What is your view on “Changing Face of Facilities Management”? How the future of FM Sector in India looks like?

There has been a dramatic change in the FM industry over the past few years, not only has the role of FM changed for good but also the perception of the workplace amongst people has changed. Businesses have realised, how important workplace is to enhance the productivity of the employees and hence finally recognising the importance of FMs with the value they bring in to make workplace better and people happy. FMs may not add to the sales or revenue but certainly has the ability to help increase profitability.

FM sector in India is swiftly expanding and has led to noteworthy growth, predicting the market to cross $ 100 billion by 2023. According to a market report by Technavio, the facility management services market in India predicts the market to register a CAGR of almost 18% by 2022. Interestingly the entire APAC will see tremendous growth and will become the largest FM market by 2025.

As a user/operator in Facility Management, what are the qualities you look for in your vendor/ supplier before choosing them for FM operations?

Vendor/service provider is more of a business partner than only a service provider to us, and it is very crucial to choose the right partner for long, productive and fruitful partnership. Some of the key points that we generally look into are,

• Identifying Business needs to choose a partner’s compatibility
• History – financial and work experience of the partner
• Expertise in the field
• Technology / Mobility and communication
• Flexibility and capability to integrate with existing systems
• Robust Transition Process
• Training and development capability
• Scalability

Technology Disruption and industry 4.0, what impact they have on the imminent future of Facilities Management in India?

Industry 4.0 is seen to bring about significant changes in the FM industry, it will be interesting to see how this would shape up further.  The technologies if implemented appropriately will help ensure safe Infrastructure & operations, reduce costs and improve productivity, consequences of technological advancement for FM are substantial. some of the topmost trends would be,

• IoT, allows organisations to information, respond to changes and act. In the connected world, Smart Infrastructure is implemented, with tools that are capable of dealing with scale and lifecycle of assets.
• With the Internet of Things comes a  need for analytics. Possibility with big data allows FM ‘s to ascertain insightful outcomes, and gather intelligence on performance, lifecycle and further help in predictive analyses, which can be proactively used to detect any threat.
• Mobile technology is another trend which has already made a remarkable impact in the Industry, with a software solution that can be used on phone providing FMs greater visibility on the operations and issues.
• Other Technological advancement benefits are Augmented reality, Use of Drones etc.

How do facilities professionals move away from the Mindset of an ‘Administrative Support’ function and be recognised as key critical resources for the enterprise? What are your thoughts on this?

• I am glad that this point is taken up, there are various discipline names by which the FM is carried out in organisations, namely, Administration, Corporate services, Support services, Infrastructure services… etc. etc.

Going by the books, FM is defined as an organizational function which integrates people, place and process within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of the core business.”
With recent developments in the field and consolidation of the services, it is now being recognised as an important Function/discipline, organisations have also been able to understand the impact that FM can make both to the brand and bottom line.

Your views on The Economic Times “Facility Management Summit” and how important do you to feel is the need for organizing such summits?

It is a great initiative by The Economic Times to create a platform for the Thought Leaders, Visionaries and all professionals to Learn, Share knowledge, discuss insights and help create a path for future. Events at this scale, organised by one the best media house brings a lot of credibility to the FN sector and helps gain recognition across industries.

Ajay Bhatt

Head – Administration & Facilities

Godrej Industries

For more information about the Facility Management Summit, please visit: http://et-edge.com/conferences/sfm/