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It is not a decade gone since facilities management in the Gulf was characterized by mainly cleaning facilities, providing and maintaining security services, fixing broken installations….and that was it.
The core need for such facilities management requirements was upkeep of facilities. Today, however, the priority is stretching even beyond that. It goes as far as maintaining a facility’s lifecycle, while bringing down operating costs, in a sustainable manner.
Until the recent years, energy efficiency has been a relatively low priority and low perceived opportunity to building owners and investors. However, with the dramatic increase and awareness of energy consumption and optimization concerns, and the advances in cost-effective technologies, energy efficiency and conservation are fast becoming integral parts of facilities management operations and strategies.
As evidenced by Nishant Ravindran, the general manager of UAE-based Inaya Facilities Management; these concepts are now making significant inroads into the regional facilities management operations.
Though marginalized by many, energy is the single largest expense on any facility’s operations. It represents a significant portion of any building’s operating cost, whether that building is used to educate students, host weary travelers, house decision-making executives or offer a myriad of retail options. However, it is ironic that for many such facilities, energy costs are the single largest controllable cost of operations.
It should therefore be noted that each minute of delay in boosting energy efficiency means loss of potential savings to investors. The first step in starting this energy efficiency process and beginning to reap its benefits is to partner with the right FM service provider. The new-kid-on-the-block of such facilities management service providers is Inaya FM, a subsidiary of Belhasa Holdings.
“Inaya FM’s main priority is to look at the client’s needs, and their business objectives and create a customized service offering,” notes Inaya’s Nishant.
He further illustrates: “In all our FM operations, sustainability, energy conservation and a relentless focus on cost efficiencies are a fundamental part of what we do. It is part of our culture. For instance, if you do proper housekeeping in a facility – commercial or residential, you can save up to 15 percent on utility consumption.
The bottom line
With the ever-increasing talk of energy-saving, it’s not, however, a matter of buying energy-saving equipment and installing the same into the facility. Energy saving equipment should be suitable for the facility in question, should be easily configurable to legacy systems and should be integrated with the existing building management systems.
This calls for a need to establish a baseline for utility consumption for clients and examine how they can achieve better efficiencies in a cost- effective way. The first step towards this is the creation of a sustainability dashboard to look at what is required to enhance the clients’ assets and facilities.
“You cannot implement energy conservation without creating a base-line; so we help clients to establish how they can improve the bottom lines of their companies. We achieve this by creating for them a baseline for utility consumption, set targets and roll out proactive resource efficiency management measures. By creating a sustainability dashboard, performance is monitored periodically and continuously improved,” Nishant illustrates.
“With our service offering, we demonstrate this commitment by discussing a formal energy policy for the facility and support the energy objectives with adequate financial and staffing resources. We advise clients to form a sustainability team that is responsible for overseeing the stated resource efficiency objectives. They also need to perform periodic evaluations using the sustainability dashboard for all of the organization’s major facilities and functions.
“The first time this evaluation is carried out, the information can be used to establish a baseline against which progress can be measured. Resource efficiency management goals relative to that baseline should be established to guide decision-making and to form the basis for tracking and measuring the (cost saving) progress.”
traffic in common areas and will require greater upkeep. Residential facilities do not always have fixed-occupancy pattern, so “you can get a call or complaint at any time of the day or night, and we need to react accordingly.”
For instance, as a cost-saving strategy, facility managers sometimes deploy time-based controls in facilities - that can be used to turn on and off the air conditioning systems (and/or water heating) at pre-selected periods (of the day, of the week, etc). However, in facilities, where there are no fixed-time occupancy rates, such a strategy may be rendered ineffective. This might therefore push the FM managers to go for the rather more-costly optimizer-parameters, where, whatever the conditions, or time of the day, the controls in a facility make sure the building reaches the desired temperature requirement.
Inaya FM has assembled a team of professionals with exceptional facilities management experience with proven track record in the industry in multiple domains. According to Nishant, this team is well-equipped to answer all possible FM needs: from residential to commercial; mechanical to electrical; hard to soft requirements.
Inaya FM is well-placed to extend its service offering to commercial, residential, government buildings, mixed-use developments, education institutions and retail facilities, as well. As part of its start-up operations, the company formed its operating blue print by providing in-house FM services to Belhasa’s subsidiaries, with a firm ground to shoot for more and bigger external projects in the region.
“We started five months back and our core consistencies are creating value, reliability, accountability and long-term partnerships with our clients. Few players have good, long-lasting relationships with their clients; so we want to be considered the most reliable FM service provider in the region, providing value added, high-end, total integrated services on the regional FM front,” said Nishant.
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