Separate contracts or one integrated contract
What you gain and lose by consolidating FM, and five questions that separate an integrator from a reseller.
Separate contracts let you pick the best provider for each trade and keep competition alive; an integrated contract gives one owner for every fault and one record for the site. Separate usually wins when one or two specialist lines matter most. Integrated usually wins when faults cross trades and reporting eats your month.
The money leaks at the interface
The expensive failures in FM happen between contracts: the cooling fault that is electrical, the leak that is a roof problem, the pest issue that is a cleaning problem. With separate contracts, each provider is right about its own scope and nobody owns the gap.
With an integrated contract, the gap belongs to one party. That is the whole case for integration, and it only holds if the integrator really does own the fault rather than passing it to whichever subcontractor looks closest.
Bundled is not integrated
Some integrated contracts are one invoice over five subcontractors who still report separately, in five formats, and still blame each other. You lose the competition between providers and gain nothing in return.
Integration means one owner for each fault, one priority ladder, one record and one monthly pack, whoever turns the spanner. If the monthly pack arrives as five attachments stapled together, the contract is bundled.
Trade-offs in one table
Separate contracts keep the best provider per trade and the competitive tension. An integrated contract gives one owner for cross-trade faults, one pack and less contract management, at the cost of more dependence on one party.
The last row is the one to negotiate hardest. Dependence on one party is safe only when the exit export is written into the contract before signing.
| Factor | Separate contracts · Integrated contract |
|---|---|
| Best provider per trade | Yes · Only where the integrator self-delivers well or keeps good specialists |
| Owner of a cross-trade fault | Nobody · The integrator |
| Reporting | One report per contract, in different formats · One pack |
| Contract management effort | High · Low |
| Competitive tension | Kept · Reduced, and the monthly record replaces it |
| Dependence on one party | Low · Higher, so the exit export matters |
Five questions for any integrator
Ask which lines they self-deliver, who owns a fault that crosses two trades, whether one pack comes from one record, whether the specialist margin is stated in the quote, and what you receive at exit. Hesitation on the last two marks a reseller.
Ask all five of us too. The answers belong in the contract, not only in the meeting.
- Which lines do you self-deliver, and which go to specialists?
- Who owns a fault that crosses two trades, and how does the ticket show it?
- Will we get one monthly pack generated from one record?
- Is your margin on specialists stated in the quote?
- What do we receive at exit, and in what format?
The middle path: integrate the record, keep the contracts
You can keep separate contracts and still end the reporting chaos. Vendor management and the Evidence OS can run over contractors we do not employ: one register, one due-date calendar, one monthly view.
It is a cheap way to see whether integration would pay before committing to it. After a few months the record shows where the repeat faults sit, and that tells you which lines to integrate and which to leave alone.
A hospital support building with five contracts
A hospital support building in Riyadh has separate contracts for MEP, cleaning, pest control, fire alarm and lifts. The facilities manager spends the first week of every month reconciling five reports. We first run vendor management over all five for three months.
The record shows the repeat faults sitting between MEP and cleaning: blocked drains, wet floors, pest activity near the kitchen. The client integrates those three lines under one contract and keeps the lift and fire alarm contracts separate, now held to a written scope.
- A contract map of every current provider and scope
- A vendor register
- A recommendation per line: integrate, keep and manage, or drop
Questions about consolidating
Will integration cost more?
Sometimes less, because overlaps disappear and reporting stops costing you a week. Sometimes more, if you are buying a margin over specialists. Compare on the same scope.
Do we lose our good specialists?
No. Keep them as managed specialists inside the contract. A specialist who knows your plant is worth keeping; what changes is that their scope is written and their visits are verified.
Can we integrate part of the site?
Yes. Integrate the lines that cause interface faults and keep the rest separate.
What if the integrator fails?
Write exit export and hand-back into the contract before you sign, so the record leaves with you and the next provider does not start blind.
Where this leads
Vendor management
The middle path: one register over the contractors you keep.
Read moreServiceWhole-building O&M
The integrated contract, run on one register and one record.
Read moreCompareIn-house or outsourced
The question before this one, including when in-house wins.
Read moreConsultIntegrated management systems
The same integration logic applied to ISO systems, from ITF Consult.
Read morePart of one system
Every division keeps records to the same standard, so the second one you need works the way the first one did.
Map what you hold today
Send us the list of contracts you hold. The walkthrough turns it into a contract map with a recommendation per line.