7 minute read
FM TRENDS - NEW CHALLENGES, SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS
Martin Miller manages the takeover of properties for facility management in SAUTER Germany's SouthEast region. He is the main contact person for customers and is responsible for familiarising SAUTER FM's project managers with properties before handover. In our interview, Mr Miller provides insights into the importance of energy efficiency, flexible usage concepts and innovative environmental approaches in facility management.
SAUTER: Mr Miller, when a building is ready for handover, that's where you come in. How would you rate the quality level of new buildings currently?
Miller: Overall, we're on the right track, but there's definitely still room for improvement in energy efficiency in the operation of many buildings.
Where do you still see a need for improvement?
Many building owners continue to think that facility management begins when a newly constructed or refurbished building is handed over for use. People often forget that most of the costs aren't incurred during the construction phase but when a building is utilised. That's why facility management should be involved as early as the development and planning of the site. This is because facility managers know from many years of practical experience where the operating costs mainly arise – and how they can be reduced by taking action early on in the planning phase.
How do you take a systematic approach to this?
Ideally based on the GEFMA 116 guideline* on facility management during planning and construction. The new guideline, incidentally, is also a key winner as regards ESG.
*GEFMA 116
GEFMA stands for German Facility Management Association. With ten topic areas and 77 focus topics, their new guideline GEFMA 116 predominantly helps builders, planners and facility managers develop an integrated process for planning, construction and operation. In each phase of the construction project, it flags up the all-important topics for a property's successful life cycle.
Where is consulting most needed?
In the energy sector. Heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting are much more expensive now than five years ago. There's also the ongoing change in usage structures that I mentioned before. Facility managers have to keep a keen eye on this. Otherwise, you may end up heating rooms for no reason whatsoever or a meeting room is too cold for a conference because it was scheduled at short notice. Back when energy was cheap, this wasn't a big deal. Everywhere was simply heated with no second thoughts given to the cost. You can't do that any more – times have changed.
What has changed in day-to-day facility management?
A great deal. Thanks to building automation, stateof-the-art technical equipment (ventilation and airconditioning systems, various heat generation facilities, electrical installations) and looking after the many safety-relevant systems (fire alarms, sprinklers, safety lighting etc.), the traditional tasks of a caretaker, such as opening and locking up or changing light bulbs, no longer constitute the main job. Today's facility manager isn't so much a handyman but a consultant on all technical matters in the building. The focus is far more on managing the work rather than actually carrying it out. This is performed by specialist contractors or our own technicians. The facility manager is the first port of call and main contact person for the tenants.
Where do new challenges lie?
Today, as a facility manager, the key attribute is being flexible – just as modern building use is flexible. 20-year leases and nine-to-five occupancy are no longer the norm. These days, buildings are rented by frequently changing tenants in highly flexible models. Workplaces are allocated by hot desking, project groups suddenly need more space, departments are restructured or working hours are less rigid. These constant changes mean that time and again, facility managers have to come up with customised solutions.
Have owners also taken this change on board?
Not quite yet. When it comes to saving energy, the owners largely only undertake the bare essentials and even often sell buildings unmodernised to save money. But this usually achieves the opposite.
Why's that?
Because the value of a property nowadays revolves around its energy efficiency and level of digitalisation. The demand for commercial space, especially offices, is declining. This is partly due to the ailing economy, but principally due to hot-desking and work-from-home concepts. This is good news for buyers and tenants because they can take their pick of the properties –and will, if in doubt, always opt for the energy-saving smart building. Anyone missing this mega-trend has to take big price drops on the chin. It's not uncommon for a building needing refurbishment to become a socalled "stranded asset", unable to be sold or leased.
How can this be prevented?
By asking someone who knows how it works. At SAUTER, we offer a whole host of measures for energyefficient facility management. They range from monitoring, energy consulting, planning and ROI calculation of efficiency measures, to financing and implementation through to commissioning management and ESG taxonomy-compliant reporting. Collecting the energy consumption data needed for a building requires systematic analysis and documentation with state-of-the-art software. We can help here too, with software solutions such as the amanteia tool, for example. This can be used to meet budget and decarbonisation targets.
What steps are building operators taking to make outdoor areas more eco-friendly and closer to nature?
Green roofs instead of tarmac, wildflower meadows instead of manicured lawns, goats instead of lawnmowers, bee hives and much more. Recently, for example, we had to contend with a plague of pigeons at an upmarket office building. In the past, a lot of money would have been spent putting up unsightly deterrents like spikes or pigeon nets on the facades. After talking to the customer, we deployed a falcon. This is an efficient way of keeping the pigeons away from the property. Nature's coming back, even in industrial zones. I think this is a wonderful development that should set an example.
What other important trends do you envisage?
Efficient, sustainable management is becoming increasingly important for many operators and users, and not simply for reasons of cost. They want to be in harmony with nature. This calls for new and creative ideas.
20 years of SAUTER FM
The construction industry is characterised by quicklychanging circumstances which repeatedly present it with challenges. During one such crisis, SAUTER Germany recognised the potential in facility management and successfully expanded its services portfolio. In 2004, the facility management division was spun off into the new subsidiary SAUTER FM GmbH whose operations are headed by Werner Ottilinger.
As an integrated system provider, SAUTER FM is an expert partner for its clients. It supplies bespoke solutions and services from the planning and implementation phases through to the entire utilisation and management stage of a property.
amanteia
amanteia is a joint venture between SAUTER Germany and MeteoViva, a provider of smart data solutions. The cloud-based tool gives property decision-makers an instant overview of the decarbonisation path for the entire portfolio. It also calculates the optimal sequence of measures for achieving this. After just a few entries to record the buildings in the portfolio, amanteia delivers an initial assessment of the CO2 footprint based on location, use and building stock, as well as a projection of the development up to 2050. Numerous import options allow the addition of measurement, usage and building data so that the projection can be refined further.
