Services: get in early to avoid disappointment

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Jumeirah Beach Residence, Dubai: As the number of freehold developments increases, and therefore the number of homeowners, the FM industry is anticipating a greater demand by end users for long-running and quality service agreements.

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Mick Dalton, senior director asset management, Emaar.

Facilities Management is an often over-looked aspect of the construction industry, incorporating a diverse range of specialities from lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, technology and access, and control, to list just a few. All of these and more are faculties which are imperative for a modern building to function properly on a daily basis.

The overriding perception is that FM can be considered once the supposedly more important aspects of the process - design and construction - have been completed. But there is a growing school of thought that FM companies should be involved at an earlier stage of the overall process; the theory being that a coordinated and measured approach to the build will be advantageous in the long term.

Yet the sector is being stifled by a lack of recognition from the wider industry. Certainly, its has a wide remit, but a lack of definition is not as much to blame as the rest of the industry's unwillingness to understand its relevance. Mick Dalton, senior director - asset management, Emaar, explains: "Facilities Management is still not understood or appreciated properly, and is often the last to be consulted. To align the construction sector to international standards, it is imperative that professional FM companies are involved in the project at an earlier stage."

This doesn't happen at the moment, he adds, as it doesn't translate on the ground, mostly due to poor understanding of the concept of FM, poor communication between various partners involved in the construction and lack of engagement.

Paul Anson, director, Operon Middle East, agrees: "The problem is that FM is such a diverse industry. If you lined up 50 contractors or developers, they would all come up with a different interpretation [of FM]. They really don't understand that true FM is about international benchmarks of delivery, economies of scale, response times, service level agreements and key performance indicators."

Yet, slowly, Anson believes there is a move towards understanding what FM offers and this shift in thinking is down to a change in the property market over the last few years, with a greater emphasis on ownership, which brings with it higher demands. "I think the freehold movement has probably accelerated the recognition of FM. Because when people are buying properties, it is a different scenario. When you have an owner simply renting the villa, it is different to when you have freehold ownership, where owners demand better quality of services on their developments.

"The large scale investors that are buying these developments are becoming a lot more savvy, they are actually looking into the life cycle of the building and the costs required to maintain it," he adds.

Having an FM company on board wouldn't just alleviate problems further down the line, it would have financial ramifications as well as produce a better product. "The advantages of having on board an FM company are better feedback on design, improved quality, considerable reduction in costs and better customer satisfaction," says Dalton.

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