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Guest Blog, Vince Treadgold: One Team, One Goal, One Mission…
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FM has drastically changed over the years. The industry has harnessed more respect as it has shifted from an emerging into a well-recognised sector. As such, facilities management is playing a bigger role in the way organisations view the world of work; however, the most evident change concerns the relationship dynamic between service providers and clients. More and more businesses are now waking up to the idea that their providers are genuine partners. With that realisation comes the mutual understanding that if organisations really want the FM solution to work, they need to be on the same page as their supplier, and vice versa.

There is now the widespread recognition that innovation is only possible when both client and provider work as one. At Servest, we have a presence at more than 7,000 sites across the UK. We’re growing at a phenomenal rate and that is thanks to two things: the quality of our offering and the relationships we are able to cultivate with our clients. For us, people are at the heart of our business, and we believe in relationships and human partnerships to create mutual success. The key to our most successful contracts is the fact that both parties work together as a team. Our mission is to get our people to understand the values and the goals that underpin every relationship, and to get them involved with both sides of the partnership.

The first step in that challenge is getting your employees on-board. Regardless of the business, it’s important to understand people and what matters to them if you’re to get the best out of a workforce. We work with our clients to ensure we listen to everyone who forms a part of that working relationship. By keeping an open dialogue we’re then able to empower people with the tools needed to act, change and innovate. Employee engagement sits at the centre of this focus. If people are engaged in their roles, and if they feel like they are part of the wider team, then they will be liberated when it comes to suggesting ideas that may move the business forward in unexpected yet profitable directions. To that end, we actually run training sessions and learning and development programmes that are open to both sets of employees, both client-side and within the Servest team.

Cultivating a culture of trust and respect is essential to the success of any business. This is even more necessary when a service provider is working on a client site. It’s important to avoid an ‘us and them’ dynamic so we really do focus on the human element with each and every contract we deliver. In order for a partnership to operate with integrity and diligence, the onsite team should jointly seek to foster an entrepreneurial foundation that drives a spirit of innovation and inventiveness. Working proactively together can ensure that both client and service provider is able to respond to the customers’ needs with the adaptability and flexibility necessary to deliver a high quality service.

Servest is often considered as an extension of our clients. We work with our clients – not for our clients – and together, we collaborate, communicate and cooperate on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to ensure the working relationship is as fruitful as it can be. It’s only together that we can pull out all the stops in order to deliver a unified FM solution.

 

 

Vince has over 10 years’ experience of working with major retailers and was identified as a candidate for the position as Key Account Manager for Tesco just over three years ago. He has helped nurture and expand Servest’s business with Tesco and now runs the account as a separate division of our company with full P&L responsibility and a turnover of £36 million.

Guest Blog, Brian Londsale: The current status of energy efficiency
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Energy efficiency is now beginning to enter the minds of consumers and businesses alike. Whether the carbon footprint in your home or the use of travel to and from your workplace, the need to raise awareness and take action is gaining traction. Simple ways in which to do so include:

  • Cost-cutting initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s where organisations began to outsource ‘non-core’ services.
  • Management of varied services both ‘hard’, (e.g. building fabric) and ‘soft’ (e.g. cleaning, catering, and health & safety) to achieve better quality.

The facilities management sector has brought in a mix of new contractors, large multi-service companies along with in-house departments. The task to be addressed includes bettering emissions in travel and insulation of goods, ruses and recycling of goods. Bringing an understanding of why this is important to the longevity of your business.

It is estimated that the facilities management sector employs an estimated 10 per cent of the UK working population and is said to be worth £111 billion a year to the UK economy.

The skill and knowledge required in the management of facilities has now began to gather momentum, continuing to include management of an increasingly broad range of tangible assets, support services and people skills. Attracting a higher level of staff to pursue the sustainability will only strengthen the sectors growth and relevance.

Energy efficiency can be attained through the simple tasks completed in the correct way and, as many of you may find, the management of these simple tasks can be fruitful in cutting costs.

The energy used is more than likely your buildings largest expense, also very much the most unpredictable. Cost effective solution to help reduce the energy usage and improve performance and comfort:

  • Upgrading your boilers, ventilation, and windows.
  • Improving energy efficiency of insulation, window and doors will help improve comfort and energy savings.
  • Upgrading your lighting, with energy efficient lamps, fixtures and controls.
  • Control upgrades of optimizing when the lights are dimmed to allow natural light through and decreasing ventilation usage when not needed.
  • Water consumption and waste water improvements, seeing as electricity accounts for 80% of all water processes.
  • Renewable energy sources, solar, geothermal alternatives to improve efficiency.
  • Servicing and correct maintenance of equipment to further their life cycle.

Having these practises in place will help a long way to the efficiency of your building, before you then decide to tackle other aspects, such as: lowering transport costs, packaging, labelling and uses of biodegradable products.

Outsourcing is a major topic with how to manage your costing and what way brings the best results. Facilities management is a discipline vital to the high level, strategic change required by the decision makers in daily work or living space. Financial management will become very much common practice for many organisations, to nurture their growth. Rather than those who deem it as an unwarranted overhead and not required for the business.

Brian Londsale is a managing partner of Glasgow Boiler Service. The have been experts in energy efficiency for generations. The company use their skills and knowledge to reduce the environmental impact of their customers.

Guest Blog, Pete Mills: Can BMS go the distance? Achieving efficiency gains through remote monitoring…
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As facilities managers come under pressure to implement energy saving measures, remote communication within wider Building Management Systems (BMS) is helping to deliver efficiency gains. Here, Pete Mills, commercial technical operations manager at Bosch Commercial and Industrial, explains the role of remote monitoring in the future of buildings.

Facilities managers are faced with the challenge of recommending heating and hot water systems which have the ability to maximise efficiency. This requirement extends beyond saving on utility bills to limiting the number of site visits and even reducing equipment downtime. Intelligent Building Management Systems (BMS) – with the added advantage of being monitored off-site – advocates flexibility and are vital to achieving these goals.

 

Another hour in the day

A key benefit of the latest generation of BMS, which often boasts remote communication capability, is its ability to deliver high quality results without the necessity for a site presence. Remote monitoring may not be a new concept and systems using analogue phone lines to report faults are relatively common. Today, however, intuitive web-based systems are being developed which allow facilities managers and manufacturers to access their own platform and monitor a system’s performance data via a web browser.

Through remote monitoring integrated within BMS it is possible for automatic restarts of equipment to be actioned from off site. We have found this particularly useful in the area of Combined Heat and Power (CHP). Our system for example, allows a CHP unit to be restarted under certain fault conditions, where there is supervision, without the need to send an engineer to site.

Such holistic systems provide the potential to effectively monitor more than one site. Users can remotely access a site’s usage data and even receive text message alerts should a system encounter an error. This cuts down not only on the time spent at each site, but also the travel distance between.

 

Reducing equipment downtime

With preventative maintenance holding the key to avoiding equipment downtime, a BMS can help monitor performance shortfalls. This creates opportunities for equipment to be repaired proactively rather than in response to a breakdown. Maintenance systems can also offer warnings on equipment. In the past, system warnings rarely provided a specific prognosis, however modern systems allow facilities managers to delve into a monitoring platform to view alerts as well as access important maintenance information such as when a service is due.

 

Payback potential

As well as limiting downtime, BMS which incorporate remote communication elements have a positive impact on payback periods. One of the main benefits of monitoring a system remotely is that all concerned parties can be notified via text message or email immediately, should a system or module stop working for any reason; enabling them to resolve the issue as promptly as possible.

As payback periods continue to play a greater role in the UK, guaranteed availability contracts are set to become more common. This means that many service level agreements are stipulating that a site’s equipment must run for a guaranteed percentage of running hours each year. Monitoring systems help place the onus back on the manufacturer to manage and react to individual requirements as and when they occur.

 

Diminishing bills

Monitoring technology can also benefit utilities costs. It is often desirable to have access to proportion usage charges within a building. Modern systems are helping tenants to receive a more representative energy bill without the need for additional monitoring visits.

On a personal level, I think it is exciting to see just how intuitive the monitoring systems of the future will become, but one thing which is already coming to the fore is the inclusion of remote monitoring within the service concepts of today.

 

For more information on Bosch Commercial and Industrial and its range of products and services, please visit www.bosch-industrial.co.uk or call 0330 123 3004. Alternatively, follow Bosch Commercial and Industrial on Twitter (@BoschHeating_UK) and LinkedIn (Bosch Commercial and Industrial UK).

 

Pete Mills has been in the HVAC industry for over 37 years, having started off as an apprentice heating engineer at just 16. Since then, he has gone on to be a technical liaison officer, and is now a commercial technical operations manager at Bosch Commercial and Industrial.

Guest Blog, Ian Hetherington: 3D mapping means going green has never been easier…
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Our society is more conscious than ever of the detrimental effects our actions have on the environment, and the business world is no different. As a facilities manager, the role of policing the use of energy most likely falls in your lap, and with a wide range regulations around the management of energy, it’s often hard to keep up. 

For example, as a mandatory programme, all large UK businesses are affected by the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) whereby they are committed to partaking in an energy assessment every four years. The aim of this is to make large organisations aware of their total energy consumption and provide metrics for improvement. Naturally, it’s within facilities managers’ interest to make efforts to work towards reducing energy consumption – not just for corporate responsibility, but also as a cost saving strategy.

But how is it possible to monitor and log energy consumption for one or sometimes multiple buildings? What was once a daunting task is now becoming increasingly easier with technology innovations.

A dynamic 3D map of both the exterior and interior of buildings delivered via a mobile application can provide facilities managers with the means to both visualise data sets relating to asset and resource usage, as well as collect live information on building use. In turn, this will enable FMs to quickly and easily derive actionable insights that can optimise efficiency and reduce costs.

By monitoring assets within the premises, usage patterns can be correlated to gain insight into staff behaviour, informing decision making to help reduce costs and minimise resource wastage. If, for example, a particular meeting room is consistently never used in the afternoon, the lighting could be automatically switched off.

Thus, a mobile app that is accessible to everyone within the building allows facilities managers to engage with staff and push notifications to pass on awareness of unnecessary energy consumption. FMs could even add a gamification element to the app and allow staff to collect points for best practice.

Optimising the use of resources can create direct cost savings as well as helping to meet energy consumption targets. Presenting complex data sets graphically with geographic context enables facilities managers to intuitively extract meaningful understanding and insight from big data.

The Internet of Things (IoT) will massively increase the volume and breadth of data available to environment managers, with all kinds of devices and building components able to report on their own status and that of their surroundings. This additional information has the potential to help in the effective management of facilities, though the collection of data itself is valueless without deriving the insight from it that delivers business benefits.

Key in analysing big datasets is to always remember the business outcomes that you are aiming to distribute. Analysis for the sake of it generally achieves little; ensuring the work provides insights that can be actioned to effect positive change in the chosen areas of the business is vital to deliver a return from the technology investments.

With an increasingly ‘mobile-first’ workforce, environment managers have the opportunity to utilise mobile applications to not only visualise the complex data they have available, but also to use the mobile devices as additional means of data collection.

 

Ian came to eeGeo from the world of video gaming and is well known for his role in the introduction of games such as Grand Theft Auto and Lemmings. Primarily based in the UK, eeGeo produces apps and technology platforms to allow users to experience and discovery the world around them.