It’s fascinating to see the Home Office shift strategy here appointing Sodexo not just as a service provider but explicitly to help build the Home Office’s own in-house FM function across 677 UK assets. Sodexo UK+2TWinFM+2
On the surface this may feel counter-intuitive in the FM world (“why hire an external partner if you plan to bring it in house?”). But this represents a very clever hybrid model: use external expertise and infrastructure to fast-track capability building, then hand over to an internal team with the benefits of better control, visibility, and alignment.
From my perspective as a facilities management recruiter, this signals a couple of key implications:
1. There will be a growing demand for in-house FM leadership roles those capable of taking the knowledge and process maturity built by outsourcing partners and converting it into a sustainable internal function.
2. Meanwhile, outsourcing firms will increasingly position themselves as capability-builders, not merely “doers” of work. For senior candidates this means their value proposition may need to shift: not just “deliver this contract”, but “help the client transition, upskill their teams and embed long-term capability”.
I’d be curious to know: what are the mechanisms the Home Office is using to ensure that knowledge and process are successfully transferred in the five-year term? And what happens to the legacy supplier estate once the internal function is live is it a phased handover, a full insource, or a hybrid model?
All told, this looks like a forward-looking model: using external scale now, building internal capability for future resilience. As recruiters we should keep an eye on the ripple effect in the FM labour market more roles in “transition & transformation” of FM operations in government and large organisations.
- Peter Forshaw
