At the FM Giants Roundtable hosted on Ain Dubai, Satinder Singh, COO at EFS Facilities Services Group joined an exclusive roundtable discussion to discuss various topics and issues affecting the industry, such as contractual gaps, worker wellbeing, working closely with real estate developers, breaking into the hospitality industry, and so much more.
Satinder Singh is the COO of EFS Group. He is a veteran and has been with EFS for the last twenty-one years since its inception. Satinder Singh has extensive experience in electro-mechanical and specialized systems in diverse public & private organizations. In addition, he has over thirty-two years of facilities management experience, including commissioning, operations, transition management processes, condition audits, mobilization in global markets across business verticals like Banking, Integrated Work Place, Healthcare and Aviation.
At EFS, Satinder strengthens the organization’s capabilities as a strategic leader, process development and technical expert to enhance overall operations for service excellence
Managing Large Task-Force: The value of employee well-being by the FM Companies and Clients contracting manpower services
At EFS, we have six pillars within our HR framework, and out of the six, we have a specific one that focuses on the employee’s well-being. We are dedicated to the safety and security of our blue and white-collar staff.
When it comes to financial well-being, we have created support systems that will allow our employees coming from India to have access to apply for National Bonds, for example, through our HR Department. Our internal department will support our employees to understand and maximize this investment opportunity and translate the benefits.
In addition, we learn a lot from working with multinational companies, local clients, and local government clients and see how they are implementing their worker well-being initiatives. If you get a chance to look at our facilities, you will not find people being unhappy or demotivated – this is a direct result of our workers’ welfare management team and performance management team. These workers work around the clock with the management team to ensure that every aspect of the staff is taken care of.
Establishing a relationship with developers on projects: How can the FM Industry establish an open line of communication with developers at the beginning of new construction projects
Developers are still hesitant to deal with facilities management companies at an early stage of their projects, especially at the design stages of their buildings.
Although we have been advocating for the early integration of FM consideration, it is a long-awaited initiative that the investors/developers need to take as facilities management companies services can help reduce the cost considerably. Further, this could be due to poor construction and design of the building that would necessitate a high service charge after the whole project is completed.
Currently, for any project that we are taking over, you have key stakeholders such as the owner, tenants, and clients who will now expect us to fix issues that could have easily been avoided initially.
Contractual Gaps: What are some of the gaps seen by the FM Industry when it comes to contracts and tendering processes?
When we are talking about the contract gaps during the RFP stage, the procurement team’s objectives from the client-side are to make sure they get the value of the maximum savings for money. They don’t involve their operations team, who, in fact, are the ones managing the contract once awarded. On the other side, FM business development has a target to achieve that year, but they do not approach the operations team for their estimation. So, it is a miscommunication between bidding and actual contract expectations in reality.
At EFS, we implemented these changes early on, and we made sure through our policies that no one can go into an RFP without consulting the operations review. So, as we do the estimations, we make sure to go on-site and determine the real cost. If a certain service is required, we then put a value against it based on the review. Then the pricing will be done by the business development team and secure the contract.
Also, the expectations in the contract are sometimes unreasonable and hard to keep track of. So, we need to engage with the operations team and explain the feasibility of the contract. Currently, in the industry, the race for contracts leads up to ignoring the end-users, as well as the end-users often don’t know what is in the contract the FM provider has signed with the client. Ultimately, if the end-users are not satisfied, in the loop, they would end up requesting a new tender which leads to loss of business. At EFS, we have experienced great continuity with clients. It shows there is a high retention factor for us due to our business development ethical policies that ensure the consulting with all parties involved.