31 minute read
INTERVIEW
Warner Bros. hotel will be the world’s first Warner Bros. themed hotel, comprising 257 rooms over eight levels with a modern decor that celebrates the studio’s movies and television series
Provided these documents are in place and well-defined, and the fit-out is carried out in line with the base build, there shouldn't be any requirements to make any rectifications. However, with offices, we often see base build information specifying one occupant load. Then the interior design layout shows the future usage of the space, which exceeds the approved occupant load. This is often due to open communal spaces such as team assembly areas and cafeterias, where more employees gather in a particular space than anticipated, especially if the office is split over two floors with a central communal space.
Similarly, with a mall fit-out, the information provided in the fire strategy is crucial. If, for example, an open space will house a gym, food court or general assembly area with a high occupant load, and the relevant metrics are not provided, there is the potential the project will run into delays and additional costs.
In addition to high occupancy levels, interior designers must also take the materials used for finishings into consideration. While the majority of finishing materials comply with the relevant country codes, there are instances where this is not the case. If a selected material doesn't meet the code, it will not be granted civil defence approval.
How does Tenable FEC use technology and 3D modelling to assist with projects?
Specific projects require us to take a performance-based design approach. For example, a project may include an atrium, and the design requires a smoke management system to protect the space. In this instance, we will run a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis to ensure the available extract and supply air provides a tenable environment.
There have also been projects where we have been brought on board at a later stage, only to find there were not be adequate staircases already in place post-construction. In this instance, we will run a CFD and an evacuation model to determine the time it will take for occupants to evacuate safely versus how long the area remained tenable. Provided the tenability time was longer than the evacuation time, the design is deemed safe.
What are Tenable's objectives and goals for the next 12 months?
There has been a recent internal restructure to enable our growth and expansion plans for the next twelve months and beyond. We are seeing a variety of projects coming through both our Dubai and Muscat offices. These range from new hotel and residential projects and fit-out projects to data centres and healthcare facilities.
Geographically, Saudi Arabia is a target growth market for us, and we are already engaged in elements of the key giga-projects such as The Red Sea Project's Coral Bloom, AMAALA, Diriyah Gate and NEOM. However, people are often quick to overlook the developments taking place in other parts of the Kingdom, and we are excited to be part of projects, ranging from Al Khobar down to Medina. Further afield and COVID-19 permitting, we aim to relaunch our London office in the coming months, which will enable us to work more freely on European projects.
FM GIANTS
VENUE PARTNER
TECH INNOVATORS
CBNME sits down with the biggest FM Giants in the region to discuss how their implementation of technology has impacted the facilities management industry in a positive way.
Tarek Nizameddin
Executive Director Ejadah Asset Management Group
Tarek currently holds the role of Senior Executive Director of Ejadah Asset Management Group where he drives the business development of Ejadah’s SBU. He also oversees the facilities management operations and manages Ejadah’s Abu Dhabi portfolio, in addition to leading unit services, soft services, and marketing departments.
Tarek has over 27 years of experience out of which 20 years are in facilities management, as I started my career in the field in 2002. Since then, Tarek has been committed to the improvement and advancement of the facilities management sector in the MENA region.
Tarek is an active member in multiple industry bodies, and has participated as keynote speaker in many industry’s events and wrote several articles in the industry press, and bulletins about facilities management standards and challenges.
Tell us how each company uses technology and software’s to better improve their services? Ejadah is constantly racing to adopt and integrate cutting-edge technology. The latest endeavour in this regard is the OneApp. An employee self-service mobile app which allows Ejadah employees to view real-time information, raise HR requests, retrieve documents, print letters and pay-slips, and manage leave requests anywhere and anytime. To support HR management efforts, the app also comes with a host of manager tools to review and approve requests on the go.
Among other numerous digital transformation initiatives Ejadah boasts of, there is also the Shabaka App. An innovative B2C marketplace offering a comprehensive range of in unit-maintenance services including cleaning, mechanical, electrical, and others. Shabaka enables its customers to browse the service catalogue, schedule appointments, make online payments, and chat with virtual/real agents and much more. Ejadah is also currently upgrading its cloudbased Maximo FM system to match evolving requirements and elevated standards, and to apply best practices in customer support, management of maintenance activities and performance, QHSE, customer agreements, fixed and variable billing. Thus, providing endto-end solutions productively and efficiently, optimising resource utilization, automating cost-allocation, digitising manual transactions, reducing human supervision, and enhancing reporting.
Moreover, Ejadah is pioneering Robotic Process Automation within HR, Finance and supply chain management for time consuming and repetitive transactions like bills reconciliation, issuance of POs, E-sourcing, and government relation activities, among others.
“The usage of technology and integration between the applications achieve big efficiency, operational efficiency, and cost reduction at the same time. Weather when it comes to tracking of the assets, tracking of the tools and equipment, the machinery management of the scheduled tasks.
We also use the smartwatches for tracking the scheduled tasks for technicians and cleaning operatives. They use the usage also of competitors the cloud and what we call the technicians Help Desk increase the efficiency of the operation. Sometimes a technician on site does not have the required knowledge to troubleshoot the problem or to rectify the fault on site. So, connecting them to an expert that will give him online advice and provide them with the right advice. You can then send the technician the right spare part or right tools, if required, which will help reduce the cost and time,” said Tarek.
New digital trends will not be “disruptive” unless they create relatively more value in the market than the traditional way of doing business. IoT devices and machine learning based systems are the main digital trends to focus at in terms of value creation and value capture which shall be leveraged to build an FM effective digital strategy. These digital disruptions will create new services to clients around energy management services including energy audits, energy management plans, targets, and guaranteed savings.
Technology is the only way forward in FM. When agility and productivity are the goals, yesterday’s FM spreadsheets and workflows will no longer apply. FM teams must become proficient at using technological tools to help the rest of the business respond quickly to changing conditions and be comfortable with using predictive analytics and business intelligence to inform decision-making.
Service Management shall be considered as a key component of the successful Facility Manager of the future. Strong leadership skills with the ability to create employee motivation, engagement, respect and development are vital ingredients in any successful service model. This will create a winning formula on how to differentiate a facility manager and how to a create long term sustainable value.
With the adoption of technologies and the dependency on systems especially the Robotic Process Automation, a lot of admin and office jobs will be obsolete. Moreover, with the introduction of robots, drones and AI in operation, the number of workforces required for most of the functions will be reduced. The industry will require a different skillset to cater to these technologies such as: specialized technicians, robotics engineers and technicians, data analysts & scientists, cyber security experts, software developers, etc. Ejadah are among the pioneers who are streamlining strategic innovation in such a changing digital world by moving to data-driven decision making and operations. That’s why Ejadah is racing to be the first movers in this space to capitalize on the size and value of data which will create a compelling value proposition in this digital disrupted world.
We believe that maintenance shall move from the traditional planned and preventive maintenance and top of the shelf standards such as SFG 20 and move to a smart predictive maintenance and a reliability-based maintenance (RBM) which is a step-by-step instructional tool for how to analyze a system’s all failure modes and define how to prevent or find those failures early. RBM will ensure greater safety and environmental integrity, improved operating performance and greater maintenance cost-effectiveness. Integrated Solution It is the time to have a product that will integrate all the software’s and systems required for FM operation under one platform. While some companies are using a large number of software’s not only for operations that they have but we should look at the back offices as well such as comes HR, finance, procurement, logistics, contract management,
Tarek Nizameddin, Senior Executive Director, Ejadah
business development tracking, all these things need to come under one solution. For any company that wants to try to implement this it would take a huge investment and with our industry being unique it is important for facilities management software vendors that cater to the industry to come in and provide a holistic solution.
What are the benefits of a data-driven approach to customers? This is the way forward and I think the top industry leaders are working and investing in this approach: data driven decision making tools for collecting the data, collecting the right data, cleansing the current data that is available, and the way you’re utilizing it through artificial intelligence and machine learning.
So, we do the analysis of the building performance and try to understand what is required to enhance the efficiency and extend the life cycle of the building. Technology has evolved now, and we don’t have to install a large number of sensors as we used to do in the past and that helps boost operational efficiency.
Now, you will be able to do benchmarking and comparison which will give you accurate results and will achieve predictive maintenance program that will increase the efficiency reduce the break downtime. It will give the FM operation team insight about the procedures that need to be taken not only to reduce the energy bill, which is of course important from commercial and environment aspect, but also enhance the lifecycle of the assets and achieve reduction on the dependency on manpower, reduce the break downtime and achieve the service-level agreements with the client.
Jean Francois Chartain
Chief Operating Officer | Tabreed
Jean-Francois has over 18 years of experience in the field of Business Development, Engineering and Construction across various sectors such as utilities, energy and renewables, and environment industries across various geographies.
In his previous role as Technical Director with ENGIE ITALIA, he headed 3 separate departments; design, maintenance engineering, and energy efficiency. He was also responsible for leading the private development of the district heating scheme.
Jean-Francois holds a Bachelor Degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Electricite et de Mecanique, France, and a Master of Business Administration from European School of Management, Paris, France. Tell us how Tabreed uses technology to better improve their district cooling plants? > Increasing level of services to our customers – innovating by optimising the cooling system at every step, from the plant to the building being served. > Within the plants themselves, equipment upgrades reduce energy and resource consumption, while increasing efficiency and reliability. > Implemented ASRAPS chemicalfree systems to treat cooling water, reducing scaling and improving heat transfer, also reducing maintenance costs.
How do your clients benefit by choosing Tabreed for their cooling services? > Lower lifecycle costs. > Additional physical space where plants are situated. > Better quality cooling, absolute reliability. > Environmental benefits are enormous – Dubai Metro alone reduces its carbon emissions by 36,000 tons a year because of our services. > We’re good for a company’s CSR – overall in 2020, Tabreed prevented the release of 1.35 million metric tons of CO2, equivalent to taking nearly 300,000 cars off the road.
Tell us about Tabreed’s R&D Department and what steps has the department taken to boost energy efficiency & sustainability? As part of their efforts to boost energy efficiency and sustainability their R&D department have launched four pilot projects. These projects are part of Tabreed’s R&D funding commitment, which reinforces the company’s unwavering stewardship towards sustainability beyond just environmental benefits. This will also contribute to an improvement in Tabreed’s operational efficiency while enhancing district cooling plant life and reliability, with the funding expected to contribute towards increasing plant energy efficiency by 30% against comparable industry performance benchmarks as well as lowering overall plant lifecycle costs.
“Future of Cooling” is the name of the first initiative. It aims to introduce new concept design and control philosophy as well as innovative and disruptive technologies into each district cooling plant, resulting in material improvements in plant performance as well as a prolonged life and lower plant lifecycle costs.
“Carbon NanoTube” is another R&D initiative by Tabreed which aims at drastically enhancing the performance and life span of plant and equipment as well as reducing plant and energy transfer station (ETS) footprints using carbon nanotube (CNT) material which has outstanding properties in terms of heat transfer. We are in discussion with a number of partners to provide us with the material and support such as ENGIE Lab CRIGEN in France, Sustainable Energy Development Research Group, and another reputed higher education institution in the region.
The third initiative, called “Wet Bulb Forecasting”, will aim to drastically enhance demand side management. The initiative aims to more accurately forecast customer demand for the next 24 hours to allow for a more efficient operation by optimizing production of cooling, using AI. The first step is to rely on a stable weather forecasting system based on information updated in real time. The second step will be to use data science to develop models and correlations and finally, based on demand forecast, drive the plant performance.
The last initiative targets enhancing the district cooling plant’s condenser circuit and its cooling tower, which is one of the critical components in the plant and has a significant impact on the plant’s performance. Tabreed is currently redesigning the equipment to enhance its efficiency through improving water and air distribution as well as heat transfer, which will eventually impact the overall performance of the plant.
Tabreed’s announcement of its R&D and Innovation initiatives aligns with the commemoration of the UAE Innovation Week, which is being held under the slogan “UAE Innovates 2021”. Tabreed commitment towards reduction of CO2 emissions is a priority for the Group. What is being done in terms of overall elimination or reduction in CO2 emissions? In 2020, Tabreed added six new district cooling plants in its portfolio, and added over 50,000 new customer connections, resulting in the delivery of 1,403,819 RT across its operations. The net result was the displacement of over 1.35m metric tons of CO2 emissions – equivalent to removing 193,129 passenger vehicles off the road over the course of the year – in addition to electricity savings of 2.26 billion kilowatt/hours – enough to power 128,443 homes every year. Furthermore: > Fully supporting the UAE’s targets for carbon neutrality by 2050 > We turn energy into cooling, so the more efficient our plants, the lower the demand for electricity, which in turn reduces CO2 emissions. > Tabreed also lessens the impact on the ozone layer thanks to its larger, centralised refrigerant capture units that prevent leakage.
What are your views/perception for the district cooling sector in the region? > District cooling enables normal life to go on, in one of the planet’s hottest regions. > Tabreed is Essential for Progress – without our services would be unimaginable. > We cool many of the region’s most iconic landmarks, structures and facilities. > District cooling is better for the environment in many respects, even visually.
What are some of the future considerations that Tabreed or other stakeholders have to take into account to improve energy efficiency and waste reduction in the region? > Energy management is our core business and we are driven by energy efficiency. > Constantly looking to improve by developing and adopting new technology > The government sets ambitious environmental targets that we must be aligned with. > Important to have constant, open dialogue with legislators so we can advise on policy and react quickly to any developments or changes in direction.
MARC DALY
HEAD OF FMS | SERVEU
With over 10 years’ experience in the FM industry Marc has led FM operations in the UAE, KSA & UK with a keen eye on efficiency improvement on asset performance and service delivery.
With technology being the main driver for both these areas; Marc has played a leadership role in implementing technology in FM operations for leading clients to help deliver efficiency through their assets and achieve benefits to their budget bottom line. Technology Implementation ServeU announced the launch of a fully automated mobile application to eliminate human intervention and digitalize customer service.
A first for the regional industry, the move comes as part of the company’s efforts to use latest technologies for better service delivery, by optimizing internal processes, redefining customer touchpoints, and upgrading the interaction platforms, through the introduction of WhatsApp business and social media direct messaging services. Key features of ServeU’s new mobile application will include:
Business process mapping: The application will ensure current operations are fully automated – from start to end with zero human intervention. Online Store: Moving away from the typical voice call customer service, the new application will allow for the adoption of self-service processes. ServeU is introducing a new concept of ordering products and service from online stores, using built-in AI in the bastem. While pckend syurchasing a product from the store, customers will be provided with real-time access to resources, and upon checkout, an appointment will already have been booked with the technician.
Self-service concept: The application will mainly focus on three business processes – booking an inspection, buying an annual maintenance contract (AMC), and ordering a product from the store. All inputs will happen at the customer’s end in just a few clicks and the customer will be notified about the progress of tasks. In addition, the customer will be able to manually check the status of the job, provide feedback and also escalate issues to management, if required. User Experience: The application will replicate human-like experience with minimal inputs, through its interactive and straightforward user interface. It will come with the latest set of features such as contactless payment, real-time resource tracking, live chat with helpdesk and much more to offer a seamless experience to customers.
ServeU continues to provide services that optimize resources for maximum efficiency to deliver seamless, efficient, safe and personalized FM services to its clients across multiple industries.
In line with Smart Dubai 2021 plan and as part of ServeU’s digital roadmap to enhancing operational performances through integrating smart technologies and applications, the company upgraded CAFM to FSI Concept Evolution, in efforts to become one of the first FM service providers to utilize IoT, GIS, and BIM-enabled CAFM.
As a reflection of the company’s digital adaptation, ServeU has proudly become the first company to implement NFC Tagging for the cleaning services it provides by enabling end-clients to monitor performance in real-time through FSI-GO – which, in turn, enhances customer services and satisfaction.
The company takes pride in their self-starter initiatives from within the organisation to optimize major services by effectively managing resources, increasing efficiency and offering tailored facility management solutions to clients across a wide range of industries.
Aside from providing services in ‘Smart Security Systems’ including parking management, CCTV installations, and maintenance, ServeU also takes great pride in its initiative to serve its clients 24/7.
What are the benefits of a data-driven approach to customers? One of the catchphrases we hear a lot and see these days is that there can never be too much data, and in our industry that is fundamental to our operation. Because whether it’s the operation of an asset, and how that data gets captured it’s not just for your plan in the corrective maintenance, but also to do your predictive maintenance, that data is critical to everyone.
Also, how do you utilize the data is more important than actually capturing the data and that’s where we get these systems and software and there are so many of them in the market but then you need to make the right decision of what system you’re going to use for the right assets and the right building.
So, it is critical for us to capture the data, but how do we use the data to extend the life cycle of that asset and bring down the maintenance cost of that asset is what is critical for us from a data perspective.
What are the top 2-3 areas of focus for them after the pandemic in terms of business operations, technology? One of our key priorities is to be resilient whether it’s the business environment, manpower, supply environment it has been fluid over the last 18 months. We need to be resilient and adapt to what the customer needs and what their market needs are.
In terms of technology this is where see the drive for that demand comes in. Implementing that technology to benefit both the customer and the implementation of good service delivery is what is critical, because whether it’s a corporate real estate, or residential real estate, and that is what we’ve got to focus on.
GOPALA KRISHNAN
OPERATIONS DIRECTOR | EMRILL
Tell us how Emrill uses technology and software’s to better improve their services? Emrill launched an efficiency-enhancing app, specifically designed to enhance, and refine the delivery of soft FM services in both horizontal and high-rise communities. Via the app, staff are assigned optimised routes and task schedules. As they move along the mappedout route, tasks pop up on their mobile devices, determined by proximity to the scheduled tasks. As staff complete jobs, they upload photographs, which are automatically synced to the supervisor’s interface. This has increased transparency and visibility of supervision with improved quality assurance. This technology-driven approach to soft FM services has enabled us to pass on this valueadd to our clients.
The app is also having a positive effect on the environment. As machine operators are using digital checklists along optimised routes, this has resulted in reduced paper and fuel consumption. Furthermore, it has also led to the development of a digital work permit system, which is geo-fenced, ensuring compliance to statutory and regulatory requirements.
We ensure sustainable practices are applied to all areas of the business and provide solutions that help clients work towards carbon neutrality and sustainability. In 2018, we launched an organic vegetable garden, accessible to 5,000 residents living in 1,500 apartments. We also developed a 700 sqm plot of sand into a sustainability park. The newly laid grass and shrubs were fertilised with recycled food waste.
Further to providing a communal space in which residents can interact with nature and each other, these initiatives have a low carbon footprint, as the need to transport produce is eliminated. The garden also meets other sustainable objectives using organic fertiliser made from food waste, thereby
minimising the project’s impact on the environment, increasing green spaces and reducing the community’s contribution to global warming.
We are innovating across multiple developments to reduce water use and wastage. We launched an initiative to use condensation water to clean carparks. This has enabled us to save 35,000 litres of water per month on various sites – that’s the equivalent of 1,000 showers every month per site. We also mobilised the first and only CMAR street cleaner in the UAE. This machine significantly reduces the water required.
Technology has always played a big role in shaping the facilities management sector. New technology enables FM services providers the opportunity to offer innovative and sustainable solutions that add value and differentiate from the competition.
Furthermore, Emrill has expanded the use of technology to enhance service delivery with the launch of its TechCompanion app.
The app, which is currently being utilised by over 2,000 technicians, engineers and supervisors across multiple sites and shifts, empowers Emrill’s employees to access and utilise data and information to drive efficiencies across the company’s contracts and support success for its clients’ projects and communities. In 2020, Emrill launched What’s Next Engineering, an initiative led by innovation and implementing new ideas, which the company encourages through its ongoing continuous improvement workshops.
Emrill’s TechCompanion app was developed under the umbrella of this initiative, in line with the company’s aim to be future-ready through harnessing new technology to redefine service delivery. Accessible via iOS and Android mobile devices, Emrill’s TechCompanion app provides technicians with an all-in-one, multipurpose guidance, training, and maintenance toolkit with multilanguage capabilities.
It provides a centralised solution and single point of contact for each vendor, as well as an escalation matrix and database of contacts for each asset.
To guide and instruct technicians, all information related to assets, including service and technical manuals, is available on the app and can be accessed while employees are onsite via an easy-to-navigate up-to-date documentation and catalogues library.
Additionally, Emrill’s TechCompanion app functions as an education and development tool, providing technicians access to online courses and training.
Prabhu Ramachandran
CEO and Founder | Facilio
Prabhu Ramachandran is the founder and CEO of Facilio Inc, a leading AI-based property operations platform that helps real estate portfolios aggregate building data, optimize performance in real-time, and control operations - all from one place. Headquartered in New York City with offices in Padova, Dubai, Chennai & Singapore, Facilio is a global company backed by leading investors including Accel Partners and Tiger Global Management.
Prabhu’s career spans over 20 years of product, business, and customer experience focused on enterprise-scale software for IoT-based connected services, sustainable building solutions, and telecom network management.
Future of FM Operations and Datadriven Service Delivery The 2020s are an era we have approached with apprehension, excitement, uncertainty and ingenuity as technology races forward at breakneck speed. While the professional landscape has changed in the recent past, we still do the same work, but in a different environment and under different circumstances. As a result of this change, we see the role of FM service delivery and property operations as a whole, become more and more prominent, transitioning from an operational level to a data-driven strategic path.
This raises many questions on the future of facility operations and how operatives can stay nimble and flexible enough to respond to these changes? Will COVID-19 mean the end of the firefighting mode in operations? How will relationships with service providers change? Will the pandemic alter the way we measure O&M (operations and maintenance) SLAs and KPIs? How do we design an operational roadmap that can help overcome these challenges? Together with four facility experts from leading ecosystem organizations, we investigated the future of strategic data-led facilities management.
We asked Prabhu Ramachandran, Founder & CEO, Facilio Inc., a leading AI-based property operations platform that manages over 70m sq. ft of commercial real estate portfolio globally, to weigh in on how technology is reshaping the future of real estate operations through powerful outcome-focused solutions.
What are the barriers to innovation in real estate operations & FM services today? Legacy CaFM software has evolved considerably since their inception; expanding in scope to include inventory and asset management, cost analysis, and vendor management, etc. At a rudimentary level, CaFM adopters have successfully pivoted from paper-based systems to cloud-supported digital applications as much as possible. However, the new reality of property operations demands products and services that are more flexible, scalable, and interoperable. Property operations are left grappling with time to switch between tools, chasing people for information exchange, dealing with multiple contractors and subcontractors, and receiving outdated reports.
Many of the legacy solutions are horizontal solutions, and not really built specifically for real estate. As a result, they are often underutilized. Commercial real estate portfolios can be complex, often involve multiple asset types, and frequently leverage single purpose automation technologies utilized in a siloed manner, which can result in a fragmented view of the portfolio and a lack of useful information. The cost of leaving this issue unaddressed is that O&M leaders are left dealing with blindspots, having to resort to reactive firefighting, and limited ammunition for innovation
In contrast, imagine the ease of automating & digitizing multiple interactions, workflows, processes, and information exchange; within a single platform and a single place - without the integration bottlenecks and heavy price tags, typically associated with legacy and regular market solutions. The emerging data-driven O&M software platforms are designed to address issues for all stakeholders
and optimize all functions at the same time, while creating results where they matter most, which is the delivery of exceptional customer experiences
How will a data-driven approach bridge this technology gap? The new generation of data-driven FM software takes a workflow-driven approach to the O&M lifecycle. It creates a real-time and targeted context for maintenance schedules, which is easily accessible by stakeholders anytime, anywhere, with complete mobility. This real-time and across-the-board access creates optimal and multi-party stakeholder engagement, and with good data, benchmarking becomes easier, resulting in significantly improved service quality and delivery.
We can see the difference that access to quality, realt-ime data has made to sectors like e-commerce—in which players like Amazon have redefined the standards of delivery services; ride-sharing apps like Uber—which created immediate and quantifiable value for both end-users and drivers. The commercial real estate industry has a similar opportunity to introduce unprecedented services, efficiencies, and operational agility, by leveraging data.
With a unified software platform that enables the basic requisites of maintenance management, a modern integrated O&M approach enables portfolios to set up unique workflows and approvals—algining provider services with end customer’s business processes, offering mobility, service desk, visitor management, contractor management, budget, stakeholder portals, real-time executive insights, and more.
Drivers of this change The sudden and dramatic nature of the COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for O&M teams, making them realize the limitations of the legacy tools and processes they were using. At the same time, building occupants also became aware of the flexibility and adaptability limitations they were dealing with, leading to them wanting greater control over their environment, as well as up to the minute information and frictionless services. Transformationally, the spotlight was on operational resilience, and O&M teams emerged as a foundational strategic function, to empower building owners and operators, and create a mechanism to address the concerns of tenants and occupants.
The industry has realized that it needs to shift to a more proactive and agile model, with nimble and empowered FM teams as a fundamental building block in a strong operations strategy. Earlier, owners would keep on acquiring new buildings to gain customers, and a huge focus was on the sales side of real estate. The focus is now on increasing the square feet leased by becoming more operationally efficient, and ensuring that tenants are happy, at a lower cost to the business. Owners also have a need to be more agile, to differentiate themselves, with end-user experience firmly at the core of measuring service quality, and brand identity.
From an innovation standpoint, how can you take this to the next level for larger efficiency gains across a portfolio? Real estate portfolios are also setting themselves up for smart building success, when they choose a connected approach to CaFM operations. In its current form without real-time information from buildings, CaFM is vastly underutilized and at the risk of becoming redundant. The key is to create a Connected Ops environment where the software platform provides a hardware-
agnostic approach to connect real-time building data, with core O&M functions. Besides streamlining workflows, you can now optimize them for maximum performance.
Failure to do this will relegate CaFM to its most basic version - that of keeping maintenance-related logs. If the value of the technology is to be optimized, it must have access to a common database that includes systems data points; like asset performance, energy usage metrics, FDD data, etc. The data quality - or the lack thereof - will have a direct bearing on deep-dive analysis, maintenance schedule, and therefore on service quality and associated cost.
Such transparency in building operations favours multiple stakeholders, and O&M leaders most of all; giving them real-time access to vital information - such as asset health, vendor accountability budget versus cost analysis, a single record of information, resource utilization, and overall gaps in operations - paving the way for fundamentally improving property operations.
Centralized and connected operations are another key area that will take portfolio scale efficiency gains to the next level. For instance, if a CRE business has procured 10 different applications, this constitutes a huge investment. By contextually integrating these functionalities onto a common centralized platform, the value unlocked becomes exponentially greater. So, such a centralized Command Center allows businesses to optimize resources, operate with greater flexibility, and identify innovation gaps, through a single-window and granular real-time view, of their operations.
Benefits of a data-driven approach to customers Putting it simply, a data-driven approach is just the smarter and more cost-efficient way to operate properties. And this is measurably apparent across the entire spectrum of metrics and business outcomes. Our customers have reported workforce productivity improvements of up to 15 percent; a reduction in complaint escalations of up to 90 to 95 percent; and an up to 50 percent reduction in asset downtime.
The reliance on a modern O&M solution for decision-making has increased significantly in recent years. And considering a major chunk of building life cycle costs can be attributed to workflows around maintenance, approvals, service requests, and occupant experience, this is not in the least bit surprising. The consensus around adopting integrated, data-driven O&M software has now crossed the tipping point within the industry; and the impact on operational bottom lines, asset performance, and end-user experiences, will be profound.
