Facilitating Islands

Atlantis is one of 30 hotels and resorts planned for The Palm Jumeirah.
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Richard Burl, MD of First Resort, explains the challenges a start-up, boutique FM company faces and how to overcome them

Dubai boasts a huge number of large-scale developers that not only construct the Emirate’s iconic buildings, but also engineer the considerable infrastructure required to support projects, such as roads, bridges, sewerage treatment plants, district cooling plants and all of the networks that sustain utilities.

The Palm Jumeirah is one such landmark development, as well as being one of the world’s most exciting and challenging projects from an FM and environmental perspective. The island is now home to more than 2,000 families and will ultimately encompass 8,000 homes, 30 world-class hotels – with most of the top hospitality brands, including Atlantis, represented – in addition to the first permanent Cirque du Soleil theatre outside of the US and the Far East.

The challenges of managing such a development are enormous and often vary daily; from simple challenges, such as ensuring that Palm Jumeirah’s residents have safe access to their villas or apartments whilst construction continues, right the way through to providing simple services, like mail or newspaper deliveries in the mornings.

Weekly challenges come in the form of the handover of the project, from a construction phase to an operational phase; something that is relatively easy when you are talking about a standard residential building but, when discussing the handover of 20 buildings at a time – more than 2,500 apartments – this provides additional difficulties; for example, making sure that staff are in place and trained on the systems, ready to operate them and in a position to manage the defects liability period.

Meanwhile, at all times, residents’ needs must be met.

At a monthly level, there are often sustainability and Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) issues, however we have chosen to view these as opportunities rather than challenges, as we put in place the systems and processes to guarantee that sustainability is part of the project’s day-to-day culture. Such complications can only truly be addressed successfully by the best facilities management companies in the region; recognised as a global brand for its commitment and integrity in providing professional facility and estate management services, EMCOR Facilities Services is widely considered to be one such company.

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With over 30,000 employees worldwide and US$ 6.8 billion in annual revenues, EMCOR provides facilities services for companies in market sectors ranging from airports to banks, energy to education, healthcare to hospitality, residential communities to governments and beyond.

Our services are all backed by Integrated Management Systems – certified to ISO 9001-2000, ensuring full compliance with building, health and safety regulations – as well as with sound environmental and energy management procedures.

Two years ago, we decided to establish a boutique facilities management company to deliver the exceptional levels of customer service and technical focus required to operate, maintain, clean and secure hotels and resorts of the highest standards.

Offering a full range of carefully selected, well-trained and directly employed staff capable of providing MEP, housekeeping and security services, that FM company, First Resort, is now accomplishing our five-star vision.

We identified three critical strategies in providing FM services which were:

• Providing all of our core services through our own staff;
• Utilising staff that are technically capable and professionally proficient but, most importantly, focused on the delivery of customer service – an interaction that will become our trademark;
• Recruiting, training and developing staff to deliver five-star hotel quality customer service, technical ability and know-how, health, safety and environmental awareness.

We knew that developing a new business from scratch, or even from within EMCOR’s own existing organisation, would be complex and require a broad knowledge base. Therefore, as a service provider specialising in hotel, resort and residence facilities provision and management, based on the Palm Jumeriah, it was natural for us to seek to create a working relationship with The Palm’s master-developer Nakheel.

First Resort has solid experience in providing complementary facilities services and associated functions; Nakheel, through its many influential offshoots – many of which are directly linked to The Palm – therefore stood out as a business that First Resort would like to work with.

Through a determined approach towards building a robust FM business and managing it successfully, we identified ourselves as the perfect partner for Nakheel. The real question was: would Nakheel recognise First Resort, a young start-up, as a company it could do business with?

We analysed both theirs and our own market positions before approaching them. We imagined that Nakheel would think twice before employing our skills and, although we’re not privy to the ins and outs of their decision-making process, we are grateful that we were given the opportunity to show what we can do. Subsequently, we have gradually built a solid working relationship with Nakheel.

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