municipalities and larger companies.

It can help them get a better understanding of how they can minimize the need for building new by better utilization of the existing building stock for increased sustainability or as a corporate-socialresponsibility activity. Research limitations: The typology is a work in progress and the result of a first exploration of the concept of shared facilities and does not claim to be fully comprehensive or final.