Come grow with me

By 2022, The Dubai aviation sector will directly and indirectly employ 22% of the employment force of Dubai says Binadai.

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The expansion of Dubai International Airport is underway. Omar Binadai, senior general manager, FM, reveals how he plans to accommodate for 75 million passengers with zero additional staff.

The prime minister of the UAE, and ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum endorsed a $7.8bn expansion project of Dubai International Airport (DXB)earlier this year.

Authorisation was given to expand Terminal 2 and build Concourse 4, (C4) connected to T1 for check-in and baggage services. The project is in addition to the completion of the C3 project, an area solely dedicated to Emirates a380 flights.

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Capacity of DXB will increase to 75 million passengers when C3 opens. Baggage systems will be upgraded and cargo capacity augmented with a 30,000m2 expansion of the cargo terminal.

But as numbers increase at one end, they remain steady at the other. Senior GM, FM, Omar Binadai, has an ambitious plan which involves opening the new concourse with nil additional staff.

“We’ve already established a project team within engineering and this project team will [focus on] the direction [of working] smarter, with efficiency, to ensure every hour is utilised by the staff.

Working smarter not harder
“When I send a technician to fix something, he should think why am I fixing it, not just fix it and go. Why did it happen? How many faults like this have occurred? Then he has to evaluate, process, plan, execute and feed it back into the process. We are definitely aiming not to hugely expand teams.”

The team makes a gap analysis and sees where additional resources can be utilised. “The old electrician would have fixed the one thing and would have gone.

“No,” says Binadai. We want to enlighten them with additional responsibility, we will train them to get there. We analyse their skills; what more can they do? How do we get them to do it? We provide training and finally place them into the role[...] If you have an electrician with a bit of knowledge of mechanical, he can be trained further in this area to assist.”

Binadai joined the airport in 1994 after graduating from Boston University as an Electrical Engineer. He worked on airfield lighting to begin with, then airport special systems such as baggage handling and security.

FM was then established, forming 70% of engineering services and included facility care and MEP services. Security is given a greater emphasis in airport FM. Like a number of specialist services is outsourced or ‘out tasked’ as Binadai calls them, since they allow control to be retained at airport supervisory level.

“When it comes to FM, you’ll find many civil contractors outside. When it comes to mechanical, you’ll find many HVAC, AC contractors available, facility care and similar so we focus on outsourcing here.”

Employing a contractor at the airport is a complex process. A tender is floated initially in which requirements of the candidate are outlined. As the airport runs over 24 hours, it is vital there is a contractor present at all times - a cleaning company available on demand.

There is at least 2-3 months of overlap between existing and new service provider, during which time, the new service provider has undergone safety training, customer service training and intensive staff interviews. The existing contractor is then gradually vacated and the new contractor moved in.

Outsourcing itself however, does take a different shape when it concerns the airport, explains Binadai. “We have blue collar staff coming for outsource. However, in order to retain quality and assurance that we provide the best service for our passengers, we retain supervisory level in house.

"Especially today, we have the ACI rating which ranks the airport based on a report and a considerable part of that is the facility care aspect. That gives a lot of weight to the ranking.”

Specialist system maintenance is completely outsourced. This includes the traction system, elevator, escalator and also MEP and fit-out contracts. In other areas, blue collar staff are employed, but an account manager such as an in-house engineer will be put in place to retain and manage that control.

“You have around 140,000 passengers crossing through the airport daily,” says Binadai. “Tomorrow, we might find it difficult to source the people in case of any drawback in the service from the outsourced contractor of say baggage handling or airfield lighting.

"[Therefore] we have our core team in house, in case anything happens to the company [and it can’t be available]. It is very difficult to retain the expertise so we build our own in the airport. That’s an overall strategy - to keep our own expertise in specialised systems.”

While the aim of the game is to cut costs, Binadai is aware his strategy will present some challenges. “The challenge is there and has been since I joined the airport. When I joined there was only around six million passengers. This year we’re looking at finishing up with around fifty million passengers. So the challenge is there and the expectation is high always for the airport.