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Last week, Umesh Bhutoria (Founder, CEO Xempla) shared an insightful podcast from McKinsey’s Inside the strategy room podcast series. Kevin Sneader, partner at Mckinsey shared his predictions on the top 8 trends that will shape the world in 2021. If we can call ‘binge listening’ an actual phenomenon, then this series has to be there on the playlist of an innovator, lateral thinker, and truth seeker.

We all have been coming across various discussions on how the post covid world will look like, how businesses will function and interact with different stakeholders, how psychological and behavioral changes of the consumers will shape the demand and supply landscape, Inter-dependencies of the businesses and their impact on the end consumers, etc. 

But when it comes to managing the implications on facility management or the commercial real estate industry I often ponder upon the fact that, are we paying due attention? Both for the short and long-term goal setting, are we considering the changing consumer behavior? Importantly does it reflect in our strategic sourcing, contract management, or service delivery mechanisms? 

Responding to the situation created by the pandemic was a primary aspect of change management. Hopefully, businesses are coming up with new strategic initiatives, rethinking their business innovations, and discovering new revenue opportunities as the post covid trends seem to be far more vivid and disruptive in nature.   

In this article let’s examine some of the trends Kevin Sneader has discussed in the podcast and try to find out ways FM can respond or perhaps build upon them. 

Fostering innovation:

Fun fact, Did you know that sir Issac Newton discovered gravity while working from home (in his backyard) during the great plague? He used his time wisely and went on discovering many more theories.

Let it be work from home policies, remote operations, health and safety measures, or even climate-related consensus. Many things used to define the conventional facility management operations have changed in the last 12 – 16 months. The COVID-19 crisis has created an imperative for companies to reconfigure their operations by transforming themselves. 

It’s important that the innovation should not be limited to consumer-facing aspects but also focusing on:

• Hardcore O&M practices, 
• Collaborative tech partnerships 
• Contract structures.   

Hybrid work environment:

According to McKinsey Global Institute’s report, more than 20 percent of the global workforce in sectors such as finance, insurance, and IT could work the majority of their time away from the office without affecting their work. 

Although offices are reopening, It shouldn’t be a matter of simply opening the door. Instead, it needs to be part of a systematic reconsideration of what exactly the office brings to the organization. The fundamental need of coming to the office for the work is getting inspected 

Even after we are witnessing the back-to-office movement in some parts of the world, we can not deny that the work from home is here to stay for a long time and the facility leaders need to 

• Prepare their facilities to operate optimally in the particle occupancy levels.  
• Respond to shared workspaces as it has seen marginal growth
• Workplace design retrofits to maintain air quality and hygiene. 
• Plan to manage assets and teams remotely.

Sustainability is the focus:

In one of our earlier posts, we discussed the recent sustainable activities global organizations and cities are taking part in. From Europe’s ambitious net-zero target to US President Biden’s recent announcement on planning to modernize sustainable building infrastructure, every major government across the world is accelerating its efforts to bring down carbon emissions throughout the value chain.   

It is not just a policy structure that’s making businesses think about their carbon footprints, but the investors are also increasingly trying to greenify their portfolios. They are investing in assets that are carbon-friendly and resilient in nature. This is probably the first time that your building’s energy consumption (resource intensity) may decide whether your next tenant would like to invest in your property or not. 

For facility management firms, sustainability could be a USP to attract new opportunities, but before that, we need to introspect and check whether our teams are prepared for 

• Strengthening data and application maturity for asset maintenance and energy efficiency initiatives  
• Strategic involvement in performance-based contracts 
• Change management for better transparency and resiliency
• Upskilling its workforce to get the best of human-machine collaboration

With proactive leadership from the facility management firms, we can turn this crisis into an opportunity. We sincerely hope that we learn from our understanding of microscopic and telescopic trends and their impacts on the work environment, technology adoption, and consumer behavior.    

#CREate FM 25 Talks is an interview series with CRE change-makers and Doers. With this, we intend to bring out first-hand experiences and best practices on digital transformation, energy management, and sustainability initiatives from industry leaders. 

Umesh bhutoria Interacted with Manoj Bharadwaj to talk about normalizing aspects and to see how an FM company looks at technology from carrying out the perspective and not so much disruption perspective. 

Brief about Manoj Bharadwaj,

A facility management professional, based out of Gurugram, India. He has done his master’s in information technology. after PG he started his professional career with a big multinational company handling global /local client and enterprise applications. He is also a Microsoft certified professional and lean six sigma expert. Now, representing Cushman & Wakefield in their integrated facility management and asset services business as a subject matter expert 

Q.1 Have you seen any big changes in the last 5-6 months in the way IFM works? Largely across hard services, such as maintenance & operations?

I always feel that evolution is unbeatable. We are so agile and adaptive that we are converting the disasters into the opportunity and I must say that the covid pandemic has accelerated the O&M business by bringing technology into the picture. To manage remote facilities from home I need a very agile and simple technology in place to effectively do my job here I would like to cover two major points. 

Let’s start with the aspect of touchless technology or contactless technology. For example, When I enter the office, I either need to sign up to register or need to make an entry into the system, but nowadays people do not want to touch anything. So starting from when you enter into the facility until you leave it, the facility management team needs to focus on how to make your entire experience safe and healthy. That is possible if the application uses Artificial intelligence or a machine learning framework. If any solution is designed or developed without them then I don’t that would survive another year, that’s my gut feeling. 

The next thing I want to cover is the change in mindset, so FM managers and FM leaders are thinking out of the box now, they are trying to reframe or restructure the benchmarking for facility management, with the help of IoT solutions, drone technology, or with the power of AI/ML. They have learned to maximize the efficiency in operations and now that can be managed from home or even from a mobile phone. People are now actually implementing it and focusing on how to keep assets optimized and improve lifecycle. 

Q.2 Pre covid there was no significant attention to a business case on IoT, analytics but now things have been changed. Is it because the contracts are changing (not limited to Cushman and wakefield) which is why FM is now looking to increase productivity and considering technology as allies?

Pandemic has not affected the big business contracts, but I would say that before this situation we had choices, we can manage manually or adapt with technology. But now we have very few options to do it and if we go manually we will survive. 

So we must have those sets of technologies and those sets of tools in place to be productive and efficient. So I need to know the entire thing from the system (application on mobile or laptop) without any need to ask for a technician. 

Q.3 How do you go about starting out trial projects which are not too far-fetched, but also not too short-sighted. Do you have any thoughts that you can share on how you typically prepare for trial projects? 

So most of the organizations right now are managing their businesses from their home right now, and have very limited access to people at the site. So we have realized that the trials for the deployment of any of the technology pieces are crucial nowadays. I am mostly spending a lot of time on risk management and risk analysis of different perspectives so it’s not related to a single piece. You also need to think broadly about the ROI. So I want to point out that there are 4 major ROIs aspects, leaders are now focusing on,

One is the experience of the employee, our contractors, partners, or the delivery champs. I need to deliver a safe and healthy experience to them and to do that, we need to focus on trials because now we have a very good time to spend on trials and we can also do detailed planning for the trials, not just a prototype but serious long term plan and due diligence to create long term strategies 

The second aspect is efficiency and operations. So if I’m working on a project then experience is the number one aspect, I’m giving it to an employer or the business who is running the show. If I am at home and my people are scattered at the facility then how to manage things? So within the trials, we need to make sure that the trial is not just a prototype or just an example but a full proof solution with all the checks and balances.

Q.4 Can you name that one project that you pulled off in the last six months that you are proud of and what learning could your peer group take away? 

Okay, so I only want to share one or two things because, in the past few months, I have delivered technology solutions for dozens of clients, so just wanted to highlight a few of them which are on contactless technology which was challenging for clients to accept and for us to deliver. These solutions were new to clients, partners as well as for us. Another example was the AI-based thermal scanners which are important to capture the temperature as well as recognize whether the person is wearing a mask or not. It will also recognize the frequency of the visits and send specific messages to them about the changing policies and safety precautions the facility is following. 

Another example is a visitor management system where you don’t need to sign or touch a paper. The system will take your photo and information. It will also help you select your beverages during the meeting. And the most interesting part is when it senses that a certain meeting room/team of people asks for a specific beverage then it will automatically recommend the type of beverage next time the person visits the room/ office. So now we have the efficiency as well as the data on how people interact and behave in the facilities. 

Q.5 That means you not only address one problem with the touchless technology but also improve efficiency and productivity as well. So how many such installations have you have implemented across India? 

That’s a big number. But I just want to share the key learning. So it’s not just we are doing it but everyone is trying to explore it now. So I also want to share one more thing on how you have to deliver the key learnings from these projects 

We are managing 50-plus clients so you can imagine the volume of requests and heat of deliverables. however, It is possible only with a good program management approach. So if you have a good program management approach You’ll deliver it flawlessly sitting at your home without going to the site. People are learning project management foundation courses because it comes in handy for managing big clients. It will help you differentiate clients based on a methodology to approach them. So that is going to be the main factor to initiate and deliver something.

The second thing I would say is the good set of tools to manage them and I would highly recommend Microsoft teams. That tool saved 50% of my job of tracking and collaborating with my team stakeholders, partners, and clients. So with that single app, I can manage everything. I have also applied the Six Sigma approach in my day-to-day work. That helped me to be effective in other projects be it a touchless, chatbot or any ERP solutions 

Q.6 How do you go about managing your client’s expectations when you start something, How long do your typical trials last?

The expectation from clients can be anything, but we do think whenever we are establishing a project for a client considering the current scenario. We need to tell them that to establish a foolproof system or the solution, we need to focus on trials and we need your support as well. So without your support, we will not be able to do it. So that is the number one thing.  

We need to check certain things such as the training part, remote working conditions, etc. Even though we are looking for trials for 6 months we need to have a contract for 2-3 years. because now we are spending more time, energy on trials so we need to establish a long-term goal and a relationship with the client which is always a win-win situation for both of the sites for a partner or a client. 

Last month on 22nd April, President Biden pledged to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030 from 2005 levels. The news came up with another announcement to generate 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035 (note that the US is generating 40% of their energy from renewable sources) both were anticipated and highly celebrated decisions among climate change believers.

Rejoining the Paris agreement and focusing on climate change issues have always been on his agenda during the presidential campaign. With the official announcement of the same, he sent a strong signal across the global community that the US will take climate change seriously and do everything to protect it.

But this time these announcements had something in common, we believe it gave impetus to the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda which had already been gaining momentum worldwide amidst the pandemic. Declaration of these targets only emphasis on the united state’s participation in the race.       

Role of commercial buildings 

It is evident that to achieve both the targets, the US Govt has to partner with commercial real estate stakeholders, since the building sector in the US, accounts for 40 percent of the Nation’s energy use and nearly 75 percent of its electricity consumption.

as of now all four approaches have been individually planned and managed by the leading facility management companies.

The race to net zero was already heated during the last presidential term, with many global organizations making environmental commitments not just to save the planet but to attract and retain talented people.

Although this is not the first major boost the green building movement has received in the last couple of months, as last year witness the thousandth company pledging to meet science-based targets that would mitigate climate change and the number of companies making net zero carbon pledges more than doubled over 2019 levels.

But from the investor’s point of view and specifically for sustainable or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds, this is certainly a major backing for both the private and govt sector.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda

Since pandemic tenets are realizing the importance of the built environment on the well-being and productivity of the employees. Sustainable buildings are rising up the environmental, social, and governance agenda as tenants want offices that promote wellbeing and sustainability. the carbon footprint of offices has also become an area of focus for more occupiers. Investing in green buildings is being pushed further up the environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda.

Research from Warburg-HIH Invest found 51 percent of 100 respondents were expecting a higher return on real-estate projects that take ESG into account and 70 percent said ESG is now relevant to their investment criteria.

A similar change has also been observed from the demand side as well, the buildings that aren’t energy-efficient and usually require higher operational spending come at cheaper rates, however now the forward-thinking tenants are inclined to look elsewhere else and more likely to pay higher charges for offices that promote wellbeing and sustainability. Whether we look at investors or occupiers, it seems clear that demand for more sustainable buildings is climbing. According to RICS’ latest Global Commercial Property Monitor, almost 40% of professionals believe that occupier demand for buildings with Green Building Certifications has risen modestly in the past year. 

How close are we to the finish line?

While all the policy, regulatory and social-economical changes the demand for greener buildings is growing, however, it is still not achieved mainstream attention. There are many investors for whom cost economics is still the main deciding factor. Although they express interest in the ESG-related factors, the underlying decisions are still taken on the cost factor. 

Sustainable buildings have so much to prove. They had promised and delivered better work environmental conditions and attracted the early movers. But to sustainability improve the bottom line building developers and facility management firms need more data to track the building performance. More investment cases on sustainability development. 

There is only one way to ensure progress and it is to produce and monitor reliable building data. With the use of technological innovation that has been taking place, performance benchmarking can be developed to ensure all the key building parameters are in place and aligned to improve the building performance.  

How are you managing the ESG agenda? What are the ways your team is approaching sustainable development while ensuring profitability? Do you have facilities management and sustainability strategies aligned?

There is a famous Chinese proverb that goes “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” 

I am sure you must have come across this quote before and there are many versions of It. Some of them are quite bold and sarcastic in nature, depicting the changing definition of an independent human being. Anyway, In today’s work environment, the thought process behind the original proverb still stands true, particularly for the blue-collar workforce. 

In a facility management fraternity, these people become the frontliners to fight against the virus and to ensure continuous operations even amidst this crisis and tough working conditions. From O&M technicians to cleaners, asset operators to security teams everyone has played their crucial roles when the whole world was under life-threatening conditions.    

This international labor day (1 May) we wanted to appreciate the efforts and risks these warriors have taken to achieve new heights of hygiene and operational standards. Hence we wanted to give back something that can practically help them evolve with the changing work environment or leverage the digital transformation and keep them on the edge all the time. And we thought, What could be better than a gift of learning? 

According to PwC, Upskilling or capability building has become one of the most important pillars of success for operation-intensive industries. Facility management, being the labor-centric industry, needs to focus on empowering its employees. Continuous learning and honing their digital and technical skills will be crucial to narrate through the changing environment. 

In this article, we are going to compile all the best resources available for facility management professionals, (specifically in the O&M dept) to improve their skills and learning.  

Online Courses & programs

Signing up for self-paced online courses or degree programs has seen massive growth in recent months. If you are looking for advancing your career option or wants to refresh your theoretical knowledge then this could be an ideal time for you to start. Here, we’ve listed a couple of online programs for early-stage facility management professionals.  

• IFMA professional courses 

Perhaps one of the highly recommended and popular choices of online learning for FM freshers. IFMA provides an exhaustive list of courses from sustainability & operations to FM budgeting, covering 11 FM core competencies.  

• Red Vector

Red vector provides practical and engaging online courses that cover all aspects of facilities management. Courses that are focused on improving safety and compliance, boosting productivity, and maintenance practices. Most importantly these courses come SaaS-based online training platform to track your learning progress.  

• Auto CAD and designing 

Linda.com now a part of the LinkedIn learning program covers extensive designing courses on Auto CAD for space and occupancy management. Course topics include managing spaces with AutoCAD, setting up a facilities drawing, defining space areas, and annotating spaces. 

•  Building Maintenance and Management Courses

360training.com provides online licensing and certification for a variety of technical industries and professions. They have more than 28 courses for building maintenance and management professionals, which deliver best-in-class training content for the entire operations and maintenance workforce. Courses cover a variety of topics including basic preventive maintenance, basic HVAC maintenance, facility management, and more.

Now, most of the courses and programs provided by industry associations come at free of cost while programs from private universities or training agencies can charge you on a course/ package basis. Interestingly many facility management firms allow their employees to take such courses and cover their expenses.  

Podcast for FM professionals 

When it comes to utilizing free time during the daily community to office, or lazy weekends, millions of people are switching to podcasts to get the most of their time. This medium is becoming the center stone for learning and updating with the industry happenings.

The good news is that there are various podcasts available on Operations and maintenance of facility coving insightful interviews, updates on current changes and case studies from the veterans.  

• Asset reliability at work

One of the most comprehensive and longest-running podcast series for everything about asset performance and reliable maintenance discussions. This series has touched upon topics like inventory management, developing a culture to embrace mobile CMMS tools, Change saturation among others.  

• The Toolkit of facility management 

A podcast hosted by Jim Huntsman, for facility managers to share tips, strategies, and leadership advice to enhance their facilities management career. Discussion covers a wide variety of facilities management topics for commercial and industrial facilities.

• Rooted in Reliability

A maintenance and reliability podcast covering industry challenges and learnings. Every episode dives deeper into critical issues and explains how you can begin correcting these maintenance flaws. Defining RCM analyses and PdM strategy were some of our favorites episodes.  

• Buildings Podcast

The Buildings Podcast presents the latest developments and practices in facility management from energy management, lowering operating costs, care and maintenance of commercial buildings, life and safety, sustainability, green issues, project management, security, building performance, and much more.

If you are interested in learning how the commercial real estate industry has been revolving around technology and people then you should listen to this podcast series from The fifth wall, one of the largest VC firms for real estate industries.

Besides courses and podcasts, there are news portals and blogs that are available to cover every aspect of operations and maintenance and commercial real estate technologies. These resouThese will not only help learn new applications and tools but also keep you updated with the changing trends.     

If you are already listening to one of these podcasts or want us to recommend new ones then please feel free to comment below. If you want us to come up with a similar list of blogs and video portals then let us know. We’ll be happy to cover that in upcoming articles.  

On 4th Mar 2020, The Ministry of National Development Singapore announced the revised edition of the Singapore Green Building Masterplan(SGBMP). The fourth edition of the SGBMP also known as “80-80-80 in 2030” due to its ambitious targets, comes as part of the Singapore Green Plan 2030. The plan is developed by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and the Singapore Green Building Council and industry stakeholders.

Singapore has been leading the efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas emission from the build infrastructure. Since the launch of the green mark scheme in 2005, BCA has initiated various programs to create an economically and environmentally driven ecosystem of stakeholders to charge the green building movement in Singapore. 

80-80-80 in 2030 : Quick overview

Since the first edition of SGBMP in 2006, It has been receiving immense support and collaboration from public and private enterprises to make a success. The latest edition of SGBMP is a result of their engagement activities with more than 5000 stakeholders since Jan 2020. 

SGBMP come up with 3 aggressive targets, to accelerate the adoption of green building technology

1. 80% of singapore’s building to be green marked

As per the last edition of the SGBMP, the goal is to green 80 percent of buildings by gross floor area (GFA) by 2030. But with the revised edition the government wants to accelerate the pace of greenification. Now the existing buildings can benchmark their energy performance against similar building types and take the necessary steps for energy optimization for asset maintenance.

BCA will also raise the ‘minimum energy performance requirements for all new construction and existing building stock from 2021 and subsequently the standards of the green mark scheme. 

2. 80% of all the new building to be super low energy building 

According to the definition, super low energy (SLE) are the buildings that achieve equivalent to 60% energy savings over the 2005 building standards. The Government wants 80% of all the new buildings from 2030 would be classified as SLE buildings. 

BCA has also published the required technology roadmap to achieve SLE building standards earlier. 

3. Achieving 80% Energy Efficiency improvement for best in class buildings

The 3rd target is achieving an even higher level of energy efficiency among top building assets. Till now, best-in-class buildings are able to achieve 65% improvement in energy efficiency over 2005 levels, with this target BCA wants to raise the bar to 80%.

BCA will support such a building through its Green Buildings Innovation Cluster (GBIC) program. 

What are the Implications of those targets? 

The latest targets have opened up a lot of opportunities for the entire Energy Efficiency ecosystem. From material procurement, design, resource management to electronics and smart technology providers, everyone has a huge scope to excel and prove their value to building owners.  

• Thinking beyond low hanging fruit:

Since the inception of SGBMP, many buildings have incorporated green building strategies to participate in the plan and have shown considerable improvements. As per the stakeholder’s engagement report, 90% of respondents are aware of the positive impact of green buildings and recognized them as a key strategy to fight climate change. 

However, an equal number of respondents believe that more urgent measures need to be in place in the next 5-10 years to achieve the super low energy building status. It’s time to think about the goals and technologies of the long-term improvement and find sustainable facility management solutions.

• Asset and space utilization:

From 2022 for existing buildings undergoing major retrofitting, will have to be 40 percent more energy-efficient than the 2005 levels, which has increased from 25 percent under current regulation. That additional 15% Improvement has to come from building operations as both the renewable energy sourcing and design retrofit options would have been explored to a certain extent. 

Most of the respondents suggested using smart control, space optimization applications, and data monitoring for preventive maintenance would help improve operational efficiency and better office space management.

This could be an opportune time for facility management firms to focus on asset performance and energy management suite of applications as the demand will see a significant rise.

• Demonstrate the value of data analytics

As per the Super low energy building SLE technology roadmap, Building energy management system (BEMS), Fault detection diagnostics system (FDD), Data-Driven Modelling and Real-Time Optimisation for Chiller Plant are listed under high energy saving potential systems. 

Startups and technology providers will have abundant opportunities to prove the value of their technology and grab the early market. From super-low energy building smart hubs to providing prototyping platforms, BCA is supporting such startups under their green building innovation cluster program.

What are your thoughts on this ambitious “80-80-80 in 2030” plan? Where does it stand compared to the global energy efficiency targets? Let us know in the comment section below.

We have also covered the UK’s latest performance-based policy to rate commercial buildings and the right approach to building benchmarking standards for CRE in our previous articles. Hope you find them insightful. 

The Middle East construction industry has been seen as an ever-growing ‘growth engine’ for multiple sectors ranging from hospitality, trade to property management. Despite the setback due to the pandemic and subsequent ripples on tourism and workplace adoption, the industry has shown a massive comeback in the first quarter of 2021.

The UAE’s facility management market was valued at $14.5 billion in 2020 and is expected to showcase a CAGR of 10.8% by 2030. In many ways, the facility management landscape of MENA is far different than other global markets. One can witness the unique equations of multinational and regional firms there. While multinational firms bring in their cross-market expertise, standardizations, and service benchmarks, regional firms provide Ultra customized, cost-effective solutions with low turnaround time. 

In the past couple of years, we have witnessed that the IFM market in The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is getting closer to a consolidated stage due to the increasing competition and presence of many players in a concentrated geographical region. 

Many multinational FM service providers have adopted various growth strategies, including mergers and acquisitions, aggressive expansions, and joint ventures with local service providers to strengthen their position in this market. Yet they are facing fierce competition from the homegrown players. In fact, in many aspects, those regional firms are proving more successful in their endeavors than the global ones.

In a pursuit to understand those critical functional traits of successful regional facility management service providers, we analyzed the leading facility management firms based on their recent activities, type of contracts, product/service portfolios, and their organizational value systems. In this article, we are trying to present our learnings and takeaways to everyone.

Agile structure: 

According to McKinsey’s report, there are five key trademarks of an agile organization which focuses on the strategy, structure, process, people, and technology part of the business. We observed that most of the regional facility management firms exhibit at least 3 to 4 such qualities.

During the first wave of COVID, many firms responded quickly to prevent the spread of the virus. In such difficult times, firms like Imdaad quickly acted upon robust strategies to get closer with their clients and ensure continuous and hygienic operations of their facilities.  

Contactless applications to remote asset management, In the last 12 months many firms have rolled out technologies at an unprecedented speed. FM firms have realized the opportunities for product portfolio expansion in the area of energy management, predictive analytics, and mobile engineering teams. Interestingly, firms are doing the same without exposing their capital investment by building everything from the scratch. 

Strategic partnerships with technology startups are helping them to leverage mutual expertise and gain that competitive edge. While multinational FMs are investing heavily in R&D to develop their own technology stack, regional firms are focusing on getting into JV with a tech company and white-labeling the solution for their customers, maximizing the coverage with limited exposure to capital.    

Customer-centric approach:

While we all have been a part of a transition from an outcome-based to an ‘experience-based economy’ this is particularly very evident in UAE and the entire MENA region. Maybe because of the exponential growth of tourism or cosmopolitan and millennial workforce, clients and tenants are expecting seamless experience more from the facility management teams. 

Forward-thinking facility management firms are not stopping by creating help desk or service centers but also investing in human-centric technologies to deliver uninterrupted experience. Firms like Ejadah Asset Management Group have started a dedicated division to focus on ‘customer-centric operations’  under their new initiative. Biju Nair, head of a customer experience, Ejadah recalls the meeting they used to conduct every month to discuss the pain points of each individual facility owners and corrective actions to take, eventually, this exercise helped them to improve their Net Promoter Score from 54 to 72 within two years last year Ejadah was selected as a finalist in the Customer Centricity World Series 2021 awards. 

Upskilling the workforce:

Multiple studies have demonstrated that employee upskilling has a positive influence on Facility Management’s performance and improving their bottom line. Besides skill development, there are other benefits of upskilling such as employee retention and higher productivity of the teams. No wonder smart and lean facility management firms are giving special attention to cross-skill or upskill their workforce through training and capacity-building workshops. 

Upskilling becomes even more relevant for soft services due to the sheer number of blue-collar workforce. Chris Roberts, CEO of Eltizam Asset Management Group, strongly believes that sustainable business growth can only be achieved by focusing on the development of its people and processes  (organizational development), customer happiness, and ensuring efficiency in operations. Hence every senior management employee has to go through their relevant training programs. They also support their employees for a higher degree of education.  

Firms like Transguard have gone one step further the show their empathy towards the blue-collar workforce during the pandemic by taking the voluntary pay cuts. Note that this is the same firm that has already accomplished net zero emission targets for one of their fasciitis in UAE, a feat even multinational FM firms would find difficult to execute.  

To summarise, successful facility management firms are lean and quick in their decision-making process. For them, employee welfare and customer experience are always on their priority list, and most importantly they strongly believe in strategic partnerships and constantly updating their technology stack to be able to provide relevant solutions to their clients. 

Let us know how your company is working on its asset performance management and updating the technology stack.