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Outsourced facilities management increases globally

The outsourcing of managed services and field maintenance services drive efficiency, productivity and risk mitigation, says Cornelius van der Merwe, COO for Telecommunications at Bidvest Facilities Management.


Pretoria, 12 Oct 2015

The demand for outsourced facilities management services has increased over the past few years, according to Cornelius van der Merwe, Chief Operating Officer for Telecommunications at Bidvest Facilities Management.

"Shareholders are focusing more and more on capital investment and the management of these assets. In order to manage infrastructure, specialised skills and expertise are required to ensure optimal productivity and efficiencies, which ultimately translate into return on investment," he said.

He added that the rise of facilities management as an outsourced and dedicated business has grown over the last 10 years, translating into benefits for business owners, allowing them to focus on their core business, and outsource to companies such as Bidvest Facilities Management, which specialises in these services. "This trend started in the oil and gas and technology sectors, where companies sold their FM to staff, who formed companies, and over the years developed the relevant skills," he said.

Globally, outsourced facilities management has become a trend, particularly with multinational organisations that take a global view of their infrastructural assets and use experts to advise on how best to manage and run it for them, ensuring alignment to the business needs of the asset in terms of mix and use.

According to Van der Merwe, in the telecoms space, it's more mission critical and is about network availability and maintaining infrastructure, so that it maximises the mechanical and other equipment capabilities resulting in efficiency, productivity and uptime. "When a network goes down," he said, "it has a huge impact on the telecommunication business and their customer, hence the criticality of ensuring that the infrastructure equipment is reliable."

Van der Merwe says both locally and internationally, there's been a big shift in the way telecoms are approaching the management of their assets and there is a trend of selling off some infrastructure elements to private companies, so they can focus on their core business - the efficient provision of telecoms service, while third party companies can consolidate services across various providers in order to reduce operational costs. Alternatively, telecommunications providers enter into agreements to share its service provider to service infrastructure commonly placed on a site, which drives down operating costs for all providers.

"The outsourcing of services that supports the infrastructure, called managed services and field maintenance, is a big trend as mentioned. Both of these outsourced services drive efficiency, productivity and risk mitigation," he added.

When asked about the role that technology and innovation play in enhancing facilities management, Van der Merwe stated that it does not only enable companies to work smarter to improve efficiencies, but it allows companies to manage equipment downtime risks proactively. "For example, the remote monitoring of critical equipment and plants; the creation of a paperless environment in service delivery and management using mobile devices; and linking and interfacing into a complete asset management solution capitalising on big data," he added.

"Remote monitoring allows you to proactively diagnose and anticipate any faults in the assets and equipment and perform tasks remotely, such as controlling emergency energy equipment and temperatures," he said. "This all provides powerful control over assets, as well as reporting on assets and infrastructure on tablets and desktops in a real-time environment, enabling companies to proactively manage their assets."

With facilities management covering a broad spectrum of disciplines, Bidvest Facilities Management identified the telecommunications sector as a specific focus area for the company due to the demand from end-users for increased speed and uptime. As a result, they have set up a specialised business unit with the appropriate skills set, systems, technology and support to assist customers on a national basis to drive cost reductions across their infrastructure, mitigate risk, and minimise network downtime caused by network supporting infrastructure.

http://www.bidvestfacilitiesmanagement.co.za/specialised-services/telecommunications-facilities-management

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Bidvest Facilities Management (previously known as TFMC)

Bidvest Facilities Management is one of the largest facilities management solutions companies in southern Africa. The company currently provides various customised and integrated facilities management services for approximately 50 000 sites across 23 million square metres of space throughout South Africa.

Founded in 2000, Bidvest Facilities Management is a majority black-owned (Level 2 B-BBEE) empowered supplier and has the following accreditiation: ISO 9001 Quality Management; OHSAS 18001 Health & Safety Management and ISO 14001 Environment Management.

Editorial contacts

Trish
P and P Communications
(011) 447 3511
trish@pandp.co.za
Didi Coetzee
Bidvest Facilities Management
(012) 641 8213
Didi.Coetzee@bidvestfm.co.za