Category: FM Growth

If you are a regular reader of Facility management times then you would understand how much we love to talk about net-zero Initiatives. Our affection for the climate-conscious initiatives has led us to explore various aspects of net zero for the FM community.

In our previous articles, we have highlighted the relationship between analytics applications, strong leadership, and investor’s perspective to look at the net-zero buildings. We have always emphasized the planning part of the initiative where all the critical elements of target setting come into the picture. To our surprise, we recently stumbled upon a detailed handbook on plan zero initiative by Mitie that covers all the aspects from assessment to execution of a net-zero target. 

And we couldn’t wait to share our observations with our readers. (please note that we are highlighting our takeaways that are related to building infrastructure)

Mitie is one of the oldest and largest FM firms based out of the UK, they have been a market leader in setting up and managing sustainability initiatives for their private and public sector clients. Plan zero initiative is a suite of sustainable facility management solutions and processes, to kickstart the net-zero carbon journey. Interestingly, It is a combination of theorized practices and the implemented solution by the Mitie on their own campuses and for their clients.

Plan zero provides a comprehensive structure to a net-zero strategy for the entire value chain of the organization. It is flexible enough to address different organizational structures and rigid enough to include all the key processes.

The Plan is divided into 3 focus areas that are responsible for maximum carbon reductions. 

1. Infrastructure:

Buildings, manufacturing units, and other occupied spaces of the organization. Starting from building designing, material usage and operational parameters come under the infrastructure component. 

2. Resources:

Water, energy, and other resource consumption, conservation, and management strategies come under the resources part.

3. Emission: 

Carbon emission from the logistics, manufacturing units that can be controlled come under the emission component.

The plan zero strategy looks into the carbon control from these 3 areas and devises a 5 stage plan of assessment, baseline & target setting, compliance, development, and implementation. Let’s dissect each stage and find out action items and deliverables.

Need a snapshot of the entire plan zero initiative?
check out this infographic

1. Assessment:

It is about finding the common ground before starting any initiative. The team should be clear about what they want to drive from the initiations. Although it may seem difficult to comprehend the entire scope of the projects in the beginning, the team should have basic hypotheses charted out with them on what the outcomes would look like to see.

Team: For an organization, assessment is all about identifying key stakeholders to manage and lead the projects. Ideally, the team should include CXOs (sustainability head) and a good mix of people from operations, energy, procurement, and important innovation dept.   

Data availability: Map down the credible data sources to gather assets (BMS, BIM), workplace (CAFM, CMMS), and emission-related data (Scope 1, 2, 3 emissions). Based on that team can segmentize ideal locations, preparedness, and gap analysis.

2. Baseline & Target setting:

Comparing building’s performance against other buildings. It could be among the same organization or from the outside of the organization. There are many open-source Building benchmarking mechanisms available that can let you compare the building’s performance on resources and occupancy. It helps in creating a frame of reference to look at base targets and design comprehensive strategies to meet them. 

Once the organization has a clear idea of where does their building portfolio stands against others it can set/ redefine ambitions and sustainable reduction targets. Those could be organization-specific or Science-Based targets.

3. Compliance & Certification:

Every organization should comply with local (city, country-level) mandatory reporting requirements encompassing infrastructure, resources, and emissions. It is advisable to keep track of maintenance regimes and ensure appropriate energy and emissions certifications are completed on time.

Previously we have covered some of the country-level compliance & regulations plans for example. Singapore has the 80-80-80 Singapore green building master plan (SGBMP) plan, the UK has its own performance-based policy. 

Mitie provides its proprietary Carbon and Energy Management System (CEMS) to assist organizations to understand various carbon-producing aspects of their operations and their associated bearing on mandatory and recommended reporting and certification.

4. Development:

Create a practical plan that includes resource reduction measures, technology adoption roadmap, and scaling mechanism across the entire supply chain. Mitie suggests an implementation plan that can address each of the three Focus Areas (Infrastructure, Resources, and Emissions), and specify the associated savings, emissions reductions, and any related Capital Expenditure (CapEx). 

List down all the resource reduction methods, technology implementation timeline, expected results, and next steps. Mitie has formulated a program that ensures organizations can achieve a zero-carbon future without the downsides associated with Capital Expenditure, but with all the upside of increased efficiency and offset savings. Based on the initial assessment  mitie team provides a detailed report with optimization and asset replacement and upgrade recommendations

5.  Execution:

Final executions of those reduction measures and project performance monitoring will be the last stage of the plan zero strategies. Implementing performance-based technologies that can track the carbon consumption from infrastructure, resources, and emission segments of the organization. 

Plan zero is a cyclic process which means there is always a scope of reassessing the plan according to changing times and requirements and redefining the technology procurement according to the client’s expectation. 

Throughout the report, mitie has provided some excellent case studies that helped clients to navigate through that particular stage and improve their resource consumption strategy.    

We sincerely hope that by now, you have got a brief idea about the plan zero initiative and a basic understanding of how to start your sustainable journey. If you have already started working on some of these sustainable building management initiatives mentioned here then share your experience with us here.  

#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. 

In conversation with Ashok Mathew,

Q.1 Can you tell us your background and the kind of projects you have handled till now? 

I started my career when facility management was not even an organized industry, facility manager was not a profession at that time. When I joined my first firm to manage the Dubai world trade centre, there were only two divisions to take care of O&M activities and we used to call them projects and maintenance dept. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the engineering team at first. Those were the days when KPIs or quality indicators were not well defined so we started working on standardizing some of the services keeping the customer at the center.

Later I joined Emaar services as one of the early members of the facility management department, where we thoroughly started developing the FM processes, asset management portfolios, and basics of quality control standards. After a brief stint at limitless (Nakheel’s offshoot) where I worked on P&L, vendors & Bid management part of the business, I moved to MAB as an operations manager, and shortly become one of the members of the contract bidding team. 

Currently, I am working as a portfolio manager at Ejadah, which is a subsidiary of Dubai holdings. We take care of asset management and security under the name of the Idama facility management. I handle the portfolio of commercial properties of Dubai holdings.

Q2. what challenges did your team face during last year and how did you come up with the solutions?

When covid hit us everything went on a freeze mode. Although the facilities were not operating to the fullest we had to make sure that we follow the safety protocols give by the govt and keep the facilities operational for the essential services. So when a customer was expecting rebates and concession on the services we also had to double down on our grown staff and safety procedures to manage these high-value assets. So from a commercial angle finding the middle ground and realigning the resources was the real challenge for us. 

But the support that we extend to our client at that time helped us to earn goodwill and satisfaction with the service. Digitalization for some of the processes was a cornerstone for us that saved us an ample amount of time and money to perform particular tasks. Now we can better utilize those resources somewhere else and improve our productivity. From administration work to asset management, the applications we seldom used before the covid have become a daily routine for us now.

Nowadays we can conduct multiple classroom training and capacity building program for our workforce without allocating a dedicated space for the same. The frequency of such programs has increased in the last 6 months and we are getting positive results from the team. I don’t think this was possible without the digital drive that we embraced.   

Q.3 Besides softer aspects of digital technologies, how are you using them to manage your assets, operations, and maintenance?

We are maximizing the use of IoT applications in our asset monitoring services, although we have BMS installed in all of our facilities we are going beyond that in terms of collecting data and coming up with inferences. We are looking into predictive analytics and AI-powered applications to take our decision-making process. 

Right now we have started with collecting the data from the IoT sensors on chillers and we are benchmarking its performance with others. We wanted to list down all the impacting factors that are responsible for improving the performance of the chiller and how we can create a suitable environment for optimum performance. Hence the data for the last 6 months is important for us (including both the summer and winter seasons) 

In the next step, we are going to collect data from auxiliary assets and remotely monitor mobile towers. So from now on our calculation that involves the workhours will have this consideration of IoT-enabled services.

Q4. You have always been a part of the bidding team at multiple FM firms, so how was your experience with performance-based contracts?  

I believe there are two sides to Performance-based contracts that exist. Let me start with the darker side of the performance. It gives the leverage to the client to utilize few sections of the contracts to penalize the vendor and take some of it every month as a warning to improve the performance. Contracts benchmark your work helping you reach 90 to 95 percent of the work by taking particular actions but then sometimes a client may point out an argument and suggest areas where improvement could be possible. Now this way they unnecessarily penalize the vendor for not able to fulfill the (Undefined) performance standards. 

Now everyone wants to see the numbers, Everybody wants to save some money. So what happens is if the manager was handling a big project, and he has given a target of operational cost reduction then he might think that management would want him to show numbers anyhow. So to prove that he may say that this month I have identified irregularities and fined the vendor and saved on cost. So the penalty raised by him becomes the saving for his company and he earns the goodwill too.

As service providers, if we look at it from the other side, which is the positive side for the service provider, that you don’t need to utilize a fixed amount of workhour or resources on a project throughout the year. I can play around with the resources as and when I feel like. I only need to see that the performance is measured and maintained appropriately within the bandwidth that I am supposed to be in. 

A smart company that wants to bid for such projects will always ensure that they keep aside a small amount of value within their proposal so that even if they lose some money, their profit margin will still be intact when they get there.   

Q.5 Ejadah’s Customer experience department has been selected for finals in the Customer Centricity World Series 2021 awards for 6 categories. How did you achieve that? How does your team manage customer-centricity? 

When you say customer care, generally the perception is that it’s considered to be a remotely located help desk team, where people always complain to you, you respond to them and then submit a report. We try to go several steps further and add a little more color into it, starting from the basics, the people who are trained to attend to these systems and complaints have a very special skill of interacting with the customer. 

The second part is the process itself, when a product is handed over, for example, if I am taking over a new project or a new building for the project, then the first thing indicates that I have to inform relevant departments that this kind of project that is added to my portfolio and that official communication that has to go from me with all the deliverable requirements that are there in the contract to this particular location. The team will have a personal and physical inspection of the project so they have a physical understanding of how this particular project is actually being built and how that contract is being made.

The third part is that when the complaint is being raised from the customer, its 360-degree cycle only gets completed when the customer care reviews the customer’s feedback about that particular complaint. So it doesn’t happen for every complaint, but mostly it is being taken that the customer has been personally taken care of to understand if there is a pending complaint. 

Q.6 According to you what are the secrets behind winning new or existing facility contracts?

If you are an incumbent player who has been managing the facility for the last 5-6 years then it becomes easier for you to win it, as you will have a clear understanding of the site’s saving potential. If you are new to the site you have to understand the ground realities of that site (from an operational point of view) most of the bidding members do not understand operations they only do the number crunching. 

But being from the operations background you can tell what can and can not be done with the facility. For example, an Air Handling Unit (AHU) would require 3-4 workhours for maintenance and by adding the maintenance frequency you will get the monthly resource to require per AHU per site. But for an O&M engineer, if the AHU is in close proximity and has been in a different health condition then the maintenance time could differ a lot.   

These technical inputs are very important while submitting those bids and there comes the important role of data availability. Having a granular level data of the assets, operations and O&M history will tell you a lot about the facility operations. 

(This article is an honest attempt from the FM Times Editorial team to explore and share success stories across the facility management community for collective learning and improvement of all. If at all anything is misinterpreted by us or left to mention the source, please point it out and write back to us)

In the last couple of months, I have been closely observing the facility management market in the Middle East. Changes that have been happening in the business models, service delivery mechanism, adoption of digital technology, and consumer-centric workplace design have already created a steady impression in the year 2021.

Facility management leaders are picking up with the growing competition and experimenting with service portfolios. They are not hesitating to experiment with new technology or applications rather they are empowering their associates to take such initiatives and get the fool in the door.

In one of my previous articles, I have pointed out key factors that are driving the growth of local FM in the UAE. But while learning about FM markets I realized that each FM firm has its own personality, its own way of doing business, creating impressions, and connecting with people. Now they have their own vision and mission statements but this is something beyond the written and stated value systems. 

This persona or the image gets created every time you interact with one of the leaders from those FMs, whenever you come across their interviews or articles or read about their success stories on their websites. With all the information available in the public domain, you can get a sense of their aspirations, competencies, client management skills. 

In this article, I am going to talk about one of those FM companies that are redefining the growth strategies for the mid-size FM companies in the UAE. I am going to explore some of the unique qualities, Eltizam Asset management group has embedded in its DNA, along its journey since its inception in 2009. I believe with the right strategy and work environment, some of the traits this firm exhibits can be developed and nurtured by other FM firms to strengthen their value proposition for the client. 

Foresight in leadership

Whenever it comes to digital transformation we have seen there are two likely outcomes of such initiatives A) Process Efficiency B) Market Perception. While the perception of your investors, clients, and your stakeholders can give you more opportunities to be able to present your value proposition. It is the process efficiency and change management that makes the real on-ground savings.

Leaders around the world have taken one of the hardest tests of leadership in the last 18 months. when businesses were contemplating on possible effects of covid 19, visionary leaders were drafting their response mechanism to protect their people and services. For such leaders, Digital transformation strategy was well in place before the situation started demanding the one. 

Eltizam initiated its flagship Business transformation program – Vision 21 in the year 2017. The aim was to create sustainable business growth through focusing on their people and processes, customer happiness, and ensuring efficiency in operations. The entire program divided into various workstreams, for example, Organizational development, technology, customer-centricity, and most importantly each stream has its own dedicated project leader to track the progress.

During this program, Eltizam has created its own tech team to lead its five-year ‘technology roadmap’, deployed its mobile maintenance solution, and worked with startups on creating customer-specific applications. As a result of those initiatives, they have also seen significant growth in revenue in the first quarter of 2021.

Right blend of Build Vs Buy strategy

For a Mid-sized FM creating a differentiator based on their solution offering or the technology, stack could be more challenging than the large-scale firms as they have limited resources to spend on R&D or applications trials.

However, finding the right blend of in-house development, outsourcing, and acquisition strategy can hello them win over legacy players. Last year Eltizam launched Omnius services – An end to end asset management services that undertake financial management, tenant relationship management, facilities services management, energy management, and portfolio insights and analytics. As a part of these services, they came up with energy management tools and a business intelligence platform to provide data-driven insights. 

One more in-house developed app that needs to mention here is Tafawug GO, It is a maintenance mobility solution implemented by the subsidiary of Eltizam. It’s a work order management app to support technicians receive, carry out, and close work orders digitally, without the need to have face-to-face interaction with other staff.

To strengthen its asset management capabilities Eltizam, acquired the firm OrionTEK- an energy management solution company. With this acquisition, they are planning to leverage the next-generation Internet of Things (IoT) technology to improve their maintenance & energy management processes.  Along with the OrionTEK they also acquired small-scale FM firm FIXIS to extend their services across the MENA region.

Eltizam’s strategy seems to be building on core competencies and niche areas and outsourcing or buying standardized applications that are responsible for building a basic data infrastructure. Of course, the acquisition is the easiest way to extend service offering with the proven solutions.  

Organizational Culture 

Regardless of technical advancements FM is and will remain the People driven industry for years to come. Hence it becomes imperative for them to master people management and it always starts with its employees.

Chris Roberts, CEO of Eltizam has stated in one of his interviews that the Customer experience and customer-facing technologies with shape the asset management industry in the near future. Technology can enable FM to service multiple tenants at a time but it’s the employees that can add the personal touch to every service.

Training and capacity building of its workforce has been a challenge for most of the conventional industries, upskilling their workforce and empowering them to make the most of available technology can always add great value to the service. Last year Eltizam launched a new program called ‘Get Wonkey’ for its employe, with this they wanted to promote positive work culture by focusing on six key areas: Technology, People Development, Corporate Social Responsibilities, Happiness, In-Country Value, and Vision 21.   

Eltizam believes its people are the key assets that are why they focus on their Professional Development and Wellbeing. As a part of the program, they have also launched a training academy to encourage higher qualifications and certification.

Now that is the perspective/Image that I mentioned earlier, that is how they wanted to be remembered by their client and stakeholder, It’s the organizational personality to be wonky, to be creative in its own way. This is how they will differentiate their culture, value system, and their service offering.

#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.

In conversation with Zohaib Azhar,

Q.1 Can give us a brief about your background and the kind of projects you are currently undertaking?

I am an electrical engineer and I started my career in the facility management industry in 2014 with Khidmah, Abu Dhabi. I was a team leader there for more than 3 years. During my tenure there I learned many things as at that time FM was just started and getting a lot of tractions. If you look at the CRE landscape in UAE, the Infrastructure development started around 2003 and In the year 2008-09, there comes the facility management as the buildings like Burj Khalifa, city walk, downtown Emaar & DEFC were there and they needed professionals to manage those buildings.

Then for a brief time, I joined DEFC and after one year I joined Farnek as an assistant facility manager, there withing 3 years I moved to the Head of operations manager, and last year I won a highly commended young facility manager of the year award. Another moment of pride for me at Farnek is that we are still managing Burj khalifa since 2010.

Q.2 What is turning out as a differentiator in most of the contracts? Is it still a cost or solution exclusivity?  

Technology is playing a key role in getting new business and adding value to contracts. Farnek is investing heavily in digital technologies and innovative solutions. In the year 2019-18 Farnek won the Sustainability Initiative of the Year at Middle East industry awards.

We totally believe the technology and our approach a differentiator for us. For example, we came up with the smart washroom concept where we Installed IoT sensors and Communication devices to check whether the cleaning is required or not or how frequent it is required. With the smart washroom implementation, we are now receiving huge data on various parameters and we have built our own data connectors and created cloud applications to monitor and analyze the data. 

Every leading FM firm in UAE is investing in IoT but the differentiation comes when you know how to use that data or how to extract inferences and reduce your operational cost.

In one of the contracts, we proposed to the client an IoT solution that can give them insights on the average footfall of the customers, operating temperature, and energy consumption of all the distributed facilities. Now, this wasn’t part of the initial agreement but we wanted to create an extra edge in our service hence we gave them this solution.

Interestingly with that solution, we also saved on extra work hours required for regular inspection as well as delivered energy saving to the client with no additional cost.   

We are also revamping technology for operations and maintenance processes. We are providing services to closely monitor critical assets such as vibration analysis for motors and baseline calculations where we can manage those assets remotely.

Farnek has developed its own command and control center (CC) where it collects data from all of its sites and the dedicated engineering team at CC analyzes the data and provides centralized insights on maintenance & energy efficiency to those sites. The team at the CC also communicates with the individual sites for any proactive suggestions based on real-time asset data.

FM in UAE is matured now, both the service provider and the clients know what to expect from the contract, Initially, the people were good at negotiation, client handling, etc but now with the advancement of technology, most of them are exploring best practices in O&M too. With that, competition is also on the rise, companies like Imdaad, Emrill & Cofely are competing with each other, it is imperative that during the tendering period you would need to give an added value to the client otherwise it becomes difficult to win that projects. 

Q.3 Does Farnek develops its own application stack or work with partners to create a customized solution?

We are mostly working on a partnership basis because it is very challenging for an FM to develop their own technology, as there is a lot of work required to manage and maintain it post the development and unless you have that scale and appetite to invest in the capital you would not want to go that way. 

We have our own dedicated IT team at Farnek where we have our CAFM managers, BMS engineers, and a team of technicians to install any hardware at the facilities. So we get them trained by the project partners and implement our projects. In case if want to add a new feature or make any changes to the applications, our IT team co-develop it with the tech partner. Any inputs on the new applications from our operations team go to our IT team and then they verify the same and then forward it to the tech partner for the changes.  

We always follow cost-effective and feasible principles when we deal with the partners or come up with new applications. 

Q.4 What do you think about performance-based contracts?

Performance-based contracts can be helpful to FM service providers if you structure them properly.

In one of the cases, we had cleaning contracts of the common area, initially, we predicted that X number of work hours would be required to get the job done but later we realized that with the help of smart technology we can eliminate extra work hours and still get the expected results that mean we are saving on work hours and the investment we have made on the technology can also be recovered during the tenure and it can be delivered to the client once the project is over.

This way the client was happy as he was getting the expected results and the piece of technology at no additional cost. With this achieved high productivity while saving on work hours. 

We are not just following the digital technology for O&M but we have also introduced many touchless experience based applications on every part of the business. Starting from using smart applications on tablets to conduct regular monitoring work for cleaning services. We have installed checkpoints for our smart security guard touring systems, so now every security guard has a magnetic key which he needs to check in with during his round. With that installed we can ensure transparency in work.

Installed Smart data capturing devices on HVAC units where we are monitoring weather parameters such as temp, humidity, electrical inputs on meter reading, and other physical parameters such as vibrations and noise to asset the health of the system. 

There are other sustainability initiatives Farnek has taken in the last couple of years such as verticle gardening, solar energy plants (PV rooftop plants) these have to help us to try new technology and suggest scalable solutions to the client when needed.   

Q.5 Can you point out Top trends that you are seeing which will shape the FM in UAE?   

1. Client engagement: Your client will is very much engaged with you now. Unlike earlier days he can track the workplace or asset performance from his home now. Digital reporting reaches him the moment they are generated so there is no need to email or set up a monthly meeting with him to update him on the progress. Your client knows how much you care for his facility and your team’s performance reflects that in the KPI reports.

2. Access to information: Information is transparent now. It is far above the opinion and guesses work your team has to depend on earlier. Sensors can provide you clear data upon which your team can make informed decisions. From data measurement to storage analysis to implementation everything can be directed by the data. 

3. Sustainability: with all the climate change-related initiatives your clients would always want to cut down on emission and improve the indoor environment. With that target in mind, FM would need to make sure how best they can help their clients to reach their targets on time in a cost-efficient way.

Q.6 What is the bright side of being a facility manager? what Inspire you to go back to work every day?

I personally love to connect with people, understand their problems and provide them with a solution. Coming from the background of an electrical engineer I like to examine assets like pumps, compressors, Chillers, and AHUs and understand how well I can take care of them. Every facility has its own set of issues and identifying those issues and optimizing them for greater performance is the challenge that I would like to take every day.

I also get intrigued by the evolving business models we are witnessing day in day out. Each person, each site, and each project has its own requirements, and meeting those requirements keeps me on the edge. 

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.