In both private and federal sectors, continuing financial and regulatory pressures, and mergers, consolidations, and acquisitions have led to the long-term trend to downsize or ''right size'' organizations and to reshape structures and processes fundamentally. In the private sector, many changes have been forced by ever growing competition and shorter product cycles—on the order of 18 months for many high-technology businesses. In the federal sector, recent legislative and executive actions—notably, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994, the Federal Acquisition Reform Act of 1995, and Vice President Gore's National Performance Review—have prompted federal innovations and experiments that are widely viewed as the greatest transformations in federal government in the last 30 years or more. Several speakers suggested that facilities managers should recognize that changes in operating procedures and functions will continue into the foreseeable future and should incorporate plans to manage such change into their long-term strategic planning.

Today, participants emphasized, communication in general is increasingly important in facilities management of any kind. The growing multidisciplinary nature of facilities management alone makes mutual understanding of the different roles and requirements involved essential. Moreover, open and frequent communications among employees and between employees and management are required for good business process reengineering. Communications between government and industry are also required for government to identify and adopt those commercial practices that will serve it best. Participants noted that interagency cooperation in exchanging best practices has additionally been employed to mutual benefit, and might be developed further.

According to several speakers, communicating effectively with the building users or clients is essential in this new environment for the facilities manager to understand users' needs. They emphasized that facilities managers should learn to "market" their services to clients, clearly articulating how facilities contribute to agencies and their missions. Further, to know the customer well, facilities managers must be full